Miguel and I sat at dinner one night trying to figure out which direction we needed to go next.  We liked to fold our map nice and small so it fit right in the palm of the hand, and was barely noticeable as we cruised around trying to look like we knew where we were going.  At the table is a great place to use up your quizzical looks as to not draw attention to yourself while standing  at a "walk" signal at a busy intersection turning the map in circles.  The only problem was that we knew exactly where we were, at the corner of "Claro" and "Claro".  Odd, don't you think, that two streets are named the same thing? 

Strangely enough, we could pinpoint where we should have been on the map, but the actual streets of Claro could not be found anywhere on the map!  Streets in Argentina, like Bellingham, have a habit of changing from one name to another mid-stream, or continuing on after an awkward turn.  We didn't think much of it, just figured the map wasn't showing such detail.  

That was until, we noticed that the next day, several minutes on a subway and walked blocks away - there was another corner of "Claro" and "Claro".  Something was amiss.  What was it then?  Just telling you to "Be Careful", "Be Careful"?  Then, to make it even more confusing, there was a building with "Claro" on it in the same red letters!  There were advertisements on the subway, billboards for Claro everywhere.  Nothing ever actually said what Claro was.  I just looked it up and apparently it's a huge cell phone company.  That propaganda had us utterly confused for most of our time in Argentina.  Sweet. 

It´s happened twice so far.  Perhaps the most horrible by-choice experience that I can think of right now.  The smell and feeling of rotting flesh in an 80-degree enclosed butcher shop.  I was innocent at the beginning, the first time.  It was just a little shop along the side of the road, and we needed some bottles of water.  I followed Miguel in to check it out, as I love looking at all the strange things in grocery stores.  Without warning, it hit me.  This horrible, thick, warm stench of musty room temperature beef.  The first thing I did was put my hand over my mouth, and I instantly though of my best friend from high school, Sarah.  She would have thrown up all over right then and there.  She hates pulp in her orange juice and chunks in her soups - and is quite sensitive to gross things.  This was super gross.  I was dumbfounded.  How were all these people acting normal? Including Miguel.  Everyone just nonchalantly walking around like nothing was out of the ordinary.  

Well, that was all I could take.  I could feel the bloody warm air moving around me, and it was so humid and thick that it felt like I was breathing in the rot with each breath.  I told Miguel, hand - over - mouth that I had to leave and he was on his own with the water.

The second time - again - no warning.  I was there to get water and vegetables for our trip to the mountains.  Happy-go-lucky-Heather, and before I even saw the carcass in the back or the slabs of red and white pieces of meat behind the glass case, the thick bloody air filled my nostrils.  I didn´t even have to look up from the oranges and bananas I was picking over - I knew that smell.  Sure enough, there it was - the beef bar.  Of course an elderly woman standing right by it causually ordering her slabs of rotting meat.  Immediately hand-over-nose and mouth.  Oh my God, this is torture.  Still, I wanted to find food for the day, so I just walked around with my mouth open, trying not to smell anything, which is quite a challenge, but there was no other way.  The place was small, sweaty, hot and crowded and people were standing in line at the register all unorganized and bumping into me from all angles.  Utter disgust on my part.  I had to get out.  But this time I stuck with it, and I remained strong (looking like a fool, I´m sure with my hand over my nose and my open mouth).  I came very close to a few dry heaving episodes, but managed to hang on until we finally exited the building.

I had to change my shirt in the car and drive with the windows down to get the smell out of our clothes and the bags we had purchased from there.  A butcher shop is not the place for a pregnant woman from the USA.  Take note. 

Food in Argentina turns out to be quite a different experience than I´ve had anywhere else.  Whether or not I´m being influenced by pregnancy is still up for debate, but speaking for myself only (Miguel seems to be ok with it), I´ve been fairly unimpressed with the food overall.  At home we try to eat a good mix of fruits, grains and meats in our normal diets, but here, the main staple apears to be bread.  Lots of bread.  A typical breakfast includes about 4 different types of bread (wheat, white toast, biscutes, croissants and maybe pastries with dulce de leche on them), a slice or maybe two of ham (compressed lunchmeat: jamon), a slice of cheese, and tea or coffee.  I´ve been bying my own fruit to supplement these, but the grapefruit here isn´t quite as juicy and sweet as it is at home.  Once in a while, we get some melon or mango, but for the most part, fruit isn´t served much at all - at any meals.

Sure, fruit is one thing, but the crazy schedule they have here is another.  They get up at 8am or so, and have this bready breakfast.  Then they don´t eat lunch until about 4pm or 5pm.  Who knows what they´re doing in between, but for me, that is a very long time.  Finally, dinner crowds START building around 9:30 or 10 at night, and they go to bed about 1 or 2 in the morning.  You´d be hard pressed to find anyone in a restaurant at 12 or 1pm.  On many occasions, we´ve waited until we abslutely must eat something, and end up being the 2 lonely patrons of a 30+ table restaurant.  All eyes on us - which is just great, but not really. 

Deciding on a place and finding a place to eat has been a challenge from the beginning.  Being a tourist in this country must trigger something for an Argentine, because whenever we ask about restaurants, they always lead us to touristy restaurants.  We´ve found this in all 3 of the cities so far.  We wonder if this is because they just think we only want fancy places with waiters at our beck and call, thin glass wine glasses and cloth napkins, or if they´re just trying to get business into these restaurants.  Regardless, we have been rather unsuccessful at finding the "true" restaurants of the area that I was hoping for; the places where the locals meet, shake hands, have a laugh and a beer, and eat their favorite foods.  We´ve asked bus drivers, cab drivers, pool cleaners, and even people on the street - all with the same result.  "Si, va a dos cuadras y isquierda y ya esta un restaurant" (yes, sure, go to two blocks, turn left and there is a restaurant - just for you). 

Once we´ve decided, however, the next challenge has been ordering - yes to an extent because we don´t fully understand all the nuances and different phrases on the menus - but more for the portioning.  Argh!  We just can´t get it right.  We´ve consistently failed at ordering the right amount of food.  Most Argentine people don´t get boxes to take leftovers, and we haven´t had rooms with refrigerators, so every time, we think really hard and try to order less than we think we should.  I´d say that in 100% of the cases, we´ve failed and ended up with enough food for 3 or 4  people.  Who do they think we are?  Maybe we´d eat that much if we were exercising again, but travelling like this just isn´t building up the appetite. 

One time Miguel got a steak and I got steak pieces with mustard sauce with rice and vegetables.  Sounds pretty good - right?  Well, turns out Miguel´s steak was the size of a small cow, and my meal was inundated with a greasy oily mustard gravy (not sauce), that I´m sure no Argentinian would ever eat and enjoy.  My rice with "vegetables" was instant rice with specks, no-kidding - flakes of green and orange things that may have - at one time - been part of a vegetable.  I was so disgusted by my first few bites that I just ate the french fries that came with it and we took the rest to go.  We had been watching, through our whole fancy meal with thin wine glasses and cloth napkins, the family of 6 or 7 outside the window that were selling trinkets in ther dirty bare feet.  They were sweeping the sidewalks and keeping their little "store" as clean as they could.  I was sure they had seen their share of tourists - and that they´d been given food many times in the past.  Still, we decided it wouldn´t be too distasteful to offer them our food.  We left the restaurant and took a look at the things they were selling.  All cheap stuff that looked handmade - and was mass produced to look handmade.  We asked if she "made" the basket we kind of liked, and she said "si", however when we asked what it was made from, she was stumped and finally pointed to a tree - which was definitely NOT what the basket was made from.  Still, we gave her the 10 pesos out of guilt of eating inside that restaurant, and offered our food.  She took it with no hesitation.  Although with what was in the box - I hope it doesn´t wreck their digestive systems from being such an abnormal food for their regular - probably much healthier diet.  Maybe she took one look at it and fed it to her dogs - who knows.

Other times, we´ve given our leftovers to dogs that are staying at our places, or even the stray dogs in the area (making sure each time that nobody´s watching).  Hopefully, before we leave this place, we´ll figure it out, but for now, I feel trapped inside the tourist world of food.  I can sense that there is good food out there somewhere - the food the people here love to enjoy.  It probably doesn´t include many vegetables or fruits, but I´m determined to find it, eat it, and remember it fondly.

Remember back 2 posts - to when we had finally found out how to get money on our first day (Sunday) here in Argentina.  Here the story continues...Walking around a new city with pull-along luggage, backpacks, a map in hand and apparently touristy looking clothes, we were anxious to get somewhere.  Now that we had some money, things were looking up but still we had no idea where to go.  We saw a street in the distance that at least had some people on it, so we headed there.    Most of the shops along both sides were behind locked bars - a sign of being closed, but many were just starting to be unlocked and raised up with big clanking sounds.  Apparently we had arrived a little early for the big city. 

In general, we were surprised to find the infrastructure (sidewalks, parks, buildings, streets) to be rundown and very old-looking.  Possilby a side-effect from the big problems with the economy back in 2002.  Many of the big bricks in the sidewalks are missing, there is graffiti painted on the buildings and almost every other street has big fences around it with torn up asphalt or bricks in the middle (a sign that work is being done, but wont be finished anytime soon).  Dogs and cats roam around the streets and therefore, within our first 20 minutes we both had a welcoming touch of stepping into dog shit in the middle of the sidewalk.  Nice.  Apparently, as we later read, this is a normal mality of walking in Buenos Aires - lovely that all the people like taking their dogs with them on concrete-only walks around town, but many of them allow the pooches to just poop right in the middle and they often don´t clean up after.

Along the street, the vendors that were open were selling cheap flip flops, underwear with English sayings on them and doughnut-looking pastries.  Still, as you may remember, I was desperate for a bathroom.  As I´ve come along in this pregnancy - and being on a travelling schedule, I´ve definitely noticed a trend in constantly having to find a bathroom.  I´ve stooped as low as going into MacDonald´s and other restaurants without buying anything, but at this point, all hell breaks loose if I can´t find a bathroom.  Can´t wait to see how it is in another 2 or 3 months!  Anyway, on our first day, with little to no knowledge of anything around us, we stepped into a fancy looking hotel and were directed upstairs.  I could hardly believe my eyes when we saw a simple door to a very nice bathroom - unprotected and not even with a lock on it.  Phwew.  Crisis averted this time (although there would be many more).  As I took care of that, Miguel was out getting a good first shot at his Spanish with the  hotel clerk.  Luckily he wasn´t going to make us stay there, and he ended up being quite helpful.  By the time we left, We finally had an address to go to and directions to get there - without having to pay and settle for hiring a taxi (which we couldn´t have done in the first place anyway, because we didn´t have an address!).

As we walked along Florida Avenue, our bags rumbled along behind us like a giant megaphone exclaiming "Tourists!  Tourists!"  Since no other tourists or shoppers were really there yet, our flub flub flub flubbing wheels reverberated off the walls and gave us the grand entrance we both deserved.  At this time we had had about 26 hours of traveling, so I´m sure we didn´t look too happy about our situation.  Luckly a simple ride on the metro brought us easily to pur place "Caseron Porteno" where we got a short tour of the nice garden, dance floor and breakfast kitchen before stashing our bags and heading out for some breakfast.

We had big plans to go to the popular Antique Fair in Buenos Aires´San Telmo district.  Apparently this was the place to be on any given Sunday, and it just happened to be Sunday.  Street performers, vendors, antiques, lots of people, lots of stuff to see - sounded pretty good to us, and most people recommend that we go there.  Once we returned from our meal however, the first glance at a real bed was all too powerful for our psyche and our bodies.  Somehow we did manage to get in a nice shower beforehand, but the calling of a little shut-eye in a non-upright position was striking both of us.  We thought we only needed an hour or so, so we optimistically set the alarm on Miguel´s watch and finally laid down.  Even amidst the high-pitched irregular spikes in yelling and generic playground noise from the kids next door in the Krishna Center (celebrating waaay into the night that day) -I think I did use earplugs - we slept.  And we slept more.  And we turned off the alarms and slept even more.  Damn it feels good to sleep when you´re that tired.  Miguel and I weren´t strong enough to pull away from the grasp of it and we missed the big fair in San Telmo afterall.  We did feel like travelling failures, missing out on our first shot at authentic Argentine lifestyles, but soon forgave ourselves with the 28-hour travel journey that brought us finally to this bed from our own.

Luckily we hadn´t missed out on everything.  The place we were staying had a nightly Tango lesson from 7-8:30 each night.  So we freshened up, put on the Marcia Bloom Skirt and dance shoes and hit the dancefloor.  There were only 4 of us in the lesson and we spent most of it just walking around in circles holding each other´s arms, trying to get the smoothness down.  There were no steps, not even a count.  She just wanted us to work with each other and move around the floor to the music.  By the end, my sore toes ached from Miguel´s hard shoes and we were both still working on keeping the Tango posture, which apparently is not the same as the Ballroom posture I´ve worked so hard to figure out.  Much less taut, I would say.  We did figure out how to do a nice turn, and our dance to the final song looked pretty good (by our standards).  This was a nice and eye-opening intro to the culture here, as we later found out that this city is built on the Tango.  Everyone here seems to Tango and the people staying at Caseron Porteno were there to Tango.  Many visiting from Finland, Germany and even Seattle for a couple of weeks or more - and taking dance lessons every day for hours on end.  That wasn´t why we came, but nice to see.

It was late, but after the lesson, we decided to find our first authentic meal.  We walked the streets for what seemed like a very long time.  It was about 9pm and even though things are supposed to be opening up around then, the streets were eerily quite.  We couldn´t seem to find any busy areas as we were expecting.  Where was the outdoor seating on every corner with people clinking their wine glasses and laughing in the distance?  Where were the kids and the dogs?  I´m not a big fan of walking aimlessly along foreign streets int he dark with no indication of which way to go, so needless to say, I was quite happy to see "Don Julio", a restaurant with people in it, waiters and a few tables outside.  We ordered steak and chicken with a salad appetizer and Miguel had wine while I had a fresh squeezed orange juice - which turned out to be a normal and consistent (although relatively expensive) menu item throughout the country.  The meal was very good, worth the scary (unvalidated) walk, and the waiter was quite nice to us.  I did have to get a box "to go" (very unArgentine), but overall, we were very satisfied with making our first day a success in Argentina and not sleeping it all away.   

Much to our dismay, we´ve found it more difficult than anticipated to find the time to get to the internet to keep up this blog while we´re in Argentina.  Breakfast is currently on the table at our estancia here in Chacra De Coria (Mendoza), so I don´t have long this time either.  Everything is well though, and our trip has been full of excitement and fun activities.  Today we´re off to try our hand at driving in Argentian traffic, which should be an adventure in itself.  The internet connections here have been slow, so uploading photos is harder than we thought it would be.  Although we have many to upload!  So anybody keeping up with this, please check back, as we plan to update tonight or tomorrow with more stories and advetures.  When you´re on vacation, it´s hard to justify spending time in front of the computer - oddly enough!  As far as how I´m feeling, it seems like I´m either hungry, have to go to the bathroom, or ready to take a nap most of the time.  We´re enjoying the places we´re staying and the people we´re meeting and our Spanish is improving quite a bit each day.  So, thanks for checking in and I´m heading to eat. Hasta luego.

Jet-er

It was a long journey.  Almost 30 hours sitting down on busses, airplanes, shuttles and metros to get to the little courtyard Bed and Breakfast, the Caseron Porteno.  Everything went smoothly even though I was certain that the shuttle driver in Bellingham would say something like "Sorry, you´re not on my list", and our whole perfectly linked up journey would be squandered.  But, that wasn´t the way it went at all, and all of our tickets were in place and reservations held.  However, the two of us were worse for the wear by the time we were arrived in Buenos Aires.  The food on the plane was crummy or non-existant, we didn´t sleep much, and for some reason, Heather began sudden sneezing fits that lasted for the last couple of hours. 

After our plane touched down we proceeded through customs, showed our passports and had our bags scanned.  It seemed more for show than for actual security.  Once we were through, we were on our own in a country where, even though we had a passing faculty with the language, we could barely understand anyone.  We did manage to purchase tickets and get a bus to Buenos Aires, unlike the ´lucky´ pair with the surf board!  The ride was fairly uneventful, except for the gentleman in the seat in front of us who didn´t seem to know how to turn off is alarm.  It kept beeping every couple of minutes.  After 3/4 of an hour, we were dropped of in Buenos Aires with no Argentine pesos and no idea of where our pension was located.  On top of that, it was Sunday morning, the streets were empty and most shops were closed.

Luckily for us, Heather has been having an unending, constant need to find bathrooms on this trip, so that became our mission.  We walked up the street with pretty much 0 idea of where we were headed to find some sort of life.  We passed by several ATMs that were locked behind beautiful glass doors.   Just out of reach but in plain sight so they could taunt us weak travellers.  In a fleeting fit of desperation, we decided to try our mediocre Whatcom Educational Credit Union card in the swiper outside the door.   To our utter amazement, the light flashed ¨green¨as if we had passed some sort of test.  Woo hoo!  Money!!! We were suddenly becoming acquainted with the new area.  Now Bathroom.

...to be continued.