I apologize about never really posting while I was in Argentina, but take it as a sign that I had an awesome trip. Truly just spectacular. The single most beautiful place I've ever been in my life... probably because the whole country is so huge and varied. I'm not going to go into too too much detail here, but I'll go over some of the highlights. Also, I didn't get to sketch nearly as much as I wanted to. Seriously, we just had too much to do.
We left early February and arrived in Buenos Aires. We went to a hostel in the Palermo district and explored the place for about two weeks.
A typical Palermo scene
What a city.... just amazing. We saw all the big sites, San Telmo, Recoleta Cemetery, La Boca, not to mention had some awesome food. Argentinians are serious about beef. Whereas here in California, we make a big deal about grass-fed beef, Nieman Ranch, that's pretty much the norm over there. The difference in taste is huge, and when they grill it, they do it seriously. It's an all day affair. All cooked over wood-coals, and never rare, but always juicy. Just awesome.
Recoleta Cemetery
A typical lunch - Asado
The street art is amazing. Some highlights that I saw:
In Microcentro
In San Telmo
And some sketches:
From the balcony of our Hostel
Las Viejas near the Casa Rosada
From there, we spent a weekend in Uruguay on the beach at Colonia, where we basically relaxed, had awesome food, and rode horses. We then headed down south to Pinamar, where we stayed with my girlfriend's family, the nicest people on the planet. Some sketches:
El Faro near Pinamar
Man drinking Mate on the beach
Afterwards, we took a 26 hour busride south to El Calafate to see Perito Moreno Glacier.
Spectacular. Standing on the viewing platforms, you can can hear these gunshot cracks of the shifting ice. We decided to take a trek over the glacier... the joke I came up with was, "Tomorrow we're going hiking on Perito Moreno glacier and our guide told us we will have to wear crampons. After an embarrassing trip to the drug store, I learned that these are ice shoes." I'm a mature guy. Anyway, it was spectacular. You see huge caverns dropping into the ice, out of sight. There were electric blue rivers and lakes within the glacier.
A glacial lake
Scotch on the rocks with glacier ice
Next, we crossed the border into Chile and went backpacking for 5 days in Torres Del Paine. This is the most beautiful place I've ever been in my life. The whole thing is stunning. Every time you turn your head, you see some new thing that is just spectacular. By the end, I was nonplussed by just very beautiful things. Sort of like when you go to Europe and in front of a massive thousand year old cathedral, you think, "Huh, a solid gold cathedral. Where's the cafe?"
Me in front of Glacier Gray
5 days and 50 miles of hiking later, we wound our way up to El Bolson and stayed on a farm called Chacra Millalen for a week. We did some work there, dug beds, picked almonds, and did a lot of relaxing. We hired a gaucho to lead us up to a mountain lake on horseback. It was fantastic. And at the end of every day, we would sit down and eat a huge meal cooked with vegetables that were pulled from the ground that morning. Some of the best food of my life.
Chacra Millalen
Next, up to Bariloche where we rented a car and the 7 Lakes tour. Just beautiful. We went right after a big rain though, so half of the road was thick mud. It was pretty much at this point that I became thankful for growing up in New Mexico and learning how to drive on terrible roads.
Mannequin in a mall in Bariloche
We then took a bus up to Mendoza, did the wine/bike tour, went rafting on the River Mendoza (which since it was the end of the season was only a class 2... nothing like when I went rafting on the Zambezi in Zimbabwe. See how I slipped that brag in there?), stopped by Cordoba, and then headed over to Iguazu Falls. Everything was amazing, but Iguazu might've been my collective favorite place. I loved it all: the red earth, the vibrant green of the jungle, the animals... not to mention the massive waterfalls everywhere.
We decided to come back to the falls later that night to look at it under the full moon. This was one of the creepiest things I've ever seen. Like four things that are terrifying to man all together. The next day, we saw the rest of the falls and went on a hike through the jungle, where we saw countless spiders the size of your hand in 10 foot webs, a capybarra (the largest rodent in the world), and a dozen or so monkeys.
A monkey chewing on a bamboo stalk. Look at that face. It shook a branch at me after this trying to scare me off.
A small note here... even though Lonely Planet glosses over the market in Puerto Iguazu, when I went there, it had some of the best craftsmanship I had seen in Argentina. Seriously. We had seen carved mate gourds everywhere, in every feria artesenal all over the country, top to bottom, but there's one guy in Puerto Iguazu that takes it to another level. They were just beautiful pieces. I bought three... I'll try to post some pictures soon.
We stopped for a quick visit to Misiones, the ruins of an old Jesuit mission. Fascinating history.
Then back to Buenos Aires. We stayed in San Telmo this time, and liked it a lot more. The Sunday feria is awesome... I'm not a huge fan of the antiques part, but the artist booths around it are great. We ate at some great restaurants... Petanque in San Telmo is great. French food, the rabbit stew in particular is great... and in Palermo, you have to go to Lele de Troya. We went here once at the beginning of the trip and also our last night in Buenos Aires. It's a beautiful restaurant visually, and the food is great, specifically the clams and the fish of the day (especially if it's white fish).
Then, we flew home... our backpacks full of dulce de leche. Nice to be back, nice to be back at work, but damn I miss it. What a place. What an amazing place.
Alright, back to work. I had quite a few commission requests while I was away so I'm hurrying to get them done... several painting commissions and a wire sculpture.
Oh yeah, while I was walking through the woods in Chile, I got an idea for a new way to do wire sculptures. How cliche is that? But if I can pull this off, and I'm not sure I can yet, it's going to be phenomenal.
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