Boca Juniors vs Colon BA

I have forgotten to write up the soccer game we went to on Sunday night.
After a busy day in San Telmo (flea markets, antiques and thousands of people, mostly Brazilians on their winter holiday) we got home just in time to be picked up for the Boca game at La Bomberina...the stadium famous for the shape ( a chocolate box) and for the passion of the supporters. I have been before and enjoyed it so much it was worth going again and seeing Sarah's face as the stadium started to vibrate and sway, actually.
I had not noticed how extremely poor the Boca working class streets were around the stadium. Real slum conditions behind faded facades could be glimpsed as we marched along. snotty nosed kids with attitude hung about...I think I had a different access last time. in fact I know I did as last time I was in with the Boca  supporters but now we have to be locked in with the visitors for our safety. This means we have to arrive early to avoid Boca supporters, get marched through three police cordons and searches, and past riot police all shielded up. Once we are in our seats, then the Boca supporters start to arrive with the accompaniment of drums and singing. They didn't stop playing or singing the entire game.
I stupidly applauded a great play by Boca Under 18's in the game before the main match and I was told off by the guide. Remember to be careful and you are a Colon supporter tonight!
We also had to be aware of what colours we were wearing, and all of the Colon supporters put their colours over top of what they were wearing after they were safely locked in.

 

Foodies blog post South America 2010

Here are some of the photos of what we have been eating...feasts to the eyes as well as the bellies at times.

The food has changed significantly from Chile to Argentina to now  Brazil where it is much tastier and more interesting.These photos are of the first two places.

Stuck in BA airport instead of getting drenched by Iguazzu Falls

Well, writing this from the BA departure halls...been here since 6.45 am and it is now 1.20 pm!
The flight got all loaded up, and then unloaded as the weather in Iguassu was a storm. Having survived a hairy aborted landing in Beijing in a thunderstorm/tail of a typhoon I was not too concerned as better delayed than dead. Now it is getting annoying, as other flights are going but ours has not because our flight crew were 'over' time so a new crew needs to be fetched.
The fetching is taking about 5 hours.


The flight eventually let at 4pm!!! We were exhausted and grumpy, but less so than the whole families who had missed tour bookings etc.

Iguassu was a bit damp and the the sky grey, so the water looked a little green. The Devil's Throat was roaring  but the butterflies and birds were not too keen to come out in the rain which eventually fell.
Luckily we had time to drop in to the Butterfly and Bird House on the Brazilian side , right next to the airport. If you ever go, make sure you do that too. Flamingos and Hummingbirds were some of the favourites plus of course the Toucans and the parrots of all shapes, sizes and colours.

Still tired from the long useless wait yesterday, we were glad to get on the plane on time for Rio.
My cold is so bad that my ears are playing up terribly on flights , so by the end I was almost completely deaf.  Very frustrating.

Our room at Mama Ruisa though has made up for any discomforts in the last few days. Wow what a view over the Bay and it has a veranda which I am writing from now. It was 31 degrees when we arrived last night. We had picked up a good special for the Junior Suite and decided to splurge here. Most of the hotels on Copacabana are ugly and expensive. We are also near to Lapa, the nightlife area for jazz etc. http://www.mamaruisa.com/

More on Rio next time.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Last day in BA...golf at Golf Club Patricio

Our last day in BA didn’t go quite so smoothly as the rest of the trip. I woke very sick from my cold, unsure if I could even play golf. I took some paracetamol and hoped I would feel better


I had an appointment with an agent (just to say hello, not really work), and then we caught a remis- taxi to the Golf Club Patricio, (former navel course and out on the Tigre delta). Karina had begged us to get a remis taxi rather than the usually black and yellow hail cabs as they are more reliable. Her words were “a taxi might just drive around for ages and make the charge higher.”

Well our remis driver could not find the course....the time for our booked start came and went and we were still at the side of the road asking locals for directions. This was all despite Karina having given me the instructions on how to find the course in Spanish, and me having copied them out clearly.

The driver, old, shaky hands and quite deaf kept glancing studying the piece of paper and re-reading the same sentence over and over and getting more and more uptight. Karina had also given me a mobile, in-case of trouble, so he eventually rang the number. It didn’t seem to help, he just muttered. Eventually he found some people who gave him instructions he could follow, and we rolled up to a desolate looking field, surrounded by swamp.

Two hopeful and relieved looking men smiled at us at the checkpoint, they were the caddies who had been waiting for us.

After much waiting round, miming and general confusion, we paid our money, borrowed clubs and got to play on the course which was somewhat desolate looking as it was built on a delta in the middle of swamps. Quite attractive, in an ugly kind of way!

I managed to put a ball into the water, and even more disastrously knocked a bird and her nest...making her scream like crazy and go really mad at me. The ball ended up against her egg and cracked it!! I felt like a murderer.

We called it quits after 9 holes as it was already getting late and they were bringing the flags in behind us. Sarah’s knees were hurting and my chest was getting no better. We bowled into the club rooms for a beer and the way it went quiet we suspect we were not meant to be in there or something, too bad. Our caddies came in too and we shared a few cold beers.

Another day to write down to experience.

Mendoza, Argentina via a flight over the Andes

Hi all,
Sorry but I am a week behind so I am struggling to remember what I did on what day and how I felt about things disappears.
Anyway, Sarah got her first flight over the Andes in clear blue sky and saw Aconcagua, the biggest mountain in the Americas, and higher than the snow falls at the top so it just sticks up like a rounded lump of rock.
Mendoza was it's usual sleepy little self. Plastic bags littered the brown parched fields as we drove from the airport to the hotel and the obviously very poor houses on the outskirts reminded both of us of travels in India.The one way grid road system takes a bit of getting used to too. It seems you play chicken all day.
We stayed at a little guest house/hotel called Hotel Zamora, http://www.hotelzamora.netfirms.com/ which I had sussed out last April as a better alternative to a hostel for the same price ($50NZ a night for the double with own bathroom!). A once flash Spanish style house opening out onto a tiled courtyard along an internal veranda. Now quite dilapidated but very clean and comfortable and in an excellent location.
Our Mendoza stay was very active. We did a salsa class at http://www.salsamendoza.com.ar/ which was a laugh and too difficult , in Spanish and ona  slippery floor with my sandals. 1,2, 3 eh!, 1, 2, 3, eh! she shouted (uno, dos, treis, eh!) I sat out once we got to spinning etc. I think a more successful way to salsa is to drink heaps and then just do it! Seems to have worked in the past in Colombia, Brazil and Chile.
I was confused as to where the class was, as I was sure it was in the same place the milongo/tango dance was held 2.5 years ago. It all became clear when we went by taxi to the tango place and sure enough it had shifted to a more upmarket place near to the 5 star hotel.
http://www.anayluistango.com.ar/

Well it was Sarah's first up-close look at tango and she was surprised. Middle-aged/elderly couples clinging to each other in awkward positions shuffling around the dance floor, with an occasional expert flicking their legs impossibly high or twisting them around their partners legs.
No village idiot to dance with this time thank God.(see previous blog)

Have to dash, next installment  golf and winery and photos.

Golf in Chile with caddies

With great excitement on Sunday, Sarah and I headed to Club de Golf Lomas de la De Hesa for our first ever game of golf with caddies! It was cloudy and quite cool which was not expected for the day, the forecast being for a  clear day, however as the rain became harder and harder as we drove closer we began to realise we might get wet.
The club lent us coats luckily, plus gear, and it was clear when we teed off.  The caddies were an older guy who had a few words of english (super, excellent, very good) and a young highschool guy who was the son of the golf coach.
The course is in the foothills of the Andes, quite high up we realised afterwards when it cleared momentarily and we saw the snow on the hillsides not that far away.
I will let the photos do the talking. Bravo.

Midway stop

Day trip to Valparaiso

Enough of the city...so we arranged a taxi for the day and headed for the coast.We had actually slept in too long, so had missed the possible bus day trip...not that I was so keen on that option anyway.

The beauty of having our own driver was that we could stop when we wanted to. I was keen to re-visit Bodega Indominta and perhaps have lunch, but the taxi driver convinced us to try another one called Emiliana.It is a  winery in the Colchagua Valley and it is  certified organic, plus has some bio-dynamic lines so was interesting. We had the board of organic cheeses and I had their flight of premium wines while Sarah had one wine.
First was the Novas Sav Blanc 2009 limited selection it was clear, acidic and not a touch on NZ Sav blancs. 
The next up was the Novas Chardonnay 2009 Limited Edition It was nice and light with vanilla, citrus and some buttery tones. I don't like whites in most cases so it was for the research!
Carmenere Cab Sav Novas Limited Selection 2008 was up next and it was more interesting to me. The carmenere was meant to be balanced by the cab sav.
Their top wine is the Coyam label. We tasted the 2007 biodynamic certified assemblage. There are 6 grape varieties in it......Syrah 38%, Cab sav 21%, Carmenere 21%, merlot 17%, Petit verdot 2% and Mourvedre 1%. each brings a different element to the wine eg fruitiness, colour, spices, tannins etc. It was very nice and balanced of course. Rolled around the tongue and all through the mouth as you were seeking out each element.
The taxi driver got excited and pointed out the poster on the wall that said there was a mini-festival on in the next valley for the bi-centenary...wine tasting, food stalls, dancing, musica.
Let's go ....the parking was difficult so he took us to another winery called Casa del Bosque but we were not very interested, so walked in and out quite quickly. We wanted the grass -roots variety thanks.
Well it was in a very small village called Casablanca and there were small stalls set up in the village square/green. Sarah needed to try her first empanadas so we went to the stall and first of all bought the cheeses ones then went back for a meat one. We bought tickets for the wine tasting which also got us a commemorative glass, and proceeded to taste and wander.
A lovely drop in...impossible if we had been on the bus.
We were dragged away by the driver to get to the coast before the sun went down.
Valparaiso is a world heritage site as the colourful wooden houses tumble down very steep hills above the once important port. One up from slums, very interesting. Up in the clouds is also Pablo Neruda's coastal house where he wrote. He is their most famous writer/poet and won a Nobel prize. We did the tour of the house and caught the vistas that inspired him.
We also braved the antique cable car down the steep slope. Most are broken!

Chile 2010

Arrived Thursday 9th September, a few hours before we left...does your head in every time.
back to the favourite place Hotel del Patio in Bellavista, a really interesting neighbourhood of Santiago. www.hoteldelpatio.cl/english
The problem was, that they are still building the university across the road, so the noise is terrible, not the mention the party goers coming out of the clubs at 4 or 5 am and the music blaring from various bars for most of the night. I wear earplugs, so I sleep ok, but for new comers it is a bit of a shock.
Of course they had the big earthquake at the start of the year, so some of the construction noise was from re-building. I only saw one building that was obviously damaged from the quake. A taxi driver told me that most of the damage is on the outskirts of town as the CBD was rebuilt quickly.
One thing that has changed is that businesses have gone or changed names since I was here last April. My favourite restaurants had gone! I will have to change my links now.
However, a whole set of new restaurants have emerged on the cityside of Patio Bella vista, so we didn't go hungry.
Grills, cafes, jazz bars, French bistros, rock bars...you name it, it is there.
Sarah and I enjoyed one of our first nights at the Bistrot Jazz Club Le Fournil where we were treated to a big night of Latin Jazz.  "con Antoine Alvear Quinteto".  We were seated right up the front of the small room, and could practically drum ourselves. A whole bunch of musos came in, perhaps the next band...or not, as they seemed to switch  roles and some of the newcomers appeared to take over the set. www.lefournil.cl.
A few nights later we came back to the bistro and  loved the food. Recommended.
When in Chile you must drink Carmenere of course. We shared a bottle of Vina Chocolain
Carmenere Selection  2009 from Valley Maipo which was very nice to warm up by.
because it was the celebration week coming up for the Bicentenary of Chile there were many events specifically arranged to commemorate it and the other up-risings of the past 200 years.

We ended up in the Casa del Aire  a few times to listen to political songs and hear the crowd noisily join in on the anthems. One night we were in the 'red' bar and heard political songs from singers from Argentina, and Chile.  There were badges for sale, political newspapers and pamphlets from a table manned by bearded students. It seemed like a time-warp.