My Second Visit to Argentina July 1st to July 7th

My Second Visit to Argentina July 1st to July 7th

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I stepped off the plane and frantically searched my purse for the customs documents, my passport and other paper junk that a person needs to travel between existences. With relief I spied them and all was well again. I turned over that small blue book in my hands and stared at it, such an insignificant looking thing for something that carries so much power. With it you have the freedom to come and go as you please, without it you are powerless. No passport or visa, no cave diving at Devils Ear, no Hydro Atlantic, no husband and no life: Nothing!!! This small paper was held the key to getting my life back to normal, I clutched it tightly as if someone were there just waiting to grab it and take it away. I glanced around in the line of people waiting and saw not a single body speaking English, but I am used to that so it didn’t upset me. I wonder sometimes how bored the immigration officials must be, sitting all day staring at face after face as they check their documents. I got a nice fat stamp saying I could stay in Argentina for 90 days, when that expired I would be the one that had to leave.

There is always that awesome moment when you step through the door, and start madly scanning the sea of faces to find him. Yes, there he was! We blocked the exit for a whole minute of hugs and kisses until finally the people behind began to get impatient and demanded we get out of the way. So here we were, Cris and I, separated in two different worlds but together again just for an instant. As always it took us thirty minutes to walk the 100 yards to reach the car in the parking lot, and another thirty to pull away, but remembering how much per hour airport parking is those are very expensive kisses and you have to stop sometime.

Cordoba is a large city, and is smack in the center of Argentina. It is full of college students mostly, as it is a large center of higher education for the country. I never really get to see the city, Cris hates cities, but the short drive through is fascinating. We spend as little time as possible weaving our way through the snarled traffic. The view is a strange mixture of peeling dirty houses, historic buildings and modern facilities. It is much like a big city anywhere in the world but somehow all parts seem to be jumbled up into one spot. One second you can be passing the modern looking government center, but as you pass by, you have to carefully avoid the horse and cart down moving slowly down the center of the street. I am sure that the horses are not very impressed with all the car traffic around them. As you leave the city the countryside is perfectly flat, but within a few miles you begin to climb up into the mountains called the “sierras chicas” and it becomes a ride of scenic beauty. We always go this way even though the flat road is faster this route is so much nicer. All along the road in this area you can find tiny hand built huts where people are selling foods and drinks but we don’t stop, we are heading to one special spot called “los molinos” here you can pull over and look down the cliff to the huge lake “Dique los molinos”. If you hang around long enough there is a nice girl that will bring you slices of salami and cheese to try out. This was where I got my very first slice of the salami. We tested it, and also tested the free glass of red wine that was offered. Cris bought a whole cheese, a whole salami and a loaf of bread for later, spending something like $2. Of course we also had to stop for a hug, and this time we even forgot to take our pictures again.

As you close in on Rio Tercero, the countryside again flattens out and becomes gradually more and more urban. There are several factories along the way, even one military factory and some chemical plants. Cris told me that he sometimes used to work in them before he moved to Florida. We arrived at his parent’s house, for me that first meeting is always the scary part of the trip. It is a sad thing that we cannot understand each other, I have been trying to learn some Spanish but of course this is so limited in the short space of time I have been there. I can manage to get out “Buenos Dias” and “Como estas” but after that things get really out of control and head off into dimensions I can only dream of achieving. We do the usual hugs and greetings, and I hold onto Cris’s hand and never let him out of my sight for a second in case I get left alone to manage the Spanish by myself. I had taken peace offerings for them, and Cris’s mom and dad had bought me some nice pink slippers to wear in the house, thinking that it was pretty cold being there in the winter and all. After much gesturing and nodding we decided that they fit and I managed (I hope) to convey that I liked them.

Cris had rented a small house for us in a town about twenty minutes away from his home, called Embalse. It is a small place but big enough to have a couple of restaurants and grocery stores so we wouldn’t starve to death and we could buy salami, bread and cheese. It even has an internet place where you can go online for 1 peso per half an hour. The house itself was lovely, it had two floors and a nice cosy bedroom upstairs. All the furniture in the house was made out of natural wood, that had been varnished to be shiny and it looked so nice. The best feature was that it had a water heater that continuously heated the water for the shower so we could stay in there as long as we wanted. Plus a heater in the bedroom that really made it special. That night we went out to get a beer (I really like the beer there) and went to the same place we had been on my previous trip. It felt so weird sitting there almost as if I had never been away. I would tell you about the rest of the day but that is probably not really a good idea.

Whenever I visit Cris we have a food adventure and I get to check out all the local foods (I can’t wait for the payback on our next trip, we are going to England). We spent Friday gathering food for a family barbecue, and I had helped Cris to make the chimichurri which he claims to be a secret recipie. Honestly he seems to just open the cupboard and put in whatever he finds in there, you know like most guys do.    You know, Parsley, Garlic, Oil, lemon juice, and then … “hey I wonder what this is, it smells good”, next thing you know bloop, its incorporated into the dinner!!!

Now when Cris told me we were having lamb I was pleasantly surprised. We had talked about eating lamb, and he wanted to show me how it should be cooked, not the silly way we Brits eat it with mint sauce.     I wasn’t quite prepared for the Argentinian way though.   I was thinking some nice rack of lamb, or a leg or something no!!! not this time. Cris had bought an entire lamb, including the little legs and tail, and even the head.   It was laid out flat on the barbecue and cooked whole.    Thank goodness its head was already cut off!   Cris and his dad cut this in half while I pretended to play with the dog when (I couldn’t look). They then proceeded to cook it on the barbecue as well, believe me NOTHING is wasted!   It brings home the reality of eating meat, so far removed from the little sanitized plastic packets that we buy at the supermarket.

The big worm that you see in the pictures came out from the inside of one of the logs we were burning on the fire, it was a good two inches long, and fully alive wiggling allover.   I just had to take a picture. Cris offered to barbecue it for me, and I was quite afraid that he really meant it? Ewwwww!!!!

The Lamb tasted great, it is cooked over the embers of the burning wood and another tray is put over the top so it cooks on both sides. Unlike our American barbecues there is no fire, it is more like some kind of roasting method, and the results taste delicious. Sometimes when they cook beef this way they eat all of the insides. It is called achuras (I have just been informed that this means offal). On one particular evening, unwittingly I agreed to “Asado for two” at the restaurant, innocently expecting some nice ribs and a bit of steak. Wow did I get a surprise!! The first plate arrived and was covered in all kind of squiggly things (chinchulines), and things that look like fake sausages. These are all of the entrails of the cow, right from the small intestines all the way to the other end, and even including the other end (tripa gorda). In general I can say that the squiggly bit tastes OK and is Cris’s favorite anyway but by the time you progress down it gets increasingly fatty and well, I didn’t eat much of that. The plate also contains sweetbreads (mollejas) which are my favorite part, I could eat many of those. The kidneys are no problem for me (since we eat those in England as well), and of course you can’t have a good plate without the ubiquitous blood sausage, or morcilla. Plate number two has the actual meat on it, with real ribs and steak but with all that testing and tasting it was a bit hard to eat very much more. Yes these people really know their barbecues, check here.
http://www.pasqualinonet.com.ar/sobre_asado.htm
http://www.3men.com/asado_spit.htm

As always we had some very nice Argentinian wine. The wine is one of the coolest things. I don’t think I have had any bad tasting wine there, ever. It is very very nice. We keep some bottles in the refrigerator always. The desserts I have tried out are extremely sweet. The zapallos en almibar that are in the picture are so sweet that it is like eating super concentrated sugar, NO!! it is even sweeter than sugar if you can imagine that. I had to give up halfway through! I couldn’t handle it. We have also tested some really nice ice creams with quite unusual flavours, my favorite one is with higos (figs). Cris got the blue one, I think it’s something like the superman flavour my kids used to eat at home.

To pass most of the days we go out and drive around to the small villages and then up higher into the mountains. Then we abandon the car somewhere and continue on foot. The terrain is mountainous and rocky, and there are many lakes and rivers. Once we spent the entire afternoon by a mountain river and saw two only geologists from Buenos Aires who asked us directions. The animals simply roam free allover the place, even the horses. I think I am finally getting used to having a horse pop out of the side of the road and run in front of the car. In certain special places Cris shows me many of the indian artifacts that can be found just laying around there, flat rocks used for tools, and rocks with large bowl shaped holes in them that were used for grinding corn. Once we spent at least an hour searching for a particular rock that had Indian designs on it. Oh well next time we will find it. As we walk around we continually spot all forms of wildlife, sometimes we see quails at the side of the road disappearing into the bushes. On my previous trip I saw a bird that I swore looked exactly like the Roadrunner. Cris tells me that there are even pumas there but I haven’t seen one yet. Once out of the towns all of the roads are dirt, they are maintained but still dirt. You might see one or two cars pass you in an afternoon, on a busy day maybe even as many as six. Following another car brings new meaning to the phrase “eat my dust”, driving behind someone is definitely not the spot to be in.

All too soon the time was over yet again. It is always far too short. The only real way to deal with this is by booking our next trip as soon as I get back, that way you have the next time in your mind already and it’s not quite as bad when I get home. I fly overnight, none of my precious vacation days are wasted in the air, then I just drive directly to my office from the airport in the morning.

I arrived home pretty much exhausted, walked out of the car, unlocked the front door and directly sat down in front of my computer. Good idea? I don’t know. Webcam went on, and I waited for Cris to hear me come online. Last time I talked to him was from the airport in Chile. My suitcase stayed in the car for a week. It is still laid open on my bed looking like a giant book, and waiting to be unpacked. I have been home 20 days now. Only another 64 until the next time, I suppose I could go diving, maybe. Or I could just stay here in front of the webcam.