An Occasion to Dress Up

Our secret plan to subvert the staid and steady Argentine culture with frivolity and mayhem was a smashing success. Halloween is not celebrated here, although many are aware of it’s existence. We were concerned, at first, about the success rate that we might have what with all the questions and concerns about dressing up we were receiving from our invitees. I thought they wouldn’t really get into it, but boy was I wrong. Rather than being timid about the putting on costumes, everyone put a lot into their costumes. It was as if the human desire to dress up as something you are not, to escape who you are supposed to be, had been repressed, and we opened up the floodgates. It was fun chatting and dancing and drinking. We even had two jack-o-lanterns. One was mine and a guy from Montana (the state) brought and carved the other one. I guess the repressed need to hollow out a squash and carve a face in it is not as deep as the one to costume up.

Nothing kicks a Halloween party into high gear as much as the arrival of the transvestites. These guys, like the rest, made their costumes from scratch. The kitty-cat, in particular was quite elaborate. The karate boys (not transvestites) put on a good showing as the Powder Puff Girls. Our Mendocina sister, Lula and Danish friend, Astrid, tried to drain everyone of their blood. And like the good Argentines we strive to be, we stayed up all night until the sun of the following day shone brightly enough to evaporate those feisty vampires.

These two photos, as well as some of the others in the photo set on Flickr are courtesy of Astrid who appears above as the vampire with a goofy hat. Thanks Astrid!

Hot Fresh Brownies

My wife’s funniest job was as a brownietelera. To give you a hint of what a brownietelera is, or might be if the word actually existed, cafételero is the guy who rides around on his bike chanting “Hay café, café, café. Hay café, café.” I wrote about the people who go around selling you the stuff you need in my Termas de Río Hondo post. I realize now, though, that I never mentioned one of the best chant sellers that I have ever encountered. This occured at the “Colorado” fútbol game I attended in Brazil. A big black man walked throught the stands bellowing “CERVECA!” in an almost ground-shaking voice. How could Gigi and I resist? “We’ll take four.”

So, she has this great idea to sell hot, fresh, brownies to the artisans & hippies along our street and in Plaza Independencia. Who could resist such a sumptuous temptation? Well, the locals turned out to be, if not anti-brownie, then at least brownie-apathetic. Sadly, the hot and fresh that she so painstakingly tried to insure with speedy delivery right out of the oven, in a towel wrapped pan, was completely lost on the Argentines. She sold one good and hot to a guy as she headed up one side of the street. On her return, half an hour later, she was dismayed to learn that her once hot, fresh, brownie had been left alone to get cold and dry out.

Ingredients to make hot, fresh, brownies: 25 pesos

Total hot, fresh, brownies sold at 1 peso each: 25

Hearing my wife chant “Hay brownie, brownie, brownie!”: Priceless

Working for a Living

Well, it ain’t much of a living, we can both vouch for that! While I pursued a career oriented option of teaching Geographic Information Systems (GIS) classes to a research group at the state university, my wife went with the tried and true standby of waiting tables. She worked five shifts at two different restaurants, Quinta Norte & Liverpool Pub. (photos included) Quinta Norte is a good Restaurant/Bar a block away from our house and Liverpool Pub was our joint for watching world cup games. We have been to each of these places around five times, which is more than anywhere else. I don’t have any photos of myself for this post. If I did, they would be of me dressed up as spiffy as possible, sitting around a computer with four others, pointing at the screen and asking if they understand what I’m trying to say.

On my original “Welcome” page, which I have moved into the blog chronology and plan to replace with an updated and more thorough “About” page, I mentioned three jobs. The job teaching English fell through as the institute that I had been in contact with needed me just when we were going to embark on our month long journey to the North of Argentina. I have never worked at a winter resort and I really liked the idea of working as a snowboard instructor in the Andes. This turned out to be logistically infeasible as the closest decent resort, Las Leñas, is seven hours away! (one way, in good weather)

The process of getting my job started the month I arrived in Mendoza and ended last week when I was paid 350 pesos. I started doing volunteer work which was fine with me until they had me doing mind-numbing tasks like on-screen digitizing and data entry. When it’s your job, you gotta do what you gotta do, but not for free. After a few days of this I asked when they were going to start paying me. That question, and a bunch of follow up, got me a paying job about three months later. (We were traveling all of July and a third of August) They decided that training was the most valuable thing I could provide. I was asked to design a course, present them with a syllabus, and propose compensation that an under-funded university might be able to pay. I adapted a course outline from GIS training materials that the National Parks Service makes available online. I was happy that they accepted my proposal because teaching ArcGIS 9 to CIFOT in Castellano was challenging and rewarding. The job was fun and presented a good deal of interaction. My students impressed me with their understanding and attentiveness. They are not lacking in education; they are only lacking the monetary resources to purchase new software and training.

A conservative estimate of the hours I put into the class would be about eight hours preparation plus four hours of instruction for each of seven classes. This estimate does not including time volunteered, drawing up the proposal, or grading exams. This very conservative estimate of time invested results in an hourly wage of $4.17 pesos per hour which, in US dollars, is a whopping $1.39 per hour. Was it worth it? Undoubtedly. Here are a couple of comparisons for perspective. ESRI charges US$400 per student per day for an eight hour class. My wife’s 35 hours of waitressing netted her about $105 pesos which works out to $3 pesos, or $1 dollar per hour.

Filling in the Holes

It fills me with glee to hear that some of my friends and family are actually checking this site once in a while. Really, you should see me; I’m so filled with glee that I have to go to the bathroom every couple hours. I was beginning to think that I was wasting time on this endeavor. Anyway, if I’ve spent too much time on this silly blog, I have spent an inordinate amount of time dealing with photos. It’s a bitch captioning, orienting, editing, archiving, etc. And for what, most everybody I know is too busy to even look at one slideshow, let alone 15!! Well, what am I going to do…? I guess I’ll just hope that some people enjoy what they have time to. As of October 7, 2006, there were 9 posts on this blog, today there are 16 . I don’t know what’s going on now; I seem to be experiencing some type of hyper-productivity spurt. I hope nobody minds but I’ve filled in some of the more glaring holes in the story of my blog. Furthermore, as a convenience to regular visitors, following are links to new entries, chronologically no less, to save you from scrolling through the archives.

Vegas baby, Vegas. That’s right; I’m taking you all the way back to the gold plated turd that was our second stop out of Hawaii. It wasn’t really much to talk about so if you don’t have much time, skip to something really cool like Patagonia or Brazil.

Patagonia should be its own country and I would dutifully accept the responsibility of being its president. Watch the jaws of the Argentines drop with shock, incredulity, and disgust as these words hit the screen. Who is this imperialist Yankee that wants to take over Patagonia? Hey, don’t worry, my Argentine friends, my first act as president would be to protect the whole damn newly formed country as a world nature park, or heritage site, or patrimonial cultural, or whatever the hell you want to call it. Patagonia is rugged, remote, and, in my opinion, one of the best places in the world. If you want to read my posts on southern Patagonia, click here, or on the archive (left sidebar) for January. Northwest Patagonia, or The Lake District, can be found here, or in the August archive.

Buenos Aires, the cosmopolitan capital of Argentina has hosted me now three times. Posts from my first visit flying solo can be found here (archives from the first half of February)

Brazil was such great fun. If you’ve never checked out my Brazil photo set on Flickr, then you haven’t had the pleasure of seeing the half naked samba dancers that bring Carnival to life. I have a post on the Brazil Bug, which I promised my Brazilian friends I would write. (Camila e Tiago, aqui é já e eu ainda não falo portugues)

Our month-long journey northward can be accessed here, in the July archive.

Our ten days in the Lakes District can be accessed here, in the August archive.

Scroll down a bit to read about our adventures with “Arturo y Susana” Bauckham. Highlights with the Padres include Tango in Buenos Aires, Jesuit Ruins in San Ignacio, the mighty waters of Iguazú, a day in Córdoba, and exploring the city of Mendoza and the nearby Andes. We ate a LOT, sometimes repeating meals just for the heck of it. We also visited a bodega and made an asado in Vista Flores.

Two wild weeks with Art & Sue

Bauckhams Burst into Buenos Aires

Wendy and I head to Buenos Aires a day before the Bauckhams to spend time with fellow Hawaii expat Cat Black and her boyfriend Marcello. They generously offered to let us stay at their lovely home in San Telmo. They toured us around their charismatic barrio by day and at night, we went to see an impressive performance by the Uruguayan carnival style performance troupe, Agarrate Carolina. The next day we encountered Art and Sue around the corner from their hotel, “The Cocker” while wondering the neighborhood looking for each other. We had a mini Christmas at The Cocker as they had brought a whole list of things we requested.

Let the Eating Begin

We enjoyed eating meat and drinking wine. A few words about Argentine cuisine: meat and more meat, pizza and pasta, empanadas, meat. The following words do not apply to Argentine cuisine: variety, service, ethnic foods, spicy. For better or worse, our first meal out in Buenos Aires was the best of the whole trip. The restaurant “1880” in San Telmo offered excellent quality and service. I’ll go back there if I have the chance.

How Many Does it Take to Tango?

For some reason, we really got into the tango scene in Buenos Aires. We went to a milonga, which consists of regular people doing the dance they love. It was more informal and authentic than the tango dinner show or the street dancers performing for tourists. The tango at Bar Sur was ok but the service and prices sucked. You can check out my review of the place on TripAdvisor: “What’s worse? Bad service, or no service at all?” It was so horrible that I the only enjoyment I got was when I slyly told some people who were deciding whether or not to pay the price of admission to get the hell out of there as fast as they could. The many street performers were fun to watch. The coolest experience was at Lina’s Tango Guest House where Art & Sue stayed with a bunch of tango aficionados after The Cocker. They invited us to a dinner where everyone partied and danced long into the night.

Mighty Iguazú

The falls themselves are an incredible experience that defies explanation. That said, I don’t have to try to come up with mouthfuls of superlatives strung together in a flowery paragraph overflowing with commas. That is my wife’s specialty. We all took millions of photos. Those are pretty great too, but still don’t compare with feeling of being at the precipice of the Devil’s Throat or along side a cacophonous wall of water the size of a building. We spent three days and four nights in the cute Argentine town of Puerto Iguazú. We stopped in San Ignacio on the way there to take in the extensive ruins of a Jesuit Mission. We enjoyed eating meat and drinking wine and got good value out of the free breakfast buffet at the Hotel St. George.

Córdoba Pit Stop

We broke up the grueling 36 hour bus ride from Puerto Iguazú to Mendoza by spending a day in Córdoba. We got an informal tour of the legislative building, visited the second oldest university in South America, witnessed the public humiliation of a recently graduated lawyer, sat in a café drinking beer, and met up with friend, Liz, for an absolutely lovely pasta dinner at La Mamá. The dinner was so good, I have to second guess my earlier statement about the best dinner being at 1880.

Around About Mendoza Province

We took advantage of the best the city has to offer. We drank wine, which we enjoyed, and also ate meat outdoors on the spacious sidewalks of the city. We visited the University, went to Ana & Roberto’s bodega in Vista Flores, hiked to Lago Horcones in the Aconcagua National Park, visited friends in Potrerillos and stopped in at our favorite (and only good one in the country) microbrewery, Jerome’s. All in all it was a great time and so very hard to say goodbye.

Edited October 19, 2006