Saturday, Oct. 9, 2010 Time to go home!

We got up and did our morning routine (got ready, ate breakfast, fed Zach, etc.) but also completely packed up for our flight back home to St. Louis. We checked out before 11am and put our bags in storage since our pick up for the airport was not until 4:30pm. We left the hostel to explore more areas of Buenos Aires. We took the subway to Retiro and the walked through various plazas until we were back in Recoleta again. This time I was determined to find the entrance to the Recoleta Cemetery. We did find it and walked around. What an interesting place...it's above ground, huge, amazing, almost like a little town. We also found Eva Peron's grave. Afterwards, we found a place for lunch and then walked a different way back to Retiro to take the subway back to the hostel so we were there for our pick up to the airport. Victoria brought us to the airport and came inside with us so she could help us talk to the people in the luggage office about our stolen items. She had previously brought the claim form in for us already on 9/21/10 but they apparently conveniently lost it. We gave it to them again and they gave us some email addresses and phone numbers to contact when we got home. I wonder if this issue will ever be addressed by delta...? Anyway, Victoria is awesome and helped us so much with this whole problem. We are very lucky she was so willing to help us. None the less, our flight left on time, both of them, from Buenos Aires to Atlanta, and Atlanta to St. Louis. Zach slept wonderfully again in the little bassinet on the 10 hour flight in the bulk head row. He also took a nap during the lay over and on the next flight. No problems with the travels back home. And our neighbor, Jeremy, was there waiting to pick us up from the airport to bring us home. Jeremy and Jennifer also took care of Loca the entire time we were gone. What amazing neighbors we have!!!!

Zach dancing- Friday, Oct.8, 2010

cont. Frid. Oct. 8, 2010

Friday Oct. 8, 2010 Estancia Santa Susana

Fri. Oct. 8, 2010 Estancic, Santa Susana

We were picked up today at 9:30am to go to an estancia (farm) in the countryside. It took awhile to pick everyone up from the various hotels (it was a fairly large group) and to drive out there so we didn't arrive until about 12pm. We were greated with meat empanadas and wine. Marc thinks these were the best empanadas of all we've had. We then went for a quick carriage ride behind the horses. No real horse rides since we had Zach with us. We explored a bit. They had a little museum showing what the farm house used to look like. The was lunch...asada...a traditional mixed grill. They have these huge open flame grills where they cook various types of meat. It looked very good on the grill but unfortunately wasn't as tasty as it looked. They had a folk music and dance show during lunch. Marc was in a rare mood and actually went and danced with Zach. Zach was having a blast pounding his hands to the music and maybe even doing a bit dancing himself. After lunch was as gaucho skill demonstration. The gauchos are the traditional cowboys of argentina. This was very good. We boarded the bus and headed back to Buenos Aires arriving around 5:30. We walked back through the financial distract (on Florida) again looking at all the street vendors. We went for dinner at Chan Chan, a peruvian restaurant which seems to be popular in BA- very good. Marc was a little shy with eating too adventurously since he had "the runs" the night before and his tummy still wasn't feeling 100%. Zach went to bed by 10:30.

Thur. Oct. 7,2010 Buenos Aires

We got up and had a somewhat leisurely morning since we didn't leave the hostal (Portal del Sur) until 10 am. They were spraying for bugs so we had to be out by then. We took the subway to Palermo where we found the office of Say Hueque, the travel agent that booked nearly everything for our trip. We stopped in to say hello and meet the people that helped us out. They were all very nice and grateful we stopped. They were even excited to meet the baby that they had made plans for. After that we had lunch at La Cabrera- excellant meat! And then walked around Palermo, poking our heads into some of the shops. It started raining too and then it down poured! Luckily we had our rain gear with us!!!! Zach slept in the carrier underneath Marc's rain jacket! We walked in the rain to the Evita Museum which was interesting. Afterwards we headed back to our hostal. We went to a Mate tasting at the hostal at 6pm. We learned how to prep the gourds with the yerba and how it's customarily drank. I still think it's a little bitter even with sugar. One of the guys was playing his guitar and Zach was loving the music and all the attention. Of course everybody loved him too! We went out for dinner at an Italian restaurant, D'Ora. The steak ravioli with malbec sauce was delicious but Zach was really tired and a little crabby.

Wed. Oct. 6.2010 Tango Show

Today was a day of walking. We started off making our way through San Telmo. We didn't stop too much, it was mostly just looking around. Sundays are when San Telmo really lights up with a huge antique fair and tango in the streets (or so we're told since we weren't in BA on a Sunday... we missed this part). We then made our way into the financial district where we had lunch at some random restaurant. We were definitely the only tourists in the restaurant and we were trying to figure out how the lunch menu was organized- a bit confusing. Anyway, we went to our hostal to get Zach down for a good nap from 4-6pm. We also went for cafe in the afternoon, as the Argentinians do. That night we were picked up at 7:45pm to go to a Tango Show. It was very touristy but a small venue and was really good. Marc even danced for a minute with one of the dancers. Zach fell asleep after we ate dinner in the carrier and was quiet during the entire show! We didn't get back to our hostal until midnight.

Just a note... strangely, every night by our hostal the sidewalks would be full of garbage. The garbage bags would be put out every night and then people would go through all the trash and the sidewalks would be littered with it! We were a bit confused by this, as people do not dig through trash in public at home. We later asked about it and found out it is an organized sort of thing. It's people who otherwise don't have jobs and they search the trash for recyclable items or anything of value. They actually have trucks that come by to pick it all up. By morning it's all cleaned up and gone!

Tues. Oct. 5, 2010 Buenos Aires

We had a half day city tour planned for 9am. We were picked up more like 9:30am but then got going. We visited Plaza de Mayo, where the Casa Rosada is. Then San Telmo, the tango capital and antique world. Then La Boca, where the Boca Jrs. soccor team plays and the colorful neighborhood. Then Puerto Madera, an old port, now swanky area. Then Palermo, a really nice residencial area, shops, and parks. Then Recoleta, also a nice residencial area, shopping and parks. The Recoleta cemetary is here and is where Eva Perron is currently buried. We were left there after the tour so we had lunch and walked around quite a bit and walked back to our hostal. We were trying very hard to keep Zach awake because we´ve tried various times to get him to take a later nap so we could have a nice dinner at a normal argentinian time (so we aren´t the only people in the restaurant). We were successful! Marc and Zach took a nap while I blogged. We went for dinner at an all you can eat meat restaurant tonight (Siga La Vaca in Puerto Madero). It was right up Marc´s alley! I don't know how he can keep eating so much beef and other meat! Buenos Aires is a very large city! It has a lot of colonial buildings and in some ways, seems like a city that might be found in the States, though the driving is a little more crazy (outside of BA, there doesn't seem to be any stop lights or signs, everyone seems to just gun it through the intersections...strangely we didn't see any accidents)!

Mon. Oct. 4, 2010 Off to Buenos Aires

Today we got up, had breakfast, and packed everything up for our flight from Salta to Buenos Aires. Since we had to check out at 10am I had some time to blog, which I did do though I still didn´t catch up. We were picked up at noon to go to the airport. We checked in, hung out, and flew to Buenos Airew without any problems. Someone was there to pick us up and bring us to our hostal (Portal del Sur). We checked in, got situated, tried to get Zach to nap in our room, failed, so went out for dinner. We walked around a bit but settled on a restaurant nearby. We actually ended up meeing some ex-pats and chatted with them for awhile before turning in for the night.

Since this is a short post I´ll comment on Zach´s eating since we´ve been here. He has continued to nurse without any problems. But his eating habits in regards to solids has changed(he thinks he´s a big boy). In the beginning he was eating as expected. We would order mashed potatoes or mashed pumkin, or he´d have cereal we brought and he´d eat it. This didn´t last long though. He apparently decided he doesn´t want to eat anything off a spoon (definitely not off the baby spoon). He seems to want to eat finger foods, things he has to chew a bit (he does have his 6 teeth after all!). So we´ve been trying to give him things off our plate that he´s eaten before that can be cut up small and given to him. So...basically he eats french fries, tomatoe, and some cheese. And that, along with some broken pieces of mum mums that we brought from home, is all he eats. We even brought some store bought baby food (the kind that comes in foil pouches) and he´ll only eat it sometimes, and only if we sqeeze it into his mouth and don´t put it on a spoon. It´ll be interesting when we get home if he´ll eat any pureed food or if he´ll just want cut up soft foods.

Sun. Oct. 3, 2010 Salta

We had nothing specifically planned today so we took it easy in the morning. The thing I wanted to do most in Salta was see the MAAM museum. I thought it opened at 10am so we were there around 10:30. It didn´t open however until 11am. The museum is on the central square so we just hung out at a cafe and had cafe con leches until it opened. We ran into Albert and Paula again, and chatted with them. We did go to the museum and it was well worth it. I think it was in 1997 they found 3 Incan children (9, 7, and 6?) at the top of Volcano LLaullaima? (I need to check the details of this) at 6700 meters. Then were naturaly preserved and intact! This museum is about the discovery, the incan culture, and it actually displays the bodies (but just one per day- and in very specific conditions so as to continue the natural preservation)! We had audio info in English which was very helpful. The people were very nice. I was having problems with my audio and then realized that it was time to feed Zach so I asked if there was a bench somewhere. They actually let me sit in one of the offices at the museum to feed him! Anyway, after the museum, we briefly went back to the hostal to pick up our laundry (which we dropped off in the morning) at the nearby laudramat. We then headed out for a walk. We went to the top of a hill for a view of the city and had lunch there. Afterwards we walked to another archeological museum that was closed. Marc wasn´t very happy about that. None the less we walked back to the hostal where Zach proptly woke up from his short nap, ensuring we would need to go for another "early" dinner. We have thus far been unsucessful in getting Zach to nap later in the day. Having said that, he has been napping during the day where ever we are and sleeping through the night so who´s complaining!?!

Sat. Oct. 2, 2010 Humahuaca gorge then back to Salta

We had breakfast at our hostal and were picked up at 9am. We drove to the other side of the Rio Grande (the other side of Iruya) to pick up Paula & Albert for our drive through the Humahuaca gorge back to Salta. Leaving Iruya was much different from our drive in. This time there was thick, thick fog. It was all white, could see probably less than 20 feet in front of us. Being that we were on cliff edges everything looked white! The real bummer of this is we missed out on all the amazing scenery on our way out. By the time we got back to the summit at 4100 meters the ground was covered in frost and we didn´t have the view we had the day before. Zach again didn´t have any problems with the altitude. Things started to clear up on our way back down on the other side. We stopped in Tilcara to visit the ruins and then for lunch. The ruins, Pucara', are another pre-incan site. These were a little more restored than those at Tastil. The views again were beautiful from the ruins too but it was really cold and windy. After lunch, we headed for Jujuy. We stopped for a short time to walk around a bit at the central square. It was a little differant than many of the other squares in that it wasn´t very commercial...no restaurants and hotels like many other citíes. Instead it had a police station and other municipal buildings. It also didn´t have the colonial buildings like Salta has. I think it was destroyed in a war along the way and was rebuilt. I don´t really feel like I saw much of Jujuy given it´s a fairly large city, but I haven´t heard all that much positive feed back from others about it so hopefully we didn´t miss much. After that, we went back to Salta. As usual, Zach was not interested in a nap when we got back so we went for a walk. We walked around the local market to check out the food and other items for sale. It was interesting, as most local markets are. We also checked out a couple of churches/cathedrals. All very beautiful. It seems like in Salta there´s a church at every other street corner. I´m told 90% of Argentinians are Catholic. We ended up having an "early" dinner to try to get Zach to bed at a reasonable time.

Friday Oct. 1, 2010 Iruya

This morning we weren´t picked up until 10am so after breakfast I went for a quick walk to the look out point again to take more pictures of the amazing mountains in Purmamarca (7 color hills). I took some yesturday too but wanted to see if the colors would be different in the morning. Just a quick note on breakfast here. It´s almost always the same...coffee or cafe con leche, bread with dulce de leche, medialunas (danishes of sort), and maybe cereal or orange juice. Anyway, at 10am Pablo picked us up. Our group was us, Paula and Albert (from Buenos Aires), and our guide Pablo. We stopped at another look out point for pictures of 7 color mountains for more pictures as well as numerous other particularly buautiful spots along the way too. We stopped at the tropic of capricorn. Lunch was in a town called Humahuaca. It was a little touristy to me but pretty none the less. We visited the church and walked around a bit. We took a little video of the stroller ane the abuse it´s been enduring on this trip. Many of the roads and sidewalks are cobble stone so the wheels look all crazy. After lunch started to portion of the drive on very narrow gravel roads as we made our way to Iruya. We went up as high as 4100 meters. The views from this point were incredible. I feel like I keep saying things like that, but seriously, the scenery has been so amazing every day! This time we put local anesthetic drops in Zach´s ears. He did do better this time, because of the drops or just because I dón´t know. The way back down to Iruya (at 2100 meters) way a bit crazy. It was switch back after switch back on a one lane gravel road. Buses take this route too so we´d intermittantly have to pull as close to the side of the mountain as possible to let the buses pass. Wow! And then we arrived in Iruya, a little tiny town snuggled between all these mountains. Iruya is also one of the few most beautiful places on our list. Truly not a lot of tourist here, as there are not a lot of restuarants or other things set up for tourists. I think they get only 2 trucks per week that bring in supplies. This weekend however there was a lot of ´traffic´in because they have an annual festival. They were setting up tons on tents (blue tarps) to get ready. The real festival was starting at noon on Saturday. We left before noon because the roads were going to be closed. Once we got settled at the hostal we had an early dinner and then went for a walk. Given the altitude, we were a little out of breath walking up even slight inclines. It was starting to get cloudy at this point and quite cold. We had to have someone come to our room that evening to start our heater because we couldn´t figure out how to start it. It was gas run, so I don´t think Marc slept well since he was a little paranoid their would be a gas leak. Anyway, all is well...no problems there.

Thur. Sept. 30, 2010 Salinas Grandes and Purmamarca

This was kind of an early start and a long day. We were picked up by 7am. Our group was small yet again, us, a couple from South Africa (Oriel & Harry), and our guide (Pablo). Our first stop for the day was in Tastil. We had a bathroom break, had a coffee and snack of emandas (we eat a lot of these- they´re quite good), and walked around a bit. Next up was the ruins of a pre-Incan town (from the 14th century AD). We walked around the ruins. There were a lot of small stone walls. Impressive, but not like the Incan ruins are (as seen in Peru). There were amazing views from the ruins as well. Next we stopped for lunch in San Antonio de los Cobres, nothing too special here...a lot of locals trying to sell their local items. We bought a small wool llama that I think we´ll use as a x-mas ornament. The next stop was Salinas Grandes, large salt flat. What a site to see...mountains on all sides, sparkling white expanse of irregularly shaped octagons. We actually drove on the salt for about 20minutes prior to making our stop. When we stopped we walked around and looked at the aqua blue pools of salt water. We also saw the large trucks being loaded up with big bags of salt. The highest point of the day was at 4000 meters. You could definitely feel it. Zach was a little unhappy on our way back down but I fed him and he settled down. Maybe it was his ears bothering him. The last stop for the day, where we spent the night, was Purmamarca (about 2000 meters). What an amazing, beautiful town!!! It is surrounded by the Seven Color Hills (mountains). This town really is one of the few on our list of incredibly beautiful places. We took a walk after checking into our hotel. We stopped at the look out point first and then walk on a trail. We took lots of pictures so you´ll be able to see them when we get home. That evening we went to a peña for dinner. A peña is a place that has folk music and dinner. The music is similar to the andean music I started listening to after my trip to Ecuador in 1997 so it´s definitely music I like! We had dinner with Oriel and Harry too. Marc had llama for the first time. He thought it tasted a little like beef but much more chewy.

Wed. Sept. 29, 2010 Cafayete, then back to Salta

We got up around 7.45, got ready, had breakfast, tried to quickly convince our clothes to dry (Marc did laundry again the night before), and then was picked up by Beto again at 10.30am. We started off with wine tasting...yeh!! First we went to a winery called Bodega Triniti, where we tried torrontes, malbec, and tannat. Torrontes is a white varietal the grows very well at these altitudes. It is the specialty of the region. It is very fruity and flowery on the nose, but dry. I really like it. This area also makes 2 red varietals that I wans´t familiar with, tannat and banardo. I haven´t had too much of the tannat or banardo, but most of what I have had I´ve liked. Next we went to Nanni an older vineyard where we had a really good tour, just us and Javier (the only other person in our group with Beto). The tasting consisted of their torrontes, a cab sav rose, malbec, and a desert torrontes. We went to one other winery, ?Viajo S....?. The tours were only in spanish and they had really big groups so we skipped and tried their torrontes and malbec. After that we were off for our journey back to Salta. This meant driving through the Cafayete Valley...yet again...wow! This time the mountains were more red, less dry, more green. I wish I could down load some of the pictures so everyone can see. You´ll just have to wait until I get home and I´ll add all the pictures into the posts. We made a lot of stops to look around and take picures. One of the stops was a natural amphitheater. It was really cool! A guy was playing music and it was amplifide in the entire area. We stopped for lunch, where I had vacuna meat in a stew (vicuna is like a llama). I was very good. Then we got back to Salta around 6.30pm.

Tues. Sept. 28, 2010 Cafayete

Today we got up at 8am, got ready and had breakfast. We checked out of our hotel and I went to blog and Marc took Zach for a walk. Zach already had his first nap of the day while I was blogging. We had lunch in Cachi-a town of 1500 people- (more regional food, I had locro-a kind of stew with beans, meat, pumkin, and tomato in it, Marc had volcan de pumkin-served in a little pumkin, quinoa risotto with cheese, and we also had an appetizer of provoleta-grilled goat cheese with seasoning on it) and then another guide, Beto, picked us up at 2pm to head on to Cafayete. We stopped at a couple small villages along the way just to see them briefly and take a couple pictures. But the guts of the trip to Cafayete was the scenery- wow! I feel like I keep thinking...ok more mountains isn´t it going to start to look the same...but no...it doesn´t. Everyday the mountains look so different. This part of the Calchaqi valley is dessert, dry, dusty, rocky, small flat cacti, whitish grey, desolate, severe, very few people, some adobe houses...something I think I might have expected to see in the middle east or northern africa. As we got closer to Cafayete (a town of 2000 people), we started to see vineyards. Cafayete has some of the highest, if not the highest, vineyards in the world, at 1700 meters. We arrived to Cafayete around 6.45pm. We checked in to our hotel and went out for dinner. We went to a parradillo???, because Marc was in the mood for one of those giant 2 inch steaks. We were there around 7.30pm and we were the only people in the restaurant! But more people started to come as we were leaving. As expected, the beef was good!

Monday, Sept. 27, 2010 Cachi

We were picked up at 7:30am for our excursion to Cachi, a small village in the mountains. Our group was just our selves, the guide and one other woman, Mariella (from Buenos Aires). Our guide spoke reasonably good English so he said everything in spanish and english so we could all understand. Having said that Mariella spoke a little english and I a little spanish so we were still able to have some conversation. It was a very enjoyable day. We made various stops along the way to take pictures of the increadibly beautiful scenery/mountains. The guide explained the history of everything along the way. One of the main stops was in Parque Nacional Los Cardones (Cacti national park). It was increadible. We were around 3000 meters up in the mountains and there were thousands of giant cacti. There were fields that seemed to just keep going on that were peppered with these huge cacti that only grow .25 cm per year. I was really cool to see. We arrived to Cachi at noon and had lunch at a local restaurant that served all local specialties. Our guide told us what we should order. It was delicious. We had a little quinoa ball that was stuffed with cheese, pototoes, and peppers. Then we had a huge green pepper stuffed with rice, tomatoes, and dried beef. And for dessert we had anchi, corn meal with large raisons, honey, and lemon juice. After lunch were checked into our hotel. Zach had a nap and then we went again searching for an 'early' dinner. We found this little cafe that was open. We had wine, empanadas, and pizza for dinner. There was a guy, Arnold, from Amsterdam, that we chit chatted with the whole time. We were actually successful in getting Zach to bed by 9pm! and he slept until 8am!

Sun. Sept. 26, 2010 Travel to Salta

This was an early morning!! Someone came to pick us up at 4am to go to the bus station. We had everything pretty much ready to go so we quickly got ready and packed up. Zach stayed in his pajamas and as usual was in his happy smiley mood. Fortunately the bus was on time and we left at 4.40am. The bus ride went smoothly. Zach slept a total of almost 6 hours, in 3 naps! We slept a little too, read a little, played with Zach, etc. The time actually went very fast. We had the cush seats again so it was very comfortable. We arrived to Salta at around 3pm and checked into our hostal. Zach and Marc took a nap while I blogged and checked email. We then went out looking for dinner. This is easier said than done as it was only a little after 6pm and restaurants really don´t open for dinner until 8pm (This is really killing the idea of getting Zach to bed at any reasonable time, but fortunately he seems to go with the flow. If he doesn´t sleep as much at night he just sleeps more during the day, usually against my chest in the baby carrier.). None the less, we got some dinner and made our way back to the hostal and got Zach in bed sleeping before Marc and I got everything ready for the next day and went to bed ourselves.