Eating my way through South America

When I returned from my last great adventure in South America, I returned lighter and thinner and with $1,200 left in my bank account.

The same will not happen this time around. I am about to dip into those special reserve funds meant to sustain me through my golden years in order to carry on traveling the way I have been – as if it’s entirely for the food.

This journey has been rich with decadent meals and fine wines, pisco sours and flavors to remember forever.

I have long believed that eating is a huge part of the travel experience, that tasting the food is the easiest (and typically most rewarding) way to get a taste of the culture in a place. And, man, have I been immersing myself in the culture.

I have been eating well all along. Well, not so much the first week. I tried very hard to spend less than $30 a day including my lodging then and so I ate a nice lunch of something cheap like milanesa (thin breaded steak or chicken), a café in the afternoon and a couple empanadas for dinner until I met my friend Peng from China. He made me curries in the hostel, which were not at all Argentine, but were quite delicious.

Then I stayed with Mara in Bariloche, known the world over for her fine cooking. I would eat a cheap lunch: pizza or churrypan (chorizo sausage on a hotdog bun with salsa). But for dinner we had fresh vegetables, pastas, meat and always a brilliant salad prepared with oil, lemon juice, vinegar and a little soy sauce.

When Joe came, the real culinary adventure started. We traveled to more expensive places and so had to rein ourselves in sometimes. But mostly, we threw caution to the wind and ordered appetizers, main dishes and postres until our stomachs bulged. I had a bife de lomo (a tenderloin steak) at a restaurant around the corner from our fancy hotel in Recoleta one night. It was served with French fries. I can still taste and feel the meat in my mouth. I didn’t so much chew it as let it melt there. It was the most amazing steak I’ve ever had in my life. It came with no sauce and little seasoning.

In Ushuaia, the southern-most city in the world, we at king crab. The meat was ripped out of the crab claws and separated like string cheese. We had a ceviche filled with buttery crab meat, onions, garlic and cured in lemon. The flavor and the texture is one of the best I’ve ever experienced in any food.

In Buenos Aires, I spent most of my time with my new vegetarian friend Ronaldo. I took advantage of the opportunity to eat something other than meat in Argentina and went to sushi with him twice. It wasn’t the best sushi I’ve ever had, but sometimes it’s good to see how other countries make the food you’re accustomed to eating a certain way at home. Most of the sushi in Argentina is made with salmon, because that’s what they can get fresh.

In the vein of trying ordinary things in extraordinary places, Brooke and I shared a cheeseburger and each had dulce de leche ice cream cones at the McDonald’s in Mendoza. The hamburger bun was the same one McDonalds’s uses in the US. But we both agreed the burger tasted like it was made from real meat and had probably not been sprayed with ammonia. The dulce de leche ice cream was to die for and the cone itself was something like a freshly-made waffle cone. The security guard did yell at Brooke for trying to take a photo inside McDonald’s.

Brooke and I did not eat regularly at McDonald’s, however. We stayed in hostel dorms to save money and spent what we saved on fancy meals (and, as previously stated, wine).

I would sometimes say to her that I thought we’d only had amazing meals on our journey and she would quickly correct me and remind me of the one night we had lasagna and cannelloni from the deli counter at the super market and that other night when we just had salad because we were too full from lunch. (McDonald's was just a snack).

Restaurants here don’t open until 8 or 9 p.m. and it’s not at all strange to show up asking for a table at 11:30 p.m. We did it several times, just polishing off our plates around 1 a.m. sometimes, well after our coach should have turned into a pumpkin.

We had an asado at our hostel, Reina Madre, in Buenos Aires. The meat was cooked over charcoal and had so much flavor and was so tender. We were full, but couldn’t stop eating. It was after 2 a.m. when the food was finally polished off.

We ate decadent meals in Buenos Aires but the most memorable ones weren’t there. The day we rolled into Mendoza, after a 14-hour bus journey (during which the waiter proposed marriage to me), we asked the guy at the tourist information center for a good place to eat. He suggested La Patrona and showed us on one of the seven maps he’d given us how to get there.

The place was cozy inside with just a few tables, warm lighting and a chalk board that featured a quote from a famous Spanish writer who spoke of the merits of sharing wine. The prices were reasonable and the food was amazing. I had Ozobuco, beef slow roasted in red wine with vegetables. It was so tender it fell apart on my fork and so flavorful I didn’t want to take a drink for fear of washing away the taste. As good as my dish was, I liked Brooke’s even more. It was pork roast bathed in mustard seed and rosemary and cooked with fresh pears.

On our last day in Argentina we toured wine vineyards by bike. The idea sounded a lot better than it turned out to be in practice. Our map of the area was not to scale and those who gave us directions seemed to be a bit off their rockers because everything seemed much farther than they said it would be. This wasn’t helped by the fact that we road about 4 kilometers with our bikes in the lowest gear thinking they were just broken. This is especially shameful, given that I logged over 800 miles of commuter biking in Jackson Hole last summer.

But after giving up on one of our scheduled vineyard tours, we arrived at Norton winery for lunch at about 1:30 p.m. Our friends sent Brooke about $250 Argentine Pesos they had leftover and told us to enjoy a bottle of wine or something along those lines. We put their money to good use and ordered a five-course wine-paired lunch. While this was the most expensive meal we had on our trip at $140 pesos a person, it still seemed a bargain. That’s about $35 US each. Big thanks to the Balmoses.

The meal was incredible. It started with fabulous champagne to accompany a potato wrapped in smoked salmon. Next we had a pasta filled with fresh buffalo mozzarella, tomato and basil, complimented by a nice rosé. Our first main course was a fish filet on a bed of cheesy risotto and served with a chardonnay. Then we topped it off with three cuts of Argentinean beef and a Malbec Reserva. By this time our tour group had left without us and the waiter continued to serve us and ask us not to fret as he delivered an apple tart and the smoothest white desert wine I’ve ever had. Neither Brooke nor I are especially fond of sweet desert wines. But we both bought small bottles of this one.

We ended up getting the royal treatment at the vineyard and had a private tour with Hugo, who rented us the bikes. Our guide took the three of us through each stage of the wine making process and let us taste the good stuff from the fermenting tanks, the oak barrels and finally from the bottle.

The eating didn’t stop in Argentina. We dined like kings in Chile as well. Zarita and my cousin-in-law, Marisol, are turning their hostel into a Peruvian restaurant. Our first day in Santiago, Brooke and I bought fish and octopus at the central fish market and helped Zarita make ceviche with it that night. Her ceviche is still the standard by which I measure all other ceviches and none have ever come close to it in the four years since I first made it with her. She makes it with fresh white fish, though you can make it with all types of seafood. The fish is cut into small bite-size cubes and bathed in lemon juice and spices for 20 minutes or more. The acid from the lemon juice cures the fish so it doesn’t need to be cooked.

Brooke and I took our appetites to the cost and ate in a few very empty establishments in Valparaso. This is the low season and tourism is especially slow after the earthquakes. Marisol suggested a restaurant near where we ended up staying – Pasta e Vino. It ended up being the only restaurant in town that had any customers at all and it was so busy we needed reservations, which we didn’t have.

We went instead to two other wonderful places. Brooke had a chicken dish at the first that she said rivaled her Mendoza pork. The next night though, we had an appetizer that I’m still dreaming about. If I were staying in Valparaiso, I would have been back to eat it every day. It was a cannelloni stuffed with goat brie and drenched in a rich and smooth goat cheese sauce.

In Santiago, I’d like to recommend the Boulevard Lavaud to anyone who comes here. It’s the restaurant Marisol’s husband founded. It’s in a historical building that used to be a barber shop. The front corner of the building hosts a renovated and functioning barber shop. It’s in the Barrio Youngay, which is the most historical part of the city. Marisol and her husband are working to slowly transform this part of the city. They plan to open an antique shop and a neighborhood grocery stand. That along with Zarita, the new Peruvian restaurant slated to open two blocks away, will add a lot to the area, which boasts hundreds of beautiful historical buildings but still struggles to keep them free of grafiti.

The Boulevard Lavaud is the restaurant of my dreams. I have spent the last four years thinking about it and wish there could be a place like it wherever I end up living. The walls are covered with old paintings and magazine covers and relics from the neighborhood. Rather than matching tables, guests sit at a mix of school desks, antique tables, marble-topped tables and in a mix of seats ranging from standard wooden chairs to plush leather benches and antique smoking chairs. You enter the ladies room through a mirrored antique armoire.

They make delicious pisco sours and serve fabulous fish, rabbit and meat.

This journey is not over. I expect I’ll learn to make something new every day from Zarita. Today, we went to the market together and bought bags and bags of produce and made fabulous fried chicken with the most delicious roasted garlic sauce.

Happy dining.

Correction

The previous entry on excusemewaitress.com contained an error.

I reported that Brooke Barbee and had consumed wine all but one or two days of her two-week visit.

After a careful day-by-day review, we discovered that we, in fact, have consumed wine every day of the last two weeks. Without exception.

I apologize for the error.

Viaje de vinos

At night, before I go to bed sometimes, I hear a voice. This voice says, "Amanda, you should post in your blog more often. It doesn't always have to be a work of art."

This voice belongs to one Brooke Barbee.

As she sits reading a guidebook for South America in our hostel in Valparaiso, Chile, I've decided to try writing a short, less-involved post.

It's been a fabulous two weeks. Joe wrote me an e-mail at the beginning referring to it as vino viaje, wine journey. And that is what it has been. I'm not sure, maybe we missed one day, two at the most. Otherwise, we've had wine every day. I feel we're doing something good for the Argentinian and Chilean economies as well as for our bodies. The guides keep reminding us, as if we needed reminding, that red wine is good for your heart.

Brooke and I have secured a healthy supply of the nutritious stuff. Aside from the many litres we're carrying home in our blood streams(as Brooke says), 17 bottles made their way through customs at the Chilean border high in the Andes. These bottles will make an even bigger journey in the spare rolling bag Brooke bought last week in Mendoza, Argentina.

I don't think we realized at the time just how many bottles we were buying, but every time we went to a new vineyard and tasted its divine fermented grape juice, we couldn't help ourselves. It was especially hard to say no when all of this fabulous wine was selling for what we would normally be willing to pay for far-inferior wines at our hometown liquor stores. We got a bottle of incredible Malbec from 1998 for about $12 at one winery. That's about $1 for every year it was aged.

She leaves tomorrow, rolling two suitcases and our prized wines with her. I'll miss her. And I'll miss the wine.

Small bites

It seems the plan we make at the start of something, or rather the
plan we make before we start something, ends up a relic before we’re
half way through.

Just as a teacher can tell you of her childhood dream to become a
veterinarian without regretting her adult life, I can talk about this
funny little idea I had to wait tables in South America without
regretting the way my trip has evolved into a series of two-week adventures.

As you all know, since I’m sure you’ve deeply sensed it’s absence,
I’ve been very bad at updating this blog lately. There are plenty of
excuses for that. None of them include my long waitressing shifts.

I am taking this viaje in many manageable two-week bites. It’s almost
like a series of vacations or as if I’m taking vacations from my
vacation. It’s strange. It’s not what I expected I would be doing. And
I would no doubt be doing things differently if I had the whole four
months straight to myself. But there’s something so awesome about not
being 100 percent free and whimsical. I feel like less of a doush-bag
travel bum this way and I’m experiencing things I wouldn’t normally.

My first two weeks started the way a solo travel mission would. I was
on my own. I spent a few days at a crummy party hostel stuffed with
22-year-old Australians on their way back to University after
celebrating Carnival in Brazil. The experience has grown more bleak in
my memory than I allowed my self to believe it was at the time. The
whole thing reaffirmed my distaste for cities.

Then I spent a week by myself on the beach, getting used to being on
my own. I made a friend. I saw and did some cool things. It was
overall a very relaxing time, but not quite hard-core traveling.

Then I went to Bariloche, my old home away from home in South America,
the place that made me fall for Argentina four years ago. I had my
language classes
four hours a day and dinners with my Argentine family. But the days
were long when the sun didn’t set until almost 10 p.m. and it seems I
had more time then.

Then Joe came for two weeks. And that’s when I stopped writing the
blog. This trip has been like a symphony with constantly changing
rhythms and beats. Joe’s arrival started off slow and relaxed. We
spent three days in Buenos Aires, sleeping in and casually exploring
the city. We focused most of our energy on eating REALY well. If you
didn’t know, Argentina is renowned for it’s beef. The cows don’t eat
corn here. They eat grass, which makes sense, right? They also live in
fields instead of feed lots.

Argentina is also known for it’s wine, especially my favorite – Malbec.
Everything is much more expensive than it was four years ago when I was here.
Prices have doubled. I’m not exaggerating. There’s a lot of discussion
and worry in Argentina about the rapid inflation. The worries are only
half-heartedly assuaged by those who say the inflation is just a
recovery from the 2001 economic collapse. Before the collapse,
Argentina was the most expensive country in South America and the peso
had the same value as the dollar (artificially). I imagine it might
have been even more expensive here than in most parts of the U.S.

Four years ago, Lonely Planet correctly guessed you could travel here
on $15 to $25 a day , the same budget it projected for Bolivia. A
beautiful steak dinner with wine, appetizers and desert would cost me
about $12 then. Now it’s about $30, which is still a pretty good deal,
but not a luxury I can afford myself often as a backpacker.

Anyway, after our luxurious three days in Buenos Aires, Joe and I
picked up the tempo. It was a fever pitch. We were up before the sun
and out late every night. We were exhausted, but couldn’t stop moving.
We went to Ushuaaia, the southern-most city in the world. We saw Tierra
Del Fuego National Park in the morning and went on a cruise through
the Beagle Channel in the afternoon. We road a train in the park and
saw Cormorants, birds that looked suspiciously like penguins but flew,
sea lions and PENGUINS. They were so cute. The boat stopped for about
20 minutes on the shore, so we could get pictures and videos of them
waddling around and yapping with each other. There were two species
there. I’ll have to add their names later. The smaller black and white
one was more predominate. But there were a few of the bigger species,
the third-largest type of penguin in the world, with orange beak and
feet. It was
definitely cool.

I wrote a blog for my cousin who owns a tourism agency and she helped
us plan this whirl-wind tour of the south. Thank god for her help.
There’s no way we would have been able to do all we did if we’d been
left to our own devises.

The morning after our trip to the park and our trip to see penguins,
we were on a bus across the Magellan Straight to Punta Arenas. We
spent the night there, got up, road a bus to Puerto Natales, rented a
car and drove into Parque Nacional Torres Del Paine. Did I mention we
were in Chile at this point?

It was cloudy and a little rainy when we entered the park, but you
could still see how absolutely amazing the views were. Amazing. We
landed at the hotel my cousin arranged for us, the Hotel Lago Gray,
which literally sits at the foot of an amazing glacier and looks out
a lake where icebergs that dropped off the face of the glacier are
melting into beautiful ever-changing sculptures.

Each day we were in the park, which was three days, the clouds broke
up a little more and the sun came out and we saw more and more of the
most amazing mountain scenery, some say, in the world. It was
incredible. It was also empty. In about 9 hours of hiking, we never
saw another soul. That was a shock because other travelers had
complained to me it was too crowded. The earthquakes scared people
off.

From the park we returned to Puerto Natales and caught a bus the next
day to El Calafate, back in Argentina. The town was buzzing with tourists
and every storefront was either a tour agency, a restaurant or a
chocolate shop.

We did see the highlight of the Parque Nacional de Los Glacieres, the
Perito Moreno Glacier. We took a tour, again arranged by my cousin.
We road a boat to the base of this monmouth thing that stretches more
than 60 meters high. It’s part of the third-largest ice field in the
world and is one of the only ones that’s not actually shrinking.
That’s because it’s constantly snowing and compacting deep in the
Andes. We learned that glaciers, the part we see at the front is
actually just snow that’s been waiting more than 400 years to be water
again. So interesting and amazing. There are boardwalks in front of
the ice wall where you can watch chunks fall off and crash like bombs
into the water.

Joe did a minitrek on the glacier and got to see it up close. Since it
takes six months for my ACL to fully heal, I didn’t think it prudent
to tromp up and down ice hills. But he did fill my water bottle
with fresh glacier water. Yumm.

Back in Buenos Aires, we spent a day in La Boca and watched a nice
tango show during our lunch there.

I was pretty sad after Joe left. It was strange after two weeks of
almost never being alone, to be always alone again. My second two-week
bite out of this journey was spent in Buenos Aires. I’m still in this
chapter of the adventure. I would have probably headed north without
staying long in Buenos Aires if it weren’t for my friend Brooke who is
coming tomorrow. I decided it made more sense to stay here and take
language classes. And I’m glad I did. I feel like I’ve bonded with
this city.

I found an apartment with an amazing woman named Tati. She’s 68. We
eat meals together a few nights a week (in my two weeks). I went to
bed early last night and woke to find a Tortilla—potato omelet—on the
table for me that she’d made me last night for dinner. So sweet.

It’s interesting to talk with her about politics because she’s
politically conservative and my teacher is liberal so I get to hear
about issues from both sides. I just listen.

I’ve also made a fabulous new friend, Ronaldo from Brazil. He and I
have gone to movies and tango shows and dinners, also drag queen shows
and gay bars. My Spanish is coming along.
We were talking with Ronaldo´s friend Mauricio one night and Ronaldo
said, “she speaks well doesn’t she?” and Maurico said, “she speaks.”
Apparently I have a terrible
American accent.

But the other night I got to do something I’ve always wanted to do. I
joined a conversation in which we were all speaking a second language.
In a noisy bar, Ronaldo and I had a conversation with an Italian guy
in Spanish.

Anyway, this chapter comes to a close tomorrow. My last Spanish class
is today and Brooke arrives in the morning. I’m so excited! I can’t
wait to explore and drink wine with her. We counted last night and I
think these will be the 11th and 12th countries we will visit together. She
flies home from Chile. It will definitely be more fun to visit wine
country with a friend. Nobody likes to drink alone.

After Brooke leaves, I have a week to get to Iguazu Falls in Brazil to
meet Illa. I never would have gone to Brazil if she hadn´t
accidentally bought her plane ticket into there. I got my visa
yesterday. It’s the first one with a picture.
I’m psyched.

My trajectory on this trip isn’t the most geographically logical. But
I´m happy to be exploring with friends.

While I´m not waiting tables, I am still traveling on tips and will
surely be earning them again when I return to the U.S.