Ushuaia - Day One
After a very wet and stormy Sunday and Monday morning we arrived in Ushuaia today at 940 this morning. We are all extremely tired right now (none of us got much sleep last night due to the noise from the storm, the late dinner, and the fact that we all were awake by 430am!!). This morning, we dropped off our bags at the hotel Mirador el Beagle and headed to town to hit some tourism offices to decide how to spend our next few days here. We have decided to go with the canal agency and tomorrow morning we will be taking a tour of the Beagle Channel via canoe, treking and something called a zodiac (seems to be some sort of motorboat). The tour will last about 12 hours and we will stop for a barbecue fish lunch along the way. Most importantly, we will hopefully see Penguins, which Natalia is DYING to see.
We spend the rest of the afternoon eating lunch, checking out the Glacier Martial (not that impressive as far as glaciers go, but it was cool to take the ski lift chairs up... the views were amazing) and we just spent a few hours at this really cute teahouse called La Cabaña del Te at the base of the glacier chair lift. Tomorrow I will probably have a more exciting story to tell you, but for now we are just taking it easy and going to call it a night early tomorrow... the travel company is coming by around 8am.
Bringing you up to date
Its very early in the morning for me, but today Usama and Natalia arrive. They are both coming on American Airlines, but on different flights. Usama's arrived at 7:18 am (thus me being up... I am waiting for his taxi to arrive here at the apt) and Nat's is arriving around 11:30am. They will be staying in an apartment at Paraguay and Gurruchaga... about 6 blocks from here. They are our first guests since we arrived and we are hoping that they have a great time. We are leaving on Monday morning to go to Ushuaia (the Southern most city in the world). I will keep you posted on the trip!
So for the last couple of weeks, we have been hanging out with different friends. In general we have found the people here very approachable and friendly. We have hung out with Roberto’s friends a couple of times – Juan, Pablo, Alejo, and Diego, among others. These are his best friends and they are quite a riot… they act like a bunch of teenage boys when they go out – staring at all of the girls and making comments… very typical male Porteño behavior. Seth and I really appreciate the way that they have made us feel very welcome, despite the language barrier that exists at times. Argentine Spanish is very distinct. Its spoken with a very Italian inflection and there are a lot of slang words. Many of the Porteños that I know tend to run their words one into the other and instead of the “y” as in yellow sound that typical in most other Spanish speaking countries, this sound is replaced with a je (as in the French pronounciation of Je). It definitely takes some adaptation to get used to!
Roberto also invited us to his friend Diego’s house in San Isidro. Diego has a beautiful house in a gated community about 30 minutes outside of BA. Because a business associate of Diego’s was in town (Jaime), Diego was having a barbecue (or Parrillada) at his house. This was Seth and my first Parrillada at someone’s house. It was really good – meat, meat and more meat… all cooked on the grill. There were Morcillas to start (blood sausage – ewww – I don’t want to try that), Mollejas (Tripe), Chorizo (a sausage), some sort of beef on the bone – they were kind of like ribs, a pork tenderloin, and grilled chicken thighs. Everything that I tried was delicious and was well seasoned by Juan the grillmaster with salt and lemon. There were also baked potatoes, grilled red peppers and grilled onions. The meal lasted about 4 hours, as we got there before the fuel for the grill had even been lit. Very delicious. I included a few pictures on the page.
We have also hung out with friends we know met through our friend Teresa back home. Their names are Martin, his girlfriend Vanessa and their friend Fernando. They are very sweet and we look forward to hanging out with them again.
La Parrillada... a carnivore's delight! The food was amazing!
Hanging with the Boys - Seth, Roberto, Pablo, Alejo, Juan... and me (taking the picture). This was a Friday night in Las Cañitas.
Roberto, Alejo and me at a friends place for a barbecue
Roberto, Alejo and me hanging out at a friend's place.
Its Been A WHILE!
Sorry for the delay in getting this out. We just got access to the internet at home in the last day or two. So, below is what I wrote about a week ago on Jan 19th:
Wow, its already been a week since we first arrived. So much has happened. We moved into our first apartment on Luis M Campos, near Dorrego, on Wed morning. Martin, the representative from BYT that helped us move into our apt when we arrived here in March, was there to check us in. It was good to see a familiar face. He took us up to the apartment, and suffice to say that we were extremely glad that we are only stayed there for 5 nights. It was about the size of a hotel room, with a separate room for the small kitchen and a bathroom. There was also no air conditioning so at times it was a little warm. Overall the room was a little gloomy and we made every effort to spend as little time as possible in it… but with the warm weather here in BA that wasn’t hard! The area that we were staying in is called Las Cañitas, and it reminded Seth and I of NYC a lot... Restaurant, after lounge, after bar, after yet another restaurant! And at night, there are so many people in the sidewalks, hanging out, waiting to enter the restaurants.
During the course of the last week, we have walked a lot, joined a gym, seen a few friends, and EATEN A LOT OF FOOD. A few restaurant highlights:
Campo Bravo – This was the Parilla we went to when we first arrived – had to get our Steak fix in. I had a delicious brochette (shish kebab) with pieces of tenderloin (bife de lomo). Seth had a Bife de Chorizo (NY Strip). We also had fries, grilled vegetables and a salad. YUM!
Olsen – a Swedish restaurant that is one of the few restaurants that serves Sunday Brunch (Sunday Brunch is not a traditionally Argentine custom ;-) It was very cool – will definitely be a great place to go when friends come to visit. Its a trendy place with tons of different types of vodkas. Apparently it is also one of the few places in the city where you can get bagels. We had delicious omelettes, fruit salads, waffles (without syrup – they don’t seem to have that here), Smoked Salmon, Chandon Champagne and Orange Juice. Of course we had coffee too. This is a high end place… and all this at a cost of $30 pesos per person! We went there with Camille, who works for at the US Embassy here (she has lived here for the last couple of years – we were introduced thanks to Lauri – an old neighbor of mine), as well as two of Camille’s friends who are visiting- Karen and Victor (brother and sister from DC).
Bokoto – a Sushi restaurant… by the way there are many Sushi restaurants here… but the strange thing is the the only raw fish they seem to eat here is Salmon. If you order a roll with Tuna, more than likely it will be Tuna Fish from a can. Here it seems popular to put Filadelfia (Cream cheese) in rolls. Of course there are plenty of rolls with cooked shrimp, avocado, etc. Seth made the mistake of ordering a roll with tuna fish in it… very interesting. He also accidently ordered a salmon roll that had cream cheese on the inside (he is not a fan!). I had a beef stirfry. Pretty good – you can’t go too wrong with anything that has beef in it here.
Kansas – a complete and TOTAL knockoff of Houston’s. This place is really popular and there is usually a wait for a table. We went here with Roberto. We had the Spinach dip (even came with Salsa and Sour Cream like in the states), the salad with the lime vinagrette (By the way, salad dressing is unusual here – usually if you ask for a salad, they bring you oil and vinegar), the Smoked Salmon with toast, the Houston’s Knife and Fork ribs and Apple Cobbler (not as good as in NY, but an interesting adaptation). Seth had some grilled shrimp (Langostinos) with Rice. On the menu, they even had the Houston’s Hawaiian steak. Will check that out next time. We had a great bottle of Malbec, too. I have to start writing down the names of the wines so I know what to bring back. The total was about $60 pesos per person. Definitely a good place for when I am craving a taste of back home.
Sudestada – We went here for lunch – it has an executive lunch menu for $14 pesos that is a good deal. Its an upscale Asian restaurant that has stirfries, lettuce wraps, dumplings, spring rolls. Seth had a vegetarian stirfry and I had a yellow curry stirfry with chicken. We have already decided that we will be visiting there for lunch at least once a week :-)
We have checked out some other good restaurants since we have been here... but thats enough for now. Based on this entry, it seems that all I am doing here is eating!!
We will miss our Friends!
Going Away Party - Hanging with the Girls!
