Mendoza Day 1: Wining, Dining, and Generally Touristing

Plazas, Sundays, Parks, and Snakes

After a few weeks on the farm, Stephanie and I made for Mendoza city, the province’s capital. It’s a remarkably liveable city: unlike the endless Buenos Aires, whose borderlines seem more the stuff of legend than of reality, Mendoza is easily walkable, and adds to that more open and green space, and notable tilework in the plazas. When we headed for the city there was only one thing on my to-do list: bicycle wine touring. Which meant we were at a bit of a loss for what to do with our other day and half there. (If we’d planned further ahead, we could have taken advantage of rafting, hiking, or adventure sports in the area). As it was, we turned out to be pretty lucky.

            Our first night in the town we found a rock concert to raise attention to AIDS and sexual health taking place in the main plaza. For dinner we sampled the wine Mendoza is famed for, and got perhaps the most stereotypical meal possible: steak cooked in wine. (Another dish on the menu sounded like Argentina’s response to the Atkin’s diet: pizza with a steak instead of a crust.)

            The plaza is a very active place, and, it being Argentina, home to some impressive crafts stands. On a later night, we stumbled across a live tango orchestra, celebrating the famous tango singer Carlos Gardel’s birthday with a show. Audience members of all sorts, some dressed elegantly, some wearing sandals and street clothes, paired up to dance.

            Our first full day in Mendoza was a Sunday, an unfortunate mistake. We wanted to visit some wine tasting places, but most shops shut down on Sundays. (Speaking of wine, for those of you who would rather eat your drinks than drink them, consider trying Malbec ice cream, a flavor that came in season in my last few days).  We flipped through my guidebook and decided to check out a huge park in the area. It’s quite pretty, with many nice places to walk, and dotted with playgrounds. If you’re looking for a picnic area, a way to occupy young kids, or just want to see some nice nature, it’s worth a stop.

            Now, what we were looking forward to next, was seeing an ancient aquarium. My guidebook described it as an “underwater freak show” of preserved oddities from the sea, and suggested that the aquarium was likely unchanged since its installation in 1945, save for the level of algae on the glass. With a description like this, I couldn’t resist. Reality, however, could. We had chosen to come the year that someone finally decided to renovate the aquarium and it was closed to the public. Across the street, however, was a little snake-etarium, hosting a variety of snakes, a few large spiders, and other reptiles. Much of the charm was in the posters, which disproved snake stereotypes I had never heard of (snakes do not, in fact, drink cow’s milk, for example) and underlined that the only way to deal with snake venom is to get treated with an antivenom (do not try to suck out the venom, don’t apply a tourniquet, don’t cauterize the bite, drink alcohol if you want but don’t expect it to help . . . ). A few interesting facts I gleaned are that snakes are deaf, and that to make an antivenom, a scientist injects a small amount of diluted venom into a horse, removes some of the horse’s blood, and separates out the antibodies.
       We also made a stop by the Modern Arts museum (Museo Municipal de Artes Moderno) , located in the plaza. It was tiny, about 1 room, with a few nice wood sculptures, some obvious photoshops, and a less-than-inspiring very abstract movie. Not worth your time.

--

Traveler's Tips:

Guidebook

I have a Lonely Planet guidebook, which has been rather useful. The latest edition doesn’t include street numbers in its maps, and is usually off on price listings, but has handy details like phone numbers and street addresses. Everyone in my study abroad program owned Lonely Planet, which suggest its either good, or trendy.

Snake-etarium

There is some more exact and legit sounding name for this place, but I don’t remember. It’s worth an hour or so, and is cheap, only AR $7, if memory serves.

Día 17 - 23: Mate, Politics, and Cowboys (with a dash of death, and a side of tango)

I.   Día 17: Mate

I just finished curing my mate with mixed results. The vessel you drink from is called a “mate” (it’s also sometimes called a word that can also mean “penis”; This doesn’t make sense on many levels). My mate is made of a gourd, but you can also buy wood, plastic, or metal mates. Gourds and wood are the most popular and have different tastes. To prepare the drink, you fill the mate about 2/3 of the way with yerba leaves. You need to leave room, because the leaves will swell when heated. Shake the mate to mix up the yerba (add sugar if you like), and shake so the yerba makes a diagonal line within the gourd (not a straight line). This is supposed to ensure that not all the yerba gets wet at once, so the flavor lasts longer. Then, add the water, at about 90 degrees Celsius – if you pour water too hot, you’ll lose the taste as well. The bombilla is a special straw with a filter so you don’t suck up yerba (except, apparently, 8 peso ones don’t do this; buy a 30 peso one). 

Traditionally, one person has a mate gourd that they pass around. Each person drinks all the water, then passes the mate back to the owner, who refills it from a thermos, and passes it to someone else. I’ve encountered this in an Anthro class I sat in on, where one girl maintained the mate the whole class (I’m not sure she ever paused to take notes), and my Creative Writing teacher explained it today. It feels rather rude, but you shouldn’t say “thank you” unless you don’t want anymore.

To prepare your mate the first time, you’re supposed to cure it, which really just ensures you have a better taste. The general idea is to let your gourd absorb the flavor of the yerba more strongly. (I suppose it’s how ceramic tea pots will take on the flavor of their tea, and so – I assume - enhance the flavor of ensuing cups). Raquel’s boyfriend’s dad suggested brewing yerba in the new mate and letting it sit for three days. The internet suggested rinsing it the mate with water, letting it dry, then brushing the inside with sugar, brewing yerba for a day, dumping out the yerba, cutting any loose skin off the inside of the gourd, and repeating the process. I chose to let my first batch brew for two days, then cut loose skin and brew another day. Trying it now, it’s not the best mate, but then that could be the result of the brand of yerba I bought or the suboptimal straw.

II. Día 22: San Antonio 

Sunday I visited San Antonio de Areco, which I had heard described as a cowboy town, two hours from Buenos Aires by bus. It’s a nice small town, more enjoyable for its pretty river and relaxing atmosphere than for any particular event we did there. Upscale silver workshops are popular, as our horse rides for tourists. 

We went to a museum that was an old cowboy farm, and also stopped by the guide-book famous La Olla de Cobre chocolate store, which had a line down the block and was crowded, likely with fellow tourists. For my own tourist advice I’d say it’s fine to skip it; it smells awesome, but save for a piece of cinnamon chocolate I tried (which gave quite a kick), what I tried wasn’t particularly special, and mostly I found it too sweet.

          La Olla de Cobre ("The Copper Pot")

III. Día 23: Tango

The World Tango festival is in Buenos Aires this week, and the previous one. I went to see a competition today, in which partners dance in a circle, showing off their moves to four judges, and slowly get eliminated. Most of the dancers were young (the women often younger than the men) and from Argentina, Colombia, or Japan.

 Masterful photograpy. A TV screen highlighted one pair at a time.

Clothing seems to be important in tango, more for women than men. Men need to guide the dance, which they do largely through one hand on the woman’s back. The woman adds flourish, showing off fancier footwork. A dress that reveals her legs and is slim around the hips seems to show off the finesse of her leg movements well. There was however, one woman dancing in pants.

IV. Día 21: Death

Friday I saw the Recoleta Cemetery. The walled-in cemetery is like a ghost town of tombs, full of grand statues and marbled works. A few tray cats live there. Today it seems creepy to look into a tomb stacked full of your family’s coffins, and note that your own will soon be added, but I suppose in older times it may have been comforting to have a tradition and a sense of order in death. Still, I think this sort of cemetery adds a more personal touch than a gravestone.

V.     Politics

Last Sunday was the primary elections. Cristina had to run to qualify for the final elections, and the opposition candidates had to compete to be the one to run against her. Apparently, it was a huge election. It was a vote for the president, governor, mayor, national congress, provincial congress, and local representative. and you had to vote not just for which party for each seat, but for which candidate from each party. Parties don’t select just one representative, anyone can run, and the Peronist party had 5 candidates for mayor. The majority of the candidates shown on TV were men, but there were a number of women candidates.  One teacher told us that in the vote there were over 30 pages of names of candidates. Argentina also uses a paper vote, but somehow got all the tickets counted an hour after voting closed.

Cristina won in a landside, taking over 50% of the population, but not everyone was happy. Why not vote Cristina? I’ve heard that the upper classes, have complained that Cristina is basically stealing money from citizens in taxes, then using the cash to bribe the poor into voting for her. The issue is not that Cristina gives money directly to the poor, she doesn’t make systems to support those in poverty (or so I’m told).   For instance, Cristina gives money to families for each kid they send to school. This can be seen as helping support families who will have a kid studying instead of working, or it can be seen as a bribe. I’ve also heard rumor of corruption, and claims that while Cristina took 400 million pesos to build houses for the homeless, only 20 were ever constructed (I haven’t fact checked this).

Whether or not Cristina uses the money optimally, one professor tells me, it does save lives, especially now that mass unemployment has hit two generations of Argentineans.  This professor who seemed to respect Cristina Kirchner voted against her, partly because she’s tired of political offices staying in the hands of the city of Buenos Aires, and would prefer a candidate from the interior. In general, Buenos Aires city seems to rule the province of Buenos Aires, and in the past has been compared to a parasite on the larger province.

Voting is required in Buenos Aires, and if people are sick or had work that prevented them from voting, they have to get a certificate officially excusing them. Most shops and businesses are closed on Sunday, for religious reasons, so this should minimize the number of people who need to be excused. Still, on Sunday I saw a line stretching down 2 city blocks or more of people waiting for their certificate.

Día Uno - Tango

Argentina . . . everyone looks like a Caucasian, more or less. At the airport I couldn’t tell what language to use, even trying English on blondes wasn’t a sure strategy.

I arrived first of my group, at 6:30 am. It was the day of the governmental elections for Buenos Aires, and everywhere there was political graffiti. So far, I’ve only seen one offensive graffiti; most is just phrases like “For the left” or “Cristina forever more” (referring in this case to the presidential elections in October), or “beloved Cristina.. One bit of graffiti even read “I Love My Mother’; not quite the “FU World” or “I will be consumed by darkness” sort of graffiti I’ve seen in the US.  Posters were plastered up reminding people to vote. I’ve heard that everyone is legally required to vote, but that the law is easy to shirk.

I am living with an elderly woman, her live-in maid (a few years older than me), a housemate in my abroad program, and another abroad student who’s been here for two months. Apparently English is rather important in Argentina. Most people seem to speak a little, and my host maid? (host helper? host peer? I’m not sure what to call her) is studying it, because it’s a requirement for being a secretary.

So far, the much rumored of deadly traffic is a no-show. They’re not jaywalking friendly, but it’s no New York. The most dangerous thing was that one of our taxi drivers had a TV attached to his windshield, playing the news. (Come to think of it, Heather mentioned seeing a more improvised version of this in Japan . . . apparently the rest of the world does not need to see to drive.)

We went out to a tango show in Puerto Madera. First they served  us wine and a meal – the best thing I tasted there was gnocchi. There’s a strong Italian heritage in Argentina, along with a love of beef. We later tried a type of black caramel flan, also very rico. “Rico” and “linda” seemed to be the words of the night, perhaps because they were the positive adjectives that we knew and were easy to apply to most things.

Gia (my housemate) and Raquel (the host maid) in Puerto Madero

The tango show consisted of many acts, either men dancing solo, together, or with women, and singing. In general, it’s a very flashy, very flirty dance. The dancers get inches away from each other’s faces, lift and spin women, and toss so many quick, high kicks around the back or between the legs that they seem on the edge of injury. Immigrants and prostitutes created the dance, which no doubt explains the sexy atmosphere.  One man in the show danced solo, and he turned the moves into something that granted an air of power, not flirtation. The men all had slicked back black hair, and all the plots (when there was one) generally consisted of a man taking a piece of clothing from a woman who was minding her own business. The woman willingly tries to retrieve her umbrella/apron/shawl, and in the process, they being to dance.