Home, but still posting

Well, here we are looking at our own bed, which looks particularly good after about a 30 hour trip home. Argentine dodge-em car remise (taxi) to the airport, fly overnight to Houston, fly in am to Seattle in time to see Two Shoes and Vigilante at their scholarship award ceremony, take them to lunch at Schultys on the Ave, visit some more with #1 daughter, shower her with gifts, and drive home. Beautiful drive, fantastic water in the Tumwater Canyon - most I can ever remember. All is well at home; dog thinks a while (at least I think she can think) and finally remembers us....

So too tired to say much more tonight but we will continue to post a few more entries about the trip in the coming week. So still stay tuned. SC

Flying Low, REALLY LOW

So when we got on the errant 747 up in the jungle town of Iquazu, there was a lot of mixxup and confusion about which gate (difficult at an airport that only has 2 gates) and when, and where did a 747 load of people come from? and why was this plane flying on to Buenos Aires with only about 20 people on board? But anyway, the preflight announcements came first in Spanish, and then in English when we learned that we were going to be flying at an altitude of 37 feet. This was disconcertng when we were on an airstrip in the jungle surrounded by trees in excess of 100 feet. But I guess the pilot knew his way through the trees cause we didnt hit a single one all the way to BA.

Wild of the Nature

We were picked up in Iguazu by a van that took us to a vintage old army truck with seats in the open back. There were 5 other people all going to Yacutinga Lodge.We drove thru mile after mile of yerba mate fields, formerly rainforest. Two bumpy, dusty hours later we were there. The lodge was built inside a nature reserve set up by conservationists who are trying to preserve remaining rainforest , assist the indigenous tribal people and protect the wildlife. To do this they charge people like us luxury hotel prices, but deliver a retreat that is simple, yet totally comfortable,so that remaining funds can help the nature reserve and its various projects. All the buildings are constructed of as much local material and labor as possible, and they were incredible. Fanciful use of wood, plants, stone, all melding in with surrounding jungle. Vines and flowers everywhere. It was cold, but a fire was heating up the main lodge, putting out aromatic smoke, while they served us mugs of hot coffee and rolls made from manioca to recover from the trip. Then we were shown to our individual cabins, only pitcures will describe these. Private, dark, vine covered,well screened, candles and lanterns around as electricity only used for a few hours in the evening. The whole resort is build to house 40 people, but it turns out the 7 of us were the only ones there. Immediately our biologist guide Gustoffa, lead us on our first hike. He was extremely knowledable about birds, plants, bio systems, bugs, you name it. His curent research involves monkeys. His english was great and he carried a backpack of well thumbed bird and plant books to look up any details, or help explain things. The other people in our group included orchid botanist from Argentina, a engineer from Valencia Spain and a dairy farmer from New Zealand, so all had to be explained in both languages. I´m so grateful that all of them knew enough to be quiet as we hiked along, and walked softly, were´nt afraid of spiders or climbing small ladders. We didn´t have to coddle anyone and all could learn and observe wildlife to the max. We saw red and black faced vultures, parrots, 3 kinds of toucans, exotic hummingbirds, on the next day we went out in a rubber raft down the San francisco river, a tributary that divides Brazil and Argentina. Headed to the area where they are replanting trees, and they had each of us plant a tree, we planted an Anichuco. Nearby they are raising capabarros, dog sized rodents whose numbers are being depleted for their fur ( saw lots of them in designer stores in Buenos Aires). At night our cabin was warm because of the aromatic fire in the wood stove.While we slept soundly,one of their staff kept feeding the fire from outside. The food there was incredible. They try to use as much of the local produce as they can, but with gourmet recipes. Cabbage stuffed with corn, squash, peppers. Beef rolled around slices of pumpkin and egg. Yerba Mate sourbet !! Baked banana with chocolate ! At night, under the full moon, Gustaffo lead us for still another hike to see even more creatures. Other than one siesta on Friday afternoon ( in a hammock in the sun), we were hiking the whole time. Lucky us, no rain in the rain forest. It was cold but we wore all our layers.
Saturday, reluctantly, we climbed back into the truck and ended up at Iguazu airport to wait 4 hours for our evening flight back to BA. But, I asked if there was anything earlier and they let us get on a Boeing 747 that was passing thru on its way to BA, so we got back to our hotel in Buenos Aires 3 hours early.
Enough time to wash off as much as we could of the red dust of Yacutinga , and make plans for the night.
Tango, of course, but thats a different wild of the nature story.

love to all, CT ( SC is off shopping for wine and a new wallet)

Iguazu cataratas

from CT
Flew here, got sweet simple room at Hosteleria Helechos and quickly found the local bus to the Iguazu Falls Park. Too bad we are not competing in that reality race travel show, because with SC unerring sense of direction, and ability to get CT to "race for the ferry" we would be hot competitors. The waterfalls were unlike anything we have experienced before, I think there were 7Km of them, any would drive Niagara to take viagra. This is in the jungle, but accesible by beautiful paths, with places to view the falls from every possible angle. Want to see framed by palm fronds, want to be near the bottm and get wet, want to look over the edge and imagine what each droplet might think at the last minute. There are catwalks that take you out over the most amazing falls, or to a point halfway down. Spent the whole day there, thankful for digital camera, because the price of film we would have used with Kodak would have broken the bank.
Just had mini internet adventure trying to get copy of voucher for Yacutinga eco lodge. Was successful, but CT had to share hits of mate´¨ with the internet store cashier girl to seal the deal. Interesting smokey flavor,great container, everybody here carries a thermos of hot water so they can mate any time, any place. Quake in your boots Starbucks.
CT
Further observations from CT¨
What they have in Argentina ....
1 = strong desire to tuck the sheets in tight on every bed, you feel you have to decontruct to get into bed at night.
2= lab coats, long white ones, worm by all the kids in the country while in school, when 2pm comes and they all are walking home, looks like a parade of mini lab techs, eating candy
3= dog walkers, these super human types are common in BA, where they walk up to 20 dogs at the same time, all of them clean, not barking, not balking, only a few wearing muzzles, I mean the dogs, not the walkers. Eat your heart out Ginger and Andorrah.
4= No issues about driving at night without lights. I was shocked to see cars just using parking lights , or none at all, but then it was trucks, buses and even police cars. But this is balanced by the general lack of Vespa and mopeds, so all is in harmony.

Filete in San Telmo

On Tuesday in BA, we went to the barrio San Telmo, an old neighborhood, abandoned by the upperclass during the yellow fever epidemics when they moved to higher ground. It was taken over by the working class who just remodled the old colonial structures into smaller apartments and shops, and then later on it became an artist community. The have a famous street fair there every Sunday in the main plaza, but we went on a weekday when the place was very quiet.

We saw the showroom of Juan Carlos Pallarols, a world famous silversmith (cups for the Pope, things like that - see website www.pallarols.com ,ar -sorry,cant figure out how to make this a link) Amazing stuff with prices to match. Interesting, but a pretty cold place. The lady running the showroom was totally unimpressed with the fact that I did engraving.

So further on we came across examples of filete painting, a very ornate and fanciful type of sign painting that used to be everywhere and now is a dying art.
SC

Mouth full of soap

Here´s my observations about what Argentines (this rhymes with Clementines) have and dont have:

HAVE
meat
good cheap wine
lots of water - average shower head puts out 20 cfm - brace yourself
bidets even very cheap hotels
urinals grande - you know the old fashioned kind that run from floor to mid chest.
You cant miss
Blackout curtains. If dinner starts at 9 or 10 and nightlife commences after that,
you need to be able to sleep in
Very sexy ads (a la Francaise) especially for boots

DONT HAVE
kleenex Not in any hotel room I dont know how anyone blows their nose, cause I
havn´t seen any hankerchiefs either. This is a mystery

napkins Well, in slighly nicer restaurants, there are big cloth napkins, but in cantinas there are only 3" square thin single thickness pieces of slick paper. Another part of the plot to prevent nose blowing

pepper. most restaurants have only the salt shaker, but some of the nicer ones have both shakers (big holes and little holes) filled with salt.

heart disease, or hypertension. Apparently. When the 2lb steak comes with potatoes, some patrons take a salt shaker in both hands to apply a generous coating. See DTG´s "Deep Powder Cookies"

THE NOTCH This is a bigger mystery than the nose blowing problem. Many things (candy, crackers, cookies, shampoo) come prepackaged in plastic wrap envelopes but WITHOUT the little notch that allows you to tear them open. I have no knife since we traveled with only carry on luggage. Many explosions occur. This morning was the worst, when I tried to tear open the shampoo packet with my teeth....

SC

To the ranch, to the town

C picked us up , went to groc store for weekend supplies. SC was accosted by store security because he was taking a photo of various oddities in the wine display. He quickly offered to erase the offending photo, but they showed mercy. Meanwhile CT scoured the vegie section for produce she couldn´t identify. Found some, which was purchased and later cooked, but still only identified as some type of squash. SC thinks it was a southern hemisphere derivitive of zuchinni. We drove to the ranch home of our friends. Only pictures can descibe the classy qualitiy of this place. When we arrived the hired help started the fire, while we inspect the landscaping, the horses, dogs, chickens and zebra finches. Then the sizzling beef was ready and we were served on the patio. Later we took a long walk into the sunset, through autmun leaves, through the woods, keeping one eye on the hundreds of parrots in the trees overhead. At night , started a fire in the fireplace to keep warm, though the soup and mate tea helped. Having long underwear on didn´t hurt either.
So glad to see this side on Argentina before heading back into the big city.
Next day, checked into Ayo. P. Hotel, and went out to the Sunday afternoon milonga, a real one, held in an ancient, elegant old dance hall. The crowd was our age and older, with a few token younger people. The man,swauve in their best suit, honestly just stood up and walked across the dance floor, while a woman would stand, walk to meet him, all this apparently set up by eye contact between songs. All the couples stood for an certain amount of time, and then ALL of them would start. They took my breathe away. Most very fluid, eyes closed tight, efficiency of body movement, counterclock wise, very serious and also cleary enjoying every step. We were the only tourists there, and kept a VERY low profile.WOW.
And I haven´t even touched on what we did today.
from CT

Carnivore in paradise

Arrived in BA yesterday am, went to a bank to wire the deposit to the ecolodge - another banking aadventure! Will need to staryt on cholesterol lowering drugs on return home SC

Ahh, the Coche Cama ride from Salta to BA . We settled in the top front seats, Beatriz served bebidas , riding through the vast outback. There were horses tethered, or not, everywhere, eating down the grass on the highway adges. We´re tooling along at 100KM an hr while chickens frequently cross the road. Dinner was a platter of cracker,ate them all, then later a platter of these flattened sandwiches showed up and we ate all those too, only to find out later, when dinner arrived that these were merely appetiozers. We rose to every eating occasion. Beatriz kept the wine flowing and >I managed to be a back seat driver from over the driver . What is that called. At night, our seats turned into beds. What a way to go.
Next day I got a manicoorah while discussing Bush with all the ladies there, all in spanish. I may have taken down the government...and my nails look great too.
CT

really high desert

So here we are in the the ubiquitos internet salon. In this small town in the side hills of the Andes mountains, we can sit down at the computer, AND if we knew how, could send pictures, sound, in real time. All this will cost around 40 cents. If we spend an hour.

Lunch today at Cachi was roast goat and home grown high (really High) mountain potatoes in a cafe featuring gutted 50's TVs with the picture tubes replaced with fish tanks, and another aquarium of axolotls! All washed down with about a liter of local beer. $10 for three.

Dinner tonight was with our driver and our guide, we covered health care, and the logistics of dry snow through a liter of local red wine and big amounts of beef. Of course it was all expressed in spanglish, once again. The tour started at 7 am in Salta. They picked us up in a Ford pick-up powered by diesel, and we drove for around 10 hours. Everything from rain forest to high desert to Utah style rock formations tho different. This road was mostly unpaved (think one or three steps down from our forest service road with lots of grade and hairpin turns and at least one monument - big cross, small chapel, garish artificial flowers- to a 28 fatality bus plunge when the driver fell asleep at the wheel)(not to worry - OUR driver is chewing cocoa leaves to keep alert) through the most amazing geologic rock formations that I have ever seen. The colors ranged from red to black to green to blue, and that is just describing the soil. The road ranged from some asphalt to newly graded compact sand, ( mostly the later), went from 3000 to 10,000 feet. Extremely isolated, extremely, made area around Tonasket look like a thriving metropolis. Saw 4 Condors feeding on a dead wild burro, saw a tree full of wild parrots, saw many other brown birds with orange bills that we could not identify. Saw guanaco running across a plain through a forest of sagauro like cactus that were 8 meters high.
Tomorrow we continue on with the same guide and truck back to Salta, then catch the overnight Flecha bus to Buenos Aires.

In Salta

What a great place! Think of Italy with a touch of Mexico and a flavor of France at 1/3 the price. On everything! So far we´ve seen the beautiful city, had fun at the ATM (1 hour to success), had great food, many conversations, some in Spanglish, eaten incredible beef, and sampled the special wine of the region - Torrentes. CT is particularly smitten by the curley dark haired long lean young men, and we havn´t even been dancing yet. Off to the mountains tomorrow.