buenos aires Archives - In Search Of Umami

Our favorite highlights of south america All created by man

Ok, we- humans destroy a lot, we kill animals and our environment. But sometimes we create. And when we do, it can be pretty incredible. Here is a list of the most impressive human creations in South America

Casa Pueblo in Uruguay

It reminds me a bit of architecture that I saw on Lanzarote from Cesar Manrique: big, white and fascinatingly futuristic. Casa Pueblo was constructed by Carlos Paez Vilaro as a summer house and workshop. It took him 36 years to finish it. The artist passed away already but his family still lives in a part of the house, the rest is a museum and a hotel! It’s truly magical and it’s situated just by the water which makes it even more enchanted. Every evening at sunset they have a nice peaceful tradition of playing one of the poems written by Vilaro and some music. We enjoyed that moment a lot because it was just so relaxing and full of pure, silent joy. It also felt like the white walls were a canvas for the colors of the setting sun. Incredible!

Mechanic flower – Floralis Generica in Buenos Aires, Argentina

It’s an unusual gift from an architect, Eduardo Catalano, for Buenos Aires. The steel flower opens its petals every morning to close them in the evening just like a natural flower would. It looks very fragile and gentle but at the same time it’s actually massive- 23 m high and 18 ton. Since building it in 2002 there were many issues with the mechanism and when we were there the pool underneath it was covered and under maintenance, but even so it was worth seeing it.

Incan Empire- almost everywhere

We didn’t like standing in line to Machu Picchu and the crowds there manage to kill any magic in the place but… it’s not the only one. Incas ruled areas from North Argentina to South Colombia and they created really many cities, left many incredible artifacts and even mummies. All of their constructions were one of a kind and the majority was situated on a slope of a mountain which automatically assures you there is going to be a nice view from each one of them, and a good work out to get there.

Street art- whole South America

Street art was very present in our whole travel really. It all started in Argentina when we arrived in Buenos Aires and we saw murals everywhere. It was just incredible for us that there artists get payed to paint on the buildings and that they get recognition for it. Each of the masterpieces was signed and some even with a web page. The art was not only beautiful but also made us think about so many issues in South America. It was political, cultural and funny, it was everything. The passion in the street art didn’t change all over South America. We saw some incredible masterpieces everywhere, especially in big cities. The bigger the city, the brighter and more daring were the murals.

Wine- Argentina, Uruguay

Both Argentina and Uruguay produce amazing wines. Argentina is already very famous for it. Unfortunately Uruguayan pride- Tannat is not so popular. It’s a shame because it’s definitely one of the most delicious red wines we have ever had, very deep and dry. When it comes to Argentina we were very positively surprised with fresh, white, fruity Torrontes.

Textiles- Bolivia, Peru

Especially in Bolivia and Peru we saw a variety of incredible textiles of all kind- ponchos, capes, blankets, carpets and all you could think about. They were all incredibly colorful and they told us a lot about local culture. Many of them were showing funerals, chicha production (corn beer) and other community events. The form and colors were all changing depending on the region and subject.

Christmas lights-Colombia

Colombians say it’s a pity that Christmas lasts only one month- December. It really does! On the first of December EVERYONE has to have lights everywhere. The bigger, flashier, brighter the better. In big cities like Bogota, Cali, Medellin they create tiny villages of light. They are truly incredible and surprisingly they don’t have that much to do with Christmas anymore. But it still has the atmosphere of Christmas maybe because of the booze & food stands and the crowds surrounding it. Obviously the weather is far from winter snow and cold.

How much does it cost to travel in Argentina? Our budget and tips

Short answer would be: a lot more than you think! Somehow we tend to think that the whole South America is cheap. Unfortunately it's not. Countries like Uruguay, Chile and Argentina are as expensive as for example Holland.
During our 99 days in Argentina we spend a total of 6827.52 euro which means that our budget per day was 34.48 euro per person.

Where did we go?
Our trip like many others started in Buenos Aires where we stayed for two weeks than we went close to Mar del Plata, here we stayed for a month volunteering. Afterwards we hit budget-breaking South of Argentina (Bariloche, El Bolson, Calafate, El Chalten). Even though out of season it was really expensive. We have also visited Iguazu Falls and the North of Argentina from Salta up to the border with Bolivia.

How did we travel?
The most expensive part of our budget was transportation (2735 euro) which includes our flight from Calafate to Montevideo. But the real budget breakers were the buses which are extremely expensive. There is no way to get a better deal when booking beforehand or just a promotion like in Europe. The buses are organised in classes depending on the service and chair that you choose. So you can decide to just sit and starve or to have a chair that will lean almost like a bed and have all the meals (don't expect anything delicious, they are worse than on the plane). Unfortunately on long distances it's impossible to find only sitting seats so you are forced to travel "business class ".
Example: Bus from Mar del Plata to Bariloche was 1298 pesos (around 131.29 euro)

Where did we stay?
On accommodation we spend 1659 euro spending 37 days in private rooms, one month in our wwoofing and the rest in dormitories. Definitely the most expensive region was Patagonia where for example in a dorm in Calafate (out of season) we paid 18.34 euro per person per night. To compare for 30 euro per night we had a double room with private bathroom in Cafayate in the North of Argentina.

What did we eat?
We spend 1362 euro on food, mainly cooking ourselves but we were not really saving on ingredients and we ate a lot of Argentinian meat:) we also didn't deny ourselves wine:) especially in Cafayate where we bought a bottle of wine every day.
Good bottle of wine: around 7-10 euro.

What else did we spend our pesitos on?
1071 euro went for entrances to national parks, wine tasting, tours (for example to see glaciers by boat in Calafate we paid 130 euro per person).

P.S. Exchange rate used 1 EUR = 9.887 ARS

Our tips:
1. Transportation is just insanely expensive so it's a good option to hitchhike! Just don't forget that Argentina is huge and it takes hours to travel through it.
2. Take as many US dollars as you can- exchanging dollars on the blue market will save you a lot of money. When the official dollar is around 8-9 pesos on blue market you can get even around 13 pesos. Euros are also ok.
3. When taking dollars is not an option transfer money to yourself using Azimo. It's a bank which charges you 2.99 euro to send money and you can send up to 800 euro. It gives you a very good exchange rate which is in between the official and the blue one. It's a big game changer especially because we couldn't withdraw more than 150 euro per time and the Argentinian banks were charging 55 pesos per transaction.
If you have time, volunteer. We did it for a month and during that month we almost didn't spend any money and it was a lot of fun. We learnt a lot about the culture and the country. We used WWOOF Argentina but you can also try HelpX or Workaway. The advantage of the last two is that you can create a couple account and pay less then for two individual ones and that you pay for two years and it's for the whole world. With WWOOFing the rules differ per country.

If you have any questions or you would like to take a look at our spreadsheet, let us know:)

Foodie in BA

Buenos is a really interesting place when it comes to food. The cow is the queen here with 55 kg per capita per year. In every supermarket you can buy every cut of beef possible and it's cheap. There are also numerous meat shops and shops with veggies, fruit and meat in one. The quality of their meat is amazing and we have been enjoying it everyday for the past 2 weeks. Until yesterday when we got food poisoning from choripan (grilled chorizo in bread). But even the best Argentinian meat needs something more, it needs Chimichurri!!!!:) it an absolutely delicious mix of dried spices like oregano, parsley, rosmary in olive oil, water and vinegar with a big dose of fresh garlic. Especially after a few days it's something absolutely incredible. But there is much more than meat.
Around 48% of the population of Argentina is from Italian descent because of various waves of migrations that brought Italians here. It all started in late 17th centry but the biggest migration took place between 1880-1920. And it's visable in their cuisine. We have seen many shops making fresh ravioli, differently shaped pasta and gnocchi and all of that on really big scale with industrial machines. For lazy ones, supermarkets offer gnocchi dough in a package. And not just usual ones, no! There is of course a variety of gnocchi so there is even a pumpkin gnocchi dough. The same goes for pizza. I don't think many people use it as we saw many people in all the pizzerias enjoying freshly made pizza. And since fall is quit a warm period (it's 32°C now) I can imagine that they need a good ice cream all year long. And that's what you can get on every corner. Amazing ice cream, thousands of flavours. And since it's Argentina and people here love to eat a lot, you buy a 1/4 kilo, 1/2 kilo, 1 kilo rather than a small scoop. 🙂

Top 4 suprises in BA

1. Buses- we were really positively suprised by the buses in BA. They look really nice, kind of old school American style full of charm and all the colours in the world. You can either buy a ticket with coins or say to the driver where you're going or how much you want to pay and use a special card on which you put money prior to the bus ride. As far as we heard max price with the card is 4 pesos (40 euro cents) but like everything here the rules are not written anywhere (at least not that we know or see). It's also not really clear to us where does the bus stop as only some stops are marked. Once in the bus there is no indication of next stop or the route so it can be adventurous. But what is the biggest suprise is that in this seemingly chaotic system there is an order. Besically waiting for the bus people create a line, really straight line, one by one. If there are multiple buses stopping in one place there are multiple lines. Amazing way to see the city:)
2. Paying by card in a supermarket- everytime we do it we get a different kind of transaction but it's always fun. We always need to show our passport, sometimes before the transaction, sometimes when we say that we pay by card. Many times few workers of the supermarket need to think together how it could be done. Sometimes they need to fill in all of the passport and card info to the cashier machine. And that when the problem starts because our passports are not in Spanish and our passport number doesn't only have numbers...:) and today we discovered that the workers copy the card with a pan and piece of paper.
3. Buying a ticket for a bus to get out of BA- well that's a challenge and a suprise. So it seems easy bacause you can buy in online and pay with all the cards that you can imagine except that you can't... Because when you fill in all the info and go to payment there is no other option than visa. Since we don't have one we needed to go to an office. Seems simple, we entered one, there were many desks and many ladies to sell us the ticket. All of them not really busy. And no wonder because they don't sell tickets... They only give numbers that you have to call to get one and number of a cabin that you can use. So we called.... And than we had to wait and wait and wait. Finally when we proceeded we needed to spell all of our data and on the phone the "p" became "b" etc. Then when we spelled everything we got an option of payment to choose: one was by cash.... Unfortunately when we came to passport details we realised that we didn't have my passport. And too bad because I would love to see how we could pay cash on the phone....:)
4. Fresh fruit and veggies- we expected Argentina to be meaty!! That's for sure (and it is) but we didn't expect it fruity ! There are plenty of small shops run mostly by Bolivians or Peruans which offer a big selection of fruit and vegetables. Everything fresh and for very, very good prices!

So beautiful and so touristic

Up till now we actually haven't seen crowds of tourists or street propaganda. It all has changed today when we went to "Caminito". It's a part of La Boca which is not really cosy due to pick pockets (probably because of those crowds of tourists which are an easy target). Caminito used to be just a grey, sad neighbourhood of poor people who didn't escape south of BA when yellow fever came (more wealthy people moved to the north of Buenos). But it changed in the '50 when Benito Quinquela Martin (famous artist from LA Boca) decided to change the boring area into a living piece of art. In result houses have been painted with bright, vibrant colours. And it does look incredible! And when something is that beautiful, it becomes a tourist attraction sooner or later. And this is what happened here. But unfortunately to the extreme. There are plenty of propaganda people inviting to numerous restaurants and in every one of them there is a couple dancing tango. But we still enjoy the view:)

Street art

We knew that Buenos Aires was famous for meat, football and tango. But what we discovered over here is that it is actually an amazing open-air museum! While walking we are always surprised by amazing graffiti and when we say graffiti we mean actually incredible street art. It begun in the '50 as artists were paid to paint slogans for political parties. During the military dictatorships when protesting was banned, the street art was drawn back. But as soon as democracy reached Argentina, people started expressing their minds on the walls of the city. But it's not all about politics, there are incredible art pieces which are vibrant, joyful and humorous. Almost every piece is signed by the author and some even have a web page written on it. Even though it's still banned, it is tolerated probably because it makes otherwise grey buildings look fresh and cheerful. Actually nowadays a lot of the street art is commissioned and the artists are being more and more recognised. Some are able to sell their canvas in art galleries. Perhaps also because so many of them have an artistic background like graphic designer or architect. What is incredible about that type of art, is that it changes very often as every wall can be painted over and over again.