Gualeguaychu!

Gualeguaychu! or, Argentina's answer to Carnival.

If you don't want to be stampeded to death, or you don't want to pay lavish amounts of money just to sit at the back of a football stadium to watch the carnival parade then go to Gualeguaychu instead. One girl who had gone to carnival in Rio that year as well said this one was better because you could actually see what was going on.

Gualeguay is about a two hour bus ride north of Buenos Aires on the rio de la plata, close to one of the border crossings with Uruguay. Carnival there consists of massive beach parties, by far the highlight for our group, and then later every night the carnival parade at the fair grounds.

I have never been to the real deal in Brazil, but I don't really see how anything could be more lavish. All of the floats were at least 20 feet high and resembled floating palaces. Our close proximity to them increased the experience because we were able to appreciate the detail, and not just the overall shape as we would have been able to if we were much farther away.

The Adventure Begins!!

I feel like that is the title of a movie?

After four months of LSAT and personal statement hell I finally emerged on the other side, cowed, but not broken. To reward myself I decided to do absolutely nothing for about three weeks, which kind of fun but I found myself subconsciously dissecting paragraphs to find flaws so it really wasn't that fun. I decided that instead of languishing in agony until March when the decisions start rolling in I would get out of the country with all due haste and go somewhere warm.

I arrived in BA tired, disoriented and feeling a bit freeze dried, all the usual from a 10 hour flight. I somehow, looking back I have no idea, managed to go look at apartments that first day and found one that I think its going to be quite awesome. It is in Las Canitas, a relatively new and posh barrio beyond Palermo. A quick overview of the main different barrios in ten words or less:

Palermo - Young, trendy, bars, nightlife, parks

Racoleta - old women in fur coats, posh, classy nightlife, expensive shopping

San Telmo - Old/historic, antiques, tango

La Boca - Football, bright colors, tourists, dangerous

Downtown - Downtown...

Las Canitas - upscale, green

Others - too far from downtown for me to get to class and wake up at reasonable hour

Anyhoo,

This apartment is in a nice, safe area, close to the main subte line and within walking distance of Palermo Soho, where many of the bars and restaurants are. It is in an old two story house, with four bedrooms, one of which is shared by a couple, bringing the occupants up to five. The floors are all red spanish tile, and the interior design is indigenous. There are two cats, one black and one tabby, both of which are already sleeping on my bed, but the best feature of the place: a roof deck!! Its actually quite big, with potted plants everywhere. There is a huge jacaranda tree that covers half of it a nice Parilla (grill).

My plan for the next four months are as follows - take lots of spanish classes and probably fail miserably, then go to Torres del Paine for a week and hopefully Chile for a week. My padres are coming to Salta in the middle of march and staying until June, so I will hopefully be able to spend time up there as well.

So far most of my adventures have been with cabbies - one taught me how to identify fake bills and the other one told me I was going to marry an argentine.

Casa Buenaventura

Salta Area, Argentina

When most people retire and feel the need to re-invent themselves they buy a Porsche, get a bad haircut or have an affair. My dad decided to be a farmer, in South America. In high school I hated this because all of my friends joked that he was a drug lord so I eventually just avoided mentioning it at all costs.

My dad spend a large chunk of his early life between Uruguay and Argentina, (mostly Uruguay) and later when he worked in the fishing industry he helmed the South America operations so the whole family moved down to BA for a short period of time. We returned to Argentina for two-ish months when I was 9 and we were traveling.

It was during this last trip that my dad met a young argentine guy who was looking for partners to buy a farm with. After a few years of looking, they had two other partners, one argentine and one american who were interested as well. In 1998 they bought the farm and embarked on organic production. The focus crop is soy, but they also produce corn, safflower, wheat and some other crops in rotation to keep the quality of the soil. Irrigating in very uncommon given the sizes of argentine fields and lack of water, and so all moisture comes from capturing rainfall in terraces and dikes to spread it around the fields evenly.

There have been rocky points in this enterprise such as the crisis and Christina's wonderful retentions last year, but I think on the whole it has been a sound investment. Three years ago we began to build a house, because there was nowhere to stay at the farm and you had to drive 40 minutes to the nearest town. This house has caused my parents a million headaches since every aspect of it is a pain in the butt. Its built up on a ridge, so it was necessary to drag all the building materials up a steep twisty road, there is not cell service or internet, water has to be piped in, there is no electricity in the area, etc, etc.

After three years of hell for them, the house is finally done. The garden still needs to go in and the problems of power and internet need to be figured out, but other than that, its good to go.

Interior courtyard from the library patio

Front of the house (main entrance side)

Secondary Zaguan (entrance)

Interior courtyard at night

Living room

Dining room

View from the main galleria

Main galleria

Pool

Wine Tasting, Cafayate, another pathetic attempt

Cafayate, Argentina

Cafayate is in the north west of Argentina, about a three hour drive from Salta. This area does produce Malbec and Cabernet like Mendoza does, the wine that Cafayate is known for is Torrontes, a very fruity white wine. Tourism has EXPLODED in the past six or seven years and now the place is kind of a tourist trap, but a very beautiful tourist trap. The drive up from Salta is almost half of the reason for the trip, you go through amazing red rock formations that are incredible and that my camera wasn't quite able to translate into photos of the same quality.

Crazy Aussies!

There are really amazing kind of "caves" in the rocks that you can get out and walk around. The whole area was shaped by water erosion thousands of years ago and when you are standing inside of one of these things you can almost feel the water rushing down on you.

Cafayate

My parents had stayed in Cafayate for a weekend before the whole wine craze really got off of the ground. They stayed at the Patios de Cafayate for 75 dollars, now it is 500 to give you some perspective (although that was also at the hight of the crisis so everything was much cheaper). They said it was Amazing, so we tried to go this time, and they wouldn't even let us through the gate since we weren't staying there.. kind of ridiculous. It looked beautiful from afar though.

Like the time before in Mendoza, we were pretty much thwarted from tasting much wine. Since we were planning on driving up and back in one day (really stupid) we didn't get to Cafayate until one-ish, at which point all of the wineries close apparently. The best way to do it is to drive up in the afternoon, spend the night, and then go wine tasting in the morning / late afternoon.

Photo from Bodega Vejesa Secreta or something like that

Above: pictures from Finca de Los Nubes (only open in the morning)

Beautiful church in the main square, Cafayate

Lowdown: 3 hours from Salta

Patios De Cafayate: ridic expensive but also ridic beautiful hotel, there is a vineyard you can visit but it is only open on certain days / in the morning

Vines de Cafayate: My padres stayed here a different time and said it was also very nice

Bodegas: Bodega Colome, Etchart, Las Nubes, El Esteco, Nanni, Domingo Hermanos

Wine Tasting, a pathetic attempt

Mendoza, Argentina

Mendoza (bottom left) circled in a Malbec color :)

I also circled Baires and Cafayate (top left, another wine area) to give perspective.

The main bulk of Wine Country in Argentina surrounds Mendoza and extends farther south towards patagonia. The region is known for its Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon, but produces wines of all varieties and price ranges. Situated on a dry plane directly below the andes the area receives very little natural rainfall; most of the water is released when the clouds hit the other side of the andes from the Pacific. All of the water for irrigation comes from the runoff of snow and glaciers, making it very easy to control the amount of water in the soil and therefore, perfect for grapes. (if you plant grapes in soils with high water content the roots will begin to rot very quickly)

After looking at pictures online of the Mendoza route we were quite underwhelmed when we actually started driving around. (Below are some pictures of what it is supposed to look like)

Sooooo beautiful

Enchaaaaannting......

Instead of seeing this, we accidentally ended up driving by the YPF refinery and getting totally lost, so we saw this:

We were even on the road to chile for a little while...

It was also a huge dust storm the day we went to you couldn't even see the mountains. To make matters worse, after we finally did get on the wine route we discovered that all of the big name wineries (Terazas de Los Andes, Norton, Luigi Bosca, etc) only take people on paid tour groups, so you can't just drive up to a winery and taste wine.

After a few hours of exasperation, we finally found a different area that catered more to the individual tourist driving around sort of thing and found a few wineries that would let us taste. I thought the area was actually prettier and the smaller wineries there were more "charming" anyway.

Road in the Maypu area (east of Mendoza by 20 minutes).

Carts outside San Filipe, La Rural

More San Filipe

Young vines at Miguel Minni, an organic winery in the Maypu area.

Final Decision: Mendoza is beautiful, but you have to do a little research before you go, first and foremost decide whether you want to do a guided winery tour of the big wineries, or go to the Maypu area and do your own thing with the smaller ones. The best time to visit would be when there are leaves on the vines, which is from now, (Nov.) until Feb or March, because things look a bit barren otherwise.

One of the other really interesting things to throw in with your wine tasting is visiting olive oil farms / factories. We went to one, Laur, which is again near Maypu, and it was VERY interesting and incredibly cool. They have guided tours and many have the old machinery still in place so you can see both the old way of making oil and the new way.

Good wineries:

La Rural / San Filippe: Free tours and tasting, Maypu area, very cool wine museum

Miguel Minni: Maypu area, free tours and tasting, interesting organic winery

Terazas de Los Andes: looked beautify, can only go with reservation or tour

Laur Olivicol: Very old cool buildings, great tour of the old and new machinery

Part 2: Shearing and dancing the Quenka

The technique that was devised for trapping the Guanacos comes from the Inca form of hunting called Jaku. Incidentally, this is also the name of the hunting lodge that is our next door neighbor at the Buenaventura, but apparently Texans can't spell and so the lodge is called Jacu.

The Manga (trap) consists of two "arms" of trap that extend out 2.8 k and then funnel together at one end, effectively trapping the Guanacos in a small enough space to be manageable. The open end of the trap is approx 3 k across, wide enough that the guanacos do not notice they are being led to their demise. Roughly six gauchos herd the guanacos into the trap from the surrounding area, and then once in the Manga they close doors as they go to prevent the Guanacos from turning around and running back out.

Video of the lower end of the Manga with the different holding pens for the Guanacos

The Gauchos preparing to ride out to the roundup

Photo op with one of the kids

The Guanacos are then herded from the big holding chamber into a tiny partitioned off area that can hold only three of the animals to make it more manageable for the gauchos to bring the individual animals out to the shearing tables. The three guys doing this job were some of the biggest men I have ever seen in my life.. probably like 6'7 or 6'8 and just huge. One of them grabs the head and one the hind legs and then they carry it out to where another guy is waiting to put a mask on it. At the very end they decided it would be funny if they dragged me in there with them..which was kind of scary - being in a 4 foot enclose with something that could kill you if it kicked you the wrong way did make me a bit nervous.

Me helping carry the hind legs out while two men tie the legs and one other puts a mask over its head.

Me and one of the gauchos right before going into the enclosure, I was scared shitless so my hand was shaking so bad that he was able to feel it and he laughed at me.

Shearing...

Veterinarians taking measurements, blood samples etc. They put a tracking collar on each guanaco as well so they could monitor the population in the area. Below is a picture of four of the veterinarians.

Pabulo directing the shearing

All of the Cooperativa with my dad and Pabulo

playing some guitar by the fire at night

One of the nights at the encampment we celebrated three birthdays with cakes, wine, dancing and home brewed liqueur. Some of the gauchos brought out their guitars (all argentines seem to be able to play guitar), and we all danced traditional argentine dances till 2 or 3 am. I went to bed at this point but apparently the party kept going, and at 4 they started cooking chorizos and had an asado, not retiring to bed until 6 am.

The Quenka is one of the most famous dances originating in argentina and requires handkerchiefs and a lot of fancy footwork on the part of the guys. I love how as a girl al you have to do is know nothing and follow. Below is a video of the tail end of the quenka with only two couples.

On the Subject of Mate --

One of great cliches of Argentina, Mate, which has become trendy in the US in the past few years, is not just an old shrugged off tradition brought out and paraded before tourists - EVERYONE in Argentina actually drinks mate, all of the time. Each person has their individual cup and bag of mate and they rarely drink from their own gourd. Each person fills theirs and then passes it to someone else in the circle, so the gourd you drink out of is always someone different. Once you are done with the mate, you pass it back to the owner who refills it with water and then passes it on to another person.

Sitting around the fire at 7 am sharing mate

More pictures:

Wrestling Guanacos in La Payunia, part 1

Before I start this post some background is required:

About 4 years ago my dad got involved in yet another project, SCI, or Sustainable Communities International. The idea was to find an indigenous community living near a endangered species and teach this community to use the animal in a sustainable way so as to give value to the animal, and also enriched the quality of life of the surrounding indigenous community through monetary gain.

After much looking around, my dad found the cooperativa of La Payunia, in which the community lives in close contact with Guanacos, an endangered wild relative of the domesticated Llama. Most of the people in La Payunia subside on less that 2 dollars a day from goat and sheep farming. There are not schools, medical assistance, running water, roads, electricity, etc.

Very mean looking guanaco.. probably about to trample someone

Guanaco fiber is the finest in the world, and Guanacos are endangered partly because of illegal poaching as a result of demand for this hyper-luxury fabric in Italy and other parts of Europe. The idea was to find a way that the Guanacos could be caught and sheared humanely without killing or traumatizing them. The cooperativa has managed to find a way to trap them, an old Inca way called Jaku, which I will talk about more later, and while we were there they caught and sheared 85. Now their major problem is finding an export market so that they can begin to see benefit to the community in the form of medical assistance and education.

Moving on, La Payunia is a nature reserve 8 hours from any sort of serious civilization (Mendoza). The drive from Mendoza almost rivaled the plane ride from the US by its degree of unpleasantness. For the first 5 hours it is a paved two lane road, which in Argentina is really three lanes: two normal ones and then an imaginary one in the middle that is constantly used for passing. Most people don't even bother to drive in their side of the road at all, but instead prefer to keep one wheel in the "passing lane" at all times in case they need to jet out around a truck.

It is however, a very beautiful drive, being bordered on one side by the Andes

The last three hours are on a washboard that would be fine if you were in a camioneta, but in our wonderful rental Fiat it was quite a problem; Fancio* had to keep swerving to avoid rocks just a few inches off the ground so that we would not bottom out our car.

There is no cell service in La Payunia, and dad seemed pretty convinced that he could find the encampment in La Payunia, which is a place the size or Rhode island with no real roads. This seems to be the Mundt way - don't ask for direction or help of any kind...becasue obviously we can do it on our own... NOT.

Of course, we got lost. Pabluo had told my dad about a month before that if he had not seen us by 5 pm he would start driving around looking for us. With this reassuring thought we parked our car and prepared to wait for Pabulo, who at that moment had completely forgotten about this promise and didn't even have access to a truck. We eventually went searching for him again, after deciding who got which seats in the car if we had to sleep there...(we are three hours from civilization). We ended up finding the camp, but while lost we made this lovely sign in case Pabulo were to drive by in his, we were sure, frenzied and very concerned search for us.

Lost Mundts

Below is what it looked like when we got lost... barren wasteland..

At the Encampe:

My parents were staying in "cabanas" nearby, while had opted to share a tent with a girl from the co-operativia.. kind of a risk since although my parents speak very good spanish, I do not, especialy when I have not been in a spansh speaking country for more than a year. They peaced out pretty much immediately once we got there, leaving an exhausted me (we had flown from the US the night before) to trail around after Pabulo until midnight putting up netting on the Manga (trap), for 5 kilometers in the freezing wind. Very fun. After we all had a delicious dinner of meat stew (I ate peanut butter), and I pretty much passed out at the table.

Working on the fence at midnight...just to have it blown down by the wind and have to get up at 6 am then next morning when there was no wind to put it back up.. all 5 k of it.

Very tired workers eating diner

Payun Matru from a hill near the encampment

Horses saddled up for the roundup

Encampment in the morning

Payun Matru at first light..

Eating / socializing tent at the encampment

Wierd plants... the whole place looked like another planet. La Payunia has the most volcanos per sq k in the world, and also has the most cosmic rays, which has prompted the US to pump millions of dollars into all these stupid little huts in the middle of nowhere to measure them