The Carnivores Guide to Buenos Aires

Ok, we are home and have been so for a couple of days but still... We should really finish the blog in a good way, so there will be a couple of more posts.
Have I mentioned that my husband and I like meat? If not, the below diary might give a hint.

Day 1:
Restaurant: El Desnivel
Meat: 2 * Lomo (one of us ordered Bife de Chorizo but it was Lomo, we are sure)

Advised by our almost local guide, The Windler, we ordered the meat "A Punto" (medium-rare), that was a mistake, it was more to the medium side but hopefully we learnt from it... The bitter taste of disappointment was washed away by generous amounts of wine.



Day 2:
Restaurant: Cabaña Las Lilas
Meat: 1 * Baby beef, 500 g, 1 * Bife de Chorizo

Advised by our almost local guide, The Windler, we ended up in what is considered by many the best restaurant in Buenos Aires. The previous mistake was corrected and the meat was ordered "jugoso" (spelling may be erronous). The Windler rose to a top placement in our hearts, the meat as well. The fact that the bill were almost the double of the price of our hotel bill for 5 nights probably says a lot of our ways of prioritzing.

Day 3:
Restaurant: Pub Gibraltar
Meat: 1 * Hamburger, 1 * Cheese sandwich

My stomach was probably still working with the baby beef, it did not want food at all this evening. From what I understood the hamburger was absolutely ok but there was disappointment regarding missing steak for one day.

Day 4:
Restaurant: La Brigada
Meat: We don't know. It was a secret that wasn't on the menu. It looked like some kind of filé. Or it could have been leftovers. It was the best freaking leftovers anyone of us has ever had. It is hard to think how the regular meat might taste. Something that good can't be legal.

By now we were so knowledgeable in the art of Argentinian meat that we didn't even bother with any french fries on the side - a Caprese sallad was enough, save the potatoes for the bad times.

Day 5:
Restaurant: La Rosalia
Meat: 1 * Chorizo (starter), 1 * 550 g baby beef, 1 * bife de chorizo

Since there was a 40 mins waiting time for the baby beef we realized that a starter wouldn't be in the way. So simple, so tasty! My bife de chorizo was still mooing on the way over to our table, I felt butterflies in my stomach from pure excitement when I cut the first piece. Yarden's baby beef was a bit less rare but the size of this piece of meat was so impressive I could almost see tears in his eyes. Tears of joy of course! We couldn't have finished our stay in a better way.

After this week of eating we have decided to spend all our honeymoons in Buenos Aires. With a bit more tango dancing we can probably manage to have steak for lunch as well (Yarden already tried the concept once, it might work). All restaurants, except for Cabana Las Lilas, is located in San Telmo, the neighbourhood where we were staying. In Puerto Madera, where Cabana Las Lilas can be found, there are plenty of other good restaurants as well. We didn't have enough time. Next time, Siga La Vaca will be visited. And La Cabrera. And possibly some of the restaurants we already been visiting will be revisited.

Bolivian south western circuit

Bolivia is a country of opposites and extremes. It has big cities and tiny villages, poverty neighbourhoods, with adobe houses, and rich business quarters. You can get a simple lunch menu for less than a dollar or a cup of coffee for the same price at a fancy cafe in Santa Cruz. The places on the altiplano are freezing, airless and dry and the amazon basin is extremely hot and humid.

If the jungle, with its' animals, insects and various plants, is the wildest thing in the Amazon basin then on the altiplano it is the south western circuit, where the air is thin and freezing, the sun is strong and bright and nature just go crazy with different extreme and magnificent views.

We went to Uyuni and booked a 3 days jeep tour of the south west. We were 8 people (6 tourists a guide/driver and a cook) and one jeep, packed with all our food, personal belongings and cooking gear.

In the first day we visited the salt plain. It's a gigantic flat area that's covered with salt (15m deep in the deepest point). In the wet season it's flooded and the reflections are magnificent but when we came it was dry. Most of the plain is protected but some is available for local to extract salt from. A few 'islands' can be found on the plain and there we found big cactuses that grow one cm a year (so some are more then 1000 years old)

View of the salt plain from the car

Karin jumps over the plain

The cactuses

Getting of the salar (the salt plain) we crossed a railway. That railway leads people and mined minerals to Bolivia and to the Chilean border. Here is the view towards the border:

Chile is over the mountains

Next, we arrived to a beautiful lake that was full of Flamingos.

Us, the lake and the flamingos

Flamingos

Flamingo landing

Then, driving on, we arrived to the ¨stone tree¨, a volcanic rock that was eroded by the wind and the sand to the shape of a tree.

El arbol de piedra

On the way we saw a fox. The guide treated him with a sweet wafer and the fox seemed to enjoy it.

Fox chewing a wafer

That evening we stayed at a local village's hostel. The temperatures dropped quickly when it got dark but it was perfectly fine with our sleeping bags and blankets. The cook, who treated us so far very well with meaty lunches and beautiful vegetables, made us a wonderful pizza. The sunset over the local b-ball court was amazing:

Sunset

The second day had a few highlights. The laguna colorada, a beautiful red/brown lake full of Flamingos and surrounded with white mineral supplied beautiful views. We also found a local animal called ¨Viscacha¨, which is some rabbit looking creature.

The laguna colorada

The laguna colorada from another angle

The Viscacha

That evening we stayed in a small hostel at an altitude of 4,300 m.a.s.l. Unlike the previous hostel we had no hot shower. The temperatures dropped so sharply, when it darkened, that we had to flee inside and hide under our blankets and sleeping bags.

Before we went to sleep the guide brought a bottle of cheap wine and later on we both decided to take a Paracetamol against any headache that might develop through the night (due to the altitude). Unknowingly, we both manage to intake the substances that were a recipe for one of the worst nights ever.

It wasn't cold at all but it was something like that: I would fall asleep for about 5 minutes and then wake up breathless. Taking a few deep breaths I notice that my mouth is so dry that I have to spend a minute or so wetting it and then taking a sip of water. Then, the mixture of bad wine and cheap, originating from a Bolivian pharmacy, Paracetamol, made a mysterious solution in my stomach that released Sulfuric gasses (mainly, but not only, from the front end). So, every time I woke up I had the taste of Sulfur in my mouth and my stomach made weird sounds.

Apart from the sleepless horrible night there were two nice Alpacas there:

Alpacas

The third day was the day of great extremes. To begin with, both our stomachs were extremely not functioning and we felt like shit. (mostly poor Karin). We had to wake up on 5 am and go to see some geysers:

Geyser

Me and my (best) wife in the land of Geysers (can you see how bad her stomach is?)

After that, we went to deep in the local hot springs (at almost 5000 m.a.s.l). It was great, but getting out was cold cold cold!

Mmmm.... Nice

And then we drove on to the highest and most magnificent point, The laguna verde (the green lake). Due to minerals like copper and sulfur it has a greenish color. When it's windy it has the color of turquoise (Luckily it wasn't). It's surrounded by three inactive volcanoes, whose peaks are crowned with snow. The guide told us that NASA is conducting experiments on the top of one of the volcanoes because it has the conditions that resembles Mars's better than everywhere else in the world. At an altitude of more then 5 km a.s.l we took a big breath and nodded (Just kidding, it's easy to breath the freezing air but it's important not to make sudden movements. The oxygen demand causes weakness)

The green lake and the Mars like volcano (and me)

From there we went on a long and almost event less ride back to Uyuni.

The relative train

On a different and geekier note, the tour actually started at a train cemetery next to Uyuni. I found an interesting train there. Not because it was old, Not because of anything trainish or engineering related but because someone grafittied it with an equation from the field of general relativity physics (And not a simple one. It took me a whole course of pure mathematics on general relativity to reach the smallest ability of understanding this equation).

Was the train moving around black holes ? Did the space time metrics and momentum, energy Tensor really mattered for the people who built that train? I doubt it.

It is hard for me to explain how ¨out of place¨ and unrelated this equation is to an antique train in the desert of south western Bolivia but I assure you that it kept me puzzled for more than a couple of minutes.

The train and the equation