Patagonia Landscape

7 March 2016

Often when travelling, things are unexpected, never exactly what you think.  We stop for a cup of coffee or tea, and see people drinking a layered drink.  At first I thought it might be cafe con leche, but when I order that it comes in a small cup and is mixed.  A latte maybe?  But that isn't on the list of available drinks.

So I finally asked at one of the little spots we were stopped at.  I asked what is the drink in the tall glass.  "Uno cappuccino," was the response.  Steamed milk, espresso poured on a spoon so it gently floats on top of the milk, milk foam rising to the top, and then sprinkled with powdered chocolate and sometimes some cinnamon.

I figured I'd try it.  Turns out to be great.  And it actually has more milk than the cafe con leche, and is more like a latte.  (Even though a cappuccino in Italy is usually an espresso with milk foam but no liquid milk.)

We drove from Mar del Plata to Tres Arroyos, a pretty town with some really old buildings.  We spent a night there, and then headed onward.

The traditional border for the Patagonia region in Argentina is the Rio Colorado (which I've marked on the map at the end).  We drove over the riverbed, which was nearly dry.  The bridge is huge, however, so apparently the river is stronger during the rainy season.  

Just past the river there was a biological check point.  It isn't really called that - it looks like a toll booth, but inspectors come out to check for plant or animal products that travellers might be bringing with them.  They're trying to ensure that no invasive species are brought into the region, no insects or plants that might change the balance of nature in this ecosystem.

We drove up and they asked that we open the trunk so they could inspect it.  They looked in and saw that we only have luggage.  And they gave us a piece of paper explaining the need for keeping insects and such out of the region.

It was a quiet afternoon, so I figured I could ask questions about the river and such.  I asked if the river was low this year, and they said, it has been dry.  They said in winter there will be more rain, the river will be stronger and bigger.  I asked if el Rio Colorado is the boundary for Patagonia, they said yes.  Then they welcomed us to Patagonia, which gave us a good laugh.

Much of this whole part of Argentina is referred to as "pampas," which in the Quechua language means "plains" - just like the plains of the central region of the USA and Canada.  Quechua is both the language and people who are indigenous to much of South America, although there are different groups and dialects under the broad grouping of the Quechua.  And yes, this is believed to be the modern version of what the Inca spoke in Peru.

Anyway, the pampas regions tend to be grassy plains with various grasses native to these areas.  Best known is the pampas grass, the tall feathery stalks and tall green spears having become common ornamentals in various parts of North America.  

This tall grass is used in yards and gardens here as well, but it grows wild all over this part of Argentina.  We see clumps of pampas around houses and gas stations, but we also see large areas in the middle of nowhere along the highway, huge areas of pampas grass.

It's really beautiful, and much softer than it looks.  The feather tufts feel cottony, without any scratchiness or stiffness.  Almost like dandelions once they've gone to seed.  Just very soft and delicate.

This is part of the ecosystem that the biological inspectors are protecting.

We managed to drive all the way to Carmen de Patagones, a historic town some 900 km (560 miles) from Buenos Aires.  This town was founded in 1779 by the explorer Francisco de Viedma, who was exploring and colonizing Patagonia for Spain.  Carmen is a pretty little town, although it's a bit depressed these days.  We walked around a bit, trying to find a hotel.  Everything available was, well, sad and not worth the price asked.  We had asked directions of a nice woman police who was directing traffic for a running race, and when we asked directions for leaving town, she asked if we had found the hotels she sent us to.  I explained in my limited Spanish that they weren't nice, so she suggested we drive across the river to Viedma, the larger town and regional capital.  So we went ahead and did that, and found a decent hotel.

Viedma, it turns out, is a pretty town with great views across the river, looking at the cathedral in Carmen.  There's a small ferry that goes back and forth, carrying only passengers.  Viedma has a beautiful riverwalk, a nice park in the center of town, and several buildings that house the regional governmental offices and agencies.  Plus there are orange trees lining the streets, and parrots flying overhead as well as nesting in the park.

We decided to stay two nights here and enjoy the town.  Because the point of a road trip is to appreciate the drive, the journey, the travel - not just a final destination.

One very odd thing about Argentinian Spanish is the pronunciation.  There's a definite slurring of "s" and "z" sounds so that there are more "sh" sounds added to the words.  "Desayunos" (breakfast) becomes "deshayunosh."  Numbers like six (sies) or seven (siete) are now "shies" and "siete."

Even more confusing is that the double L is also pronounced with a "sh" sound!  For example, the word for road or street is "calle," usually prounced more like "cah-yay" in most Spanish-speaking countries (like Spain, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Peru, Chile to name a few).  But here, when we ask directions, we're told to walk X number of "cash-yays" and then turn.  Or Richard wanted cake with chocolate ice cream, but the menu said vanilla (vainilla, pronounced "vie-nee-yah") - so the waiter told him the dessert came with "vai-nee-shah."  

We're totally baffled by this anomaly.  I don't know it this is the influence of being close to Brazil, where Portuguese is spoken - because Portuguese has more "sh" and "zjh" sounds than Spanish.  

Or maybe this is just how Spanish developed on this side of the Andes, in the 500 or so years since the Spanish arrived.

We don't know.  

It certainly makes speaking with people much more challenging!  Our Spanish is improving, but this unique pronunciation quirk has definitely set us back!

 

 

From Azul Town to Azure Skies

4 March 2016

We picked up our little car on Wednesday, and of course everything takes longer than planned.  Richard took care of the paperwork, I ran around the airport from terminal to terminal, collecting maps from the tourism centers (which are inside the arrival area, so I had to get a guard to open the area from the outside and let me in).

Finally, we were on our way, with the plan being head south and to the coast.

This part of Argentina is flat.  Perfect for farms and cattle ranches.  That's about all there is here - farms, huge herds of cattle, and straight flat roads.  With the occasional tractor or cow on the road, and signs warning that animals may be present on Ruta 3, the national highway.

Argentina is roughly one third the size of the USA at 1,068,302 square miles (or 2,766,890 square kilometers).  The length is about 3,650 km (2,268 miles) from north to south, and the width is 1,430 km (889 miles) from the Andes in the west to the Atlantic Ocean in the east - at the widest point, of course, because the country is shaped somewhat like an ice cream cone, point at the bottom.

Given that size and those dimensions, we know it will take time to get around.  Especially if we meet to cow or bull on the road from time to time.

So our first day, we drove from the international airport south of Buenos Aires, heading vaguely SW toward the beach area.  We drove until late afternoon, and arrived in the town of Azul (meaning "blue" in Spanish).  And no, no idea why the town was named Azul.

But it's a pretty little town, some 50-60,000 residents, with old buildings dating back to the 1830s, when the town was first established.  (Mostly as a fort to protect the city of Buenos Aires from raids by the indigenous peoples.) 

We found an acceptable hotel, nothing fancy, and then headed into the central part of town for some dinner.  

Now, the average time for dinner in Argentina is some time between 9 PM to 11 PM.  We tend to head out about 8 PM, which is a bit early and some restaurants aren't ready for customers for dinner.  (We often end up with something like an omelet for dinner.  I really can't eat a steak at 9 PM or so, not and get to sleep before 2 AM.)

So we were walking around at twilight, maybe 7 PM.  None of the usual dinner sorts of restaurants were ready.  Places that are open at that hour are usually serving Argentinians a small snack - maybe a coffee, juice, or a beer, with possibly some sliced cheese or something.  Or a sweet, like ice cream, cake, or the ever-present medialuna, a honey-glazed croissant.

However, this meant the lighting made for some dramatic photos of the important buildings of Azul, with sunset glowing behind the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary as well as the statue of, well, I'm not sure, one of the heroes of Argentinian history.  The white building is the Palacio Municipal, the center of the local government.  

We had our light dinner and walked back to our hotel.  The day had been warm, but once the sun set the night was cold!  Buenos Aires never quite got cold at night, but Azul was close to 400 km (240 miles or so) away, so I guess we're no longer feeling those warm evening ocean breezes.

We got back on the road by mid-morning and turned off Ruta 3 onto Ruta 226, which angles more SE.  This would give us more opportunity to spend time along the southern coast of this curve of Argentina.  Beach time!

So we continued our way past farms growing corn, herds of cows, and the intermittent bright yellow flash of a field of sunflowers.

As we approached the coast, we started to see hills - they looked so strange after so much time of nothing but flat plains.  And then there were the rocky table lands, huge mesas or plateaus, looking like hills that had their top curves chopped off.  This actually looked almost like a canyon, except that it was green and the mesas were scattered randomly across the landscape.  But they were definitely rock at their core, the stone visible in the areas where the soil has eroded.  Makes sense, this is why these mesas didn't erode away when the rest of the land was washed away by rivers or pushed away by glaciers eons ago.  It was a very eerie kind of landscape, despite the blue blue skies and sunny day.

And then the coast - beaches!  The Atlantic Ocean !  Finally!  Except, well, we've been so spoiled by our years in the Caribbean and our visits to South Pacific islands.  There was a strong chilly wind blowing, foretelling of the cold winter to come.  The ocean looked murky and dark, churning waves onto the dark sand beach.  It wasn't tropical, it wasn't warm, it wasn't inviting.  And the city, Mar del Plata, was crowded and busy and touristy.

So we headed west and a little more south again, outside Mar del Plata, to the quieter beach towns.  Richard found a little café where the waitress drew a wonderful little map for us, easy to follow and and labelled and everything!  (When was the last time you had a random stranger draw a map for you?  Such a nice woman!)

We had checked the weather report and knew that rain was expected today, Friday, so we finally found a nice hotel and opted to stay two nights.  Who wants to drive in the cold rain when you can stay in a warm hotel with access to the heated pool, sauna, and steam room?

I managed to get some photos in during a lull in the storms.  The sky was a fabulous dark grey with a hint of blue, heavy with approaching rain, a wonderful contrast to the silvery green of the ocean as it was churned up by the wind and waves.  With the white foamy surf washing up on the rain-darkened beach.  

The buildings are "balnearios," day spas.  People come to the beach and hang out at the spa so they can swim in the ocean, or the spa pool, and have access to showers and all those other facilities.  Plus there are also little cabanas for changing clothes, as well as beach chairs and umbrellas.  Yesterday the place was packed, but today everything is empty.

We're nice and cozy in our hotel, a bit nicer than our usual, and yes, it's been raining most of today.  We put on warm and waterproof clothes and headed out to the beach, but by the time we made it out the door it was pouring, with the rain bouncing back up from the pavement, it was hitting with such force!

Sometimes enforced relaxing days are good.

And here's a map of the first two/three days of our road trip:


 

 

Adventures in Tango

2 March 2016

A friend and I went to the place Richard and I walked by on Sunday, the place with the "sidewalk tango" footstep design on the pavement outside.

This place has tango practice sessions a few afternoons a week, and we went to check it out.  (She and I met in tango class.)

The only requirement is to purchase a drink, which can mean anything from a coffee or soda to beer to mixed drinks.  

The restaurant/dancing room was beautiful, with wood panelling and arches over mirrors, marble columns, and the fancy ornate plaster ceiling.  Plus brass and glass chandeliers and lights on the columns, and small tables surrounding the dance floor.

There were some couples who came in and danced together, mostly people who seemed to be learning to tango and milongo, and wanted to practice dancing.

There were also singles, like us, who sat and maybe danced, or danced together.  

My favorite, though, were the several older gentlemen who wandered around and asked various women to dance.  They seemed to dance well, perhaps were widowers who liked to dance but were in need of a tango partner.  I could imagine being an older person, looking forward to practice afternoons.  Especially a man who would have his choice of dance partners, since there inevitably seems to be more women than men.

My friend is as shy as I am, reluctant to ask a stranger to dance, hesitant to make eye contact to encourage being asked.  She finally was asked and got up to dance, and we had agreed to photograph each other if one of us was dancing.  Here she is, so you can see what the milongo and Argentinian tango look like.  Although you really can't see the fancy footwork, because that part is hard to capture in a photo - people move so quickly the photo is all blurred when they turn or swirl or swish around.

I realized that I wasn't ready to dance practically cheek to cheek and chest to chest with some total stranger, so once her dances were over (always a set of three or four), I suggested that I was ready to go.  She was fine with that, and we headed out.

But we passed a beautiful tango shoe store on our way, and I really could use a pair of tango shoes.  All of my shoes have rubber soles, so they don't swivel or slide or pivot at all.  I've been dancing barefoot, but that isn't exactly the best way to go either.  I wouldn't mind a pair of flat tango shoes, which are difficult to find.  Women's tango shoes seem to all be high heel.  (Emphasis on the HIGH heel.)

I did find some gorgeous shoes, I loved the black with red flame designs on the front and heel.  But I know I won't be any good dancing in heels that high, I can barely walk in them.  They feel like stilts.  I'd buy them in flats, though!  (Birkenstock designers, that's a new line for you - Birks for dancing!!!  Black with red flame jobs!  I'd buy those in a second!)

Okay, we're heading off on a three-week road trip tomorrow, basically aiming for the coast, the beach, and parts southward.  Exploring some of Argentina's Patagonia region, the pampas environment, and seeing whatever animals we can find.  Plus maybe getting more tango if I can find dancing opportunities!