Photos are in the gallery.

The most recent videos are:

1. A video from the tango show we went to at El Querandi in Buenos Aires.
2. A video from our visit to La Cinacina estancia in San Antonio de Areco.
3. A video showing the awesome power of the Garganta del Diablo in Iguazu Falls.
4. A musical fountain performing a “water dance” to Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.

Hope you enjoy them!

Here’s a fun little before & after for you:

Before (March 2007)

After (April 2008)

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Those flowers have definitely seen better days…

We’re wrapping up our time in Argentina, and getting ready to come home this week. It’s been a long time coming, and we’re filled with feelings of both excitement to return and dread of the 15 hrs of flying we have ahead of us. But after our recent bus adventures, we are at least comforted by the fact that we’ll be able to read on the plane (we both get sick when we read in the car).

Northeast Argentina was really the one part of the country that we hadn’t explored very much, so we decided to take a week and a half and do a whirlwind bus tour of the area. Having finished it, we have a bit more of a sense for what the non-biking tourist endures when they travel, and it definitely confirmed our opinion that we MUCH prefer to travel by bike.

We started with a 16-hour bus ride from Buenos Aires all the way up to the most northeastern corner of Argentina to see the spectacle of Iguazu Falls. Personally, I’m not a huge waterfall fan—I think mostly just because I’ve seen too many small lame ones touted as being tourist sites (just because water falls off a cliff doesn’t mean you should go see it!). But seeing Iguazu Falls may have spoiled me for all future waterfalls. It’s not really a single waterfall, but is actually a series of 275 waterfalls over 2.7 kilometers! The park is set up with catwalks everywhere so you can walk along both the top and bottom of the falls. They also have boat rides you can take that get you really close to the bottom of the falls—so close that they have to give you a dry bag to put your camera and shoes in. The boat ride is only 15 min or so, but you get absolutely soaking wet. Thankfully, there was some sun the day we were there (and we wore our quick-dry clothes), so we were able to dry out as we continued to walk through the park.

The last thing we did was take the train inside the park to the “Garganta del Diablo” (Devil’s Throat) part of the falls. All I can say is that this part was very aptly named. The falls here are U-shaped, and the Iguazu river dumps so much water over the edge here that the bottom of the falls are completely obscured by the mist of the crashing water…I can imagine how the first people who saw this must have thought that the Earth was opening up to swallow them. At the train station, we encountered another devilish part of the park—the coati. These small raccoon-like critters have unfortunately learned that the thousands of tourists who visit the national park every year are an easy mark for getting food, and they go about it in a very aggressive manner. Despite the warning signs everywhere, we saw coatis grab food from backpacks that were on the ground, and they even grabbed food right out of people’s hands!

After we finished seeing the Argentine side of the falls, we had wanted to see the Brazilian side as well (the Iguazu river forms part of the border between the two countries). Our guidebooks said that you typically didn’t need visas to visit Brazil (or Paraguay, also in the vicinity) if you were just going to day-trip. But the tour agency we wanted to book with told us that we DID need visas, so we decided that seeing the Argentine side of the falls was sufficient. We’ll be posting pictures soon!

Our trip continued with seeing some of the Jesuit missions that are still here from when the Jesuits came to the area in the 16th-17th centuries. One of the highlights was San Ignacio Mini, which is one of the most complete/most restored ruins of the Misiones province. It was an interesting mix of the evangelism/Catholicism of the Jesuits and the Guarani, the main indigenous tribe in the region. With the exception of the Jesuit motifs on the front of some of the buildings, the stonework of the buildings and the layout of the ruins was very much like we have seen in other indigenous ruins throughout South America. This probably reflects what our tour guides told us, which is that the Jesuits, among all the Spanish groups that came to colonize the Americas, actually aimed for a merging of Catholic and indiginous culture, rather than the subjugation employed by other expeditions.

From there it was on to Cordoba, one of Argentina’s oldest cities, which served as a capital of sorts for the Jesuits in the area. As such, there are a lot of buildings left by the Jesuits in the historic center of town, including Argentina’s oldest university, many beautiful cathedrals, and an underground crypt that was only re-discovered in 1989! We also took a side trip to the nearby town of Alta Gracia, which is famous for yet another Jesuit estancia, as well as being former home to Che Guevara, Argentina’s revolutionary hero (well, he didn’t lead a revolution here, but you know what I mean). We had been told that the Casa de Che museum might be closed in preparation for what would have been his 80th birthday this month, but luckily for us it was open. We were surprised to learn there that before Che made his famous motorcycle trip immortalized in “The Motorcycle Diaries”, that he made a trip through central Argentina by bicycle as well! Obviously riding through Argentina by bicycle is a sign of impending greatness…

Another bit of luck that we’ve had is with the roads on this bus trip. In case you haven’t heard, farmers in Argentina have been periodically blocking the roads to protest taxes on their exports. Usually passenger buses are allowed through the blocks, but fuel trucks have not been allowed through, meaning that the long-distance passenger bus lines have had to reduce their services accordingly. Without too much planning on our part, I think that serendipitously we managed to get into Cordoba when the roads were open, the roads were closed while we were there, and they re-opened in time for us to return to Buenos Aires.

One of the things that brought us back to Buenos Aires was that I had one last football match to attend—a qualifying match for the 2010 World Cup between Argentina and Ecuador (pictured above). Argentina played really poorly and barely squeaked out with a tie, having scored in the very last minute of the match. Argentina is an amazing team on paper, with an overabundance of talent, and they should have no trouble qualifying for the World Cup finals in South Africa. Nevertheless, they still have a lot of work ahead of them to gel together as a cohesive unit. The local press is having fainting spells and hoping they can perform better this Wednesday when they travel to Brazil for another qualifying match.

Well, the bikes are boxed, the cab has been reserved, and all we have to do is a little more shopping and figure out how the heck we’re going to get all of our stuff into our bags, and then it’s USA, here we come.

One of first priorities when we arrived in Buenos Aires was to buy jeans. We had been wearing quick-dry travel pants exclusively for over a year and were excited to feel a bit less like travelers. Once we were happily wearing jeans, we set out to explore the city.

The Boca Juniors soccer match that Matt mentioned in the last post exceeded our expectations for out-of-control fans and good soccer. We opted to join a tour group to the game so that we would feel more comfortable sitting in the general admission (the wild side), which the guidebooks tell you not to do alone. The game started with an amazing amount of confetti, balloons and streams thrown down to the field from the highest seats in the stadium. I was happy that the home team (Boca) won so that we would have to deal only with happy fans! The opposing fans (for River) were seated in the tier above us and were peeing over the edge onto the Boca fans below! We were happy to be sitting where they couldn’t reach us. The stadium security also didn’t let any Boca fans leave the seating area until all the River fans had left the stadium after the game.

We decided to take some more Spanish classes while we are here in order to solidify our progress. We speak English to each other too much to have become fluent, but we are both doing pretty well. The classes have been good and we have both improved mucho!

The highlight of our time here so far was a week-long visit from Jenn, all the way from NYC. We saved most of our big sightseeing for her and we had a great time. We started right after Jenn arrived on Saturday, first visiting Recoleta Cemetary (which houses Evita, as well as some fantastic tombs and scupltures) and the crafts fair there. Then on Sunday we explored the antiques and crafts in San Telmo, and watched tango on the streets while exploring the crafts fair in La Boca. We spent several days just wandering around town visiting the different neighborhoods, visiting museums and seeing the important government buildings in town. We caught some live rock music one night and a dinner and tango show another night. We also had the most relaxed wine tasting in a little boutique wine store. The tasting included a giant tray of meats and cheeses, as well as four different wines with as many refills as we wanted. We were there for several hours and finished one of the bottles in addition to one or two glasses each of the others. Of course, the store knew exactly what it was doing and we purchased several bottles to take home.

Jenn and I are friends after sharing adjoining lab benches in the Nathanson Lab, so we made it a real lab reunion when Juan, another former member of the Nathanson Lab, invited us to visit his lab here in Buenos Aires. We didn’t get to help with any experiments, but we got glimpse into the world of science here. After the lab tour, we all went out for dinner and had a fun time catching up.

Since Jenn lives in NYC and is used to big cities, she wanted to experience a bit of the country life of Argentina. So, we went to nearby San Antonio de Acero, home of the Gaucho. We visited a couple museums of Gaucho culture and learned about their tradition of making silver jewelry, belt buckles and knives. We browsed leather and silver shops and generally enjoyed the quietness of the town (well, Matt and Jenn did, I was feeling a bit sick and spent a lot of time sleeping.) On the second day, we headed to a nearby Estancia (kinda like a ranch) for a “Gaucho Party.” We wandered around the grounds a bit waiting for all the day-trippers from Buenos Aires to show up, and then joined in on a short horseback ride. The main activities of the day started with a giant asado

lunch, featuring a ton of meat and a few salads. After lunch, there was a show with music and dancing traditional of the Gauchos, including a fun dancing duel. Then we headed outside to watch some Gaucho games. The point of the game was to use a stick to snatch a small ring dangling from a string. Can you picture it? Put the stick through the ring, not entirely easy because the ring is fairly small and dangling from a string…and because you are at rushing towards said ring at full gallop on your horse. The Gauchos were pretty talented and managed to get the ring at least half the time. Unfortunately, unlike with the music and dancing, they didn’t allow crowd participation.

The other most important part of Jenn’s visit (for us at least) was to make sure she ate all of our favorite treats. We had alfajores, several kinds of empanadas, milanesa (we cooked some too), dulce de leche, and lots and lots of meat in different styles and cuts. Oh, and hot chocolate with churros and several argentine wines and beers.

We have one week more in Buenos Aires. Then we head out on a short bit of bus travel before coming back to the city for a final soccer match and our flight home.

Other than that, not much else to report except we are getting acquainted with Buenos Aires. And going to some soccer matches, including the Boca vs. River (a so-called “superclasico”) match this Sunday. To overstate the importance whenever these two Buenos Aires teams play is simply not possible. Think Red Sox vs. Yankees, except turned up to 11. Hopefully the game will not disappoint!

Since leaving Cafayate, we have been riding mostly through desert, which means heat (40+ degrees Celsius) with little shade and wind. For the most part, we are able to find a town with a restaurant to stop in for lunch and to wait out the hottest part of the day before continuing on, though we aren’t always so lucky.

Our route from Cafayate to Mendoza mostly followed Ruta 40, an iconic road for Argentina, similar to Route 66 in the US. It is also the route that Che followed for the Argentine part of the Motorcycle Diaries.

Setting out from Cafayate, we passed many small wineries and fields of grapes. We opted to take the longer, paved road to Santa Maria through the town of Amaiche, where we found a fun museum to Pachamama (pictured above) to wait out the heat of the day before riding the last 25 km to Santa Maria. The following day, as we were riding out of Santa Maria, 2 guys on a scooter pulled up alongside us carrying a video camera and large microphone and requested an interview. Matt did a great job of answering the questions (in Spanish) both in a live radio interview, then in a taped interview for the TV news. It took some quick thinking, especially when the interviewer wanted to know what we would remember about (the tiny little town of) Santa Maria. The real answer is awful pizza and overly expensive hotels, but Matt was able to talk about the beautiful landscapes and friendly people.

The rest of the ride from Cafayate from Chilecito was hot! It took us 2 days more than we had planned, first because a calf cramp and an impending thunderstorm forced us to seek shelter before we were ready to stop riding. We were really lucky that the house we stopped to ask for a camping spot had an empty small brick building we were able to pitch the tent in because not half an hour later, we were in the eye of a huge thunder and lightning storm. It would not have been a fun time standing out in the rain to avoid electricution through the tent poles. The other extra day was due to the intense heat coupled with no shade. From the intermediate town of Belen to the town of Salicas, it was 44 degrees and 100 km with no towns to find shade inbetween. When we finally arrived in town, we drank 3 liters of cold soda in no time. The next day, we had hoped to make it 120 km to Chilecito, but were worried about the heat since our energy had been completely drained from it the previous day. We struggled to make it to Piutil about 40 km away. When we finally made it, we found a restaurant for lunch and contemplated finding a hostel. After a liter of soda each and some yummy and much needed beef and salad, we stepped outside to see a huge thunderstorm approaching from the exact direction that we were headed. Since we were also exhausted from the ride, we decided to find a room for the evening rather than ride into the storm. When we saw the town’s only room for rent, we knew right away that it would be extremely buggy and hot in the evening (much more so than camping would have been,) but were too tired to do anything but lie down and take a nap. When we awoke around 4 pm, the storm had cleared and our energy had been renewed. We decided to head back out and see if we could make it to Chilecito or at least closer to Chilecito. With only about 20 km to go, we were feeling tired again and decided to stop in a city that we saw many signs for, Famatina. It was just off the road, or so we thought. Another 13 km and 200 meters of climbing out of our way and we arrived after our longest day of on-the-bike time at 8 hours 31 minutes. We found a nice hostel where we could pitch the tent and a small cafe where a lovely woman who called us “mi amor” made us dinner.

We arrived in Chilecito early the next day and decided that we needed air conditioning. The room was a bit more expensive than we could really afford, but Matt’s grandpa had given us some Christmas money (thank you!), so we decided that AC (and cable TV) would be a great Christmas gift. We enjoyed it so much, we spend three nights! We mostly did errands and watched our favorite Latin American TV channels, but we also did get out to the La Riojana winery for a tour and some tasting. As in Cafayate, there wasn’t much to the tour, but we did enjoy the wines much more. We tried a line of wines called Santa Florentina and found all of them to be quite yummy.

From Chilecito, we deviated from Ruta 40 a bit in order to visit two parks. The first is called Talampaya National Park, where there is a huge canyon cut by a river that only has water after it rains. There are also many petroglyphs in the area. We visited the sites of the park in a van tour. There is a biking tour option, but it was a hot day and we had had enough of the biking in the heat. We were able to camp at the visitor’s center for the evening, then the next day headed to Ischigualasto Provincial Park. We arrived too late in the evening to explore the park that night, but were able to camp at the visitor’s center again. The tours of this park are done in a caravan of private cars in which the guide finds a spot in one of the cars or tour buses. A nice couple from Rosario (near Buenos Aires) offered to let us ride the tour with them and even let us try their Yerba Mate along the way. We mostly visited interesting rock structures formed by erosion as well as a moon-like landscape at the Valley of the Moon. Both parks together were named as UNESCO World Heritage Sites because of their archeological importance as one of the only places where you can see rock deposits representing nearly the entire Triassic period, in undisturbed sequence. This means that they are both big dinosaur fossil sites as well.

It was after Chilecito on the road to the parks that we first encountered the huge head winds that we rode into almost the entire way to Mendoza. We had been hoping to put in some long days to cover large distances, but ended up putting in hard days to cover smaller than we had hoped distances. For several days we were pedaling hard in our easiest gears on flat road and achieving speed of only about 10 kph. The winds almost forced us to take 2 days longer than we had hoped to arrive in Mendoza, but on our last day of riding we managed to make it 120 km after the winds let up slightly late in the day. We topped our recently set record for amount of time on the bike by 10 minutes and arrived at a hostal in Mendoza around 9:30 pm. The hostal was hosting an “asado” (grilled meat) dinner that night of which we were happy to partake. The meat was delicious and we had a fun time meeting the other hostal guests. We ended up going out for a beer with 3 Icelandic guys and a gal from Denmark. We learned a lot about Iceland and its history with Denmark (not so good) and generally had a good time. When we crawled into bed at 3 am, after leaving everyone else at the bar, we were utterly exhausted several times over.

After spending some time in Mendoza doing errands and visting the many wineries, we will be heading over the Andes to Chile. We have really enjoyed Argentina so far, and look forward to our return (our route will take us over the Chile/Argentina border 5 or 6 more times.) We are especially enjoying the salads (safe to eat and available with almost every meal) the steaks (no feedlots here!), the fact that Argentines travel (we don’t stick out as much) and the abundant campgrounds offering hot showers (when Argentines travel, they like to camp—the hotels are a bit pricey.)

On Jan 17, we celebrated one year on the road and 6 months of marriage. Both projects are still going well! We have come a long way fitness-wise—in our month in Argentina so far we have ridden around 1800 km, compared to 1200 km in our first month in Mexico. We may actually be able to make it to the end of the continent by the end of March (though we plan to spend some time in Buenos Aires before returning to the states.)

That’s what the posted signs told us when we crossed the border into Argentina at La Quiaca. We’ve traveled pretty far in total so far, but we’ve only biked just over 7,000 kms up to now, so we’re going to need to be a little more disciplined (and luckier) than we have been so far on the trip. The border crossing itself was without incident, except that we almost didn’t make it through before they closed because our bus on the Bolivian side had to stop for repairs several times on the way. We enjoyed our first Argentinian milanesa (yum!), had a nice thick Quilmes Stout (also yum!), and then had our first nights sleep in Argentina.

The next day we started our 5-day trek to Salta. As we slowly started to bleed off our altitude from the altiplano, we were treated to great views in an arid, colorful rocky canyon called the Quebrada de Humahuaca. The only problem was that once we entered the canyon, we faced a horrendous headwind that really sapped our strength, even though we were going downhill most of the time! It was almost as if the Andean goddess Pachamama herself were trying to keep us from leaving the altiplano… Another highlight of the trip to Salta was staying in Purmamarca, which is home to the famous Cerro de los Siete Colores (Seven Colored Mountain), a large rock that, well, has seven different colors in it. To be honest, Purmamarca itself isn’t that spectacular—there is a small plaza where handicraft vendors wait for the occasional tour bus to come through and unload tourists on them, and not much else. But we had gone so far the day before (over 130 km), and the wind, which we had hoped was a one day fluke, was still gale force in our face, so we made a short day of it and rested in Purmamarca.

A couple of days later, we finished our journey from 3400 m at the border to 1200 m in Salta. As we finished our descent, we suddenly became aware of two things: how green it was, and how hot it was. Our last day riding into Salta, we were able to take a bypass highway between El Carmen and Salta that was a little hilly, but was uncrowded, shaded by vegetation most of the way, and quite beautiful. We then finally arrived at the casa de ciclistas there, where Ramon and his family were waiting for us, including our Spanish cycling friend Jose, whom we met at the other casa de ciclistas in Trujillo, Peru. After we chatted and rested a bit, Ramon showed us our Christmas present to ourselves—new Schwalbe tires! On the recommendations of Jose and countless other cyclists on the internets, we bought some tires to replace our aging Specialized Hemispheres (they were especially showing their age on the dirt roads of Bolivia). The German cyclists we met in Peru, Martin and Nadine, said that their Marathons last around 10,000 kms and they have hardly any flats, so we’re hoping for the same luck with ours! We’ve had some experience with Schwalbe road tires, and we know they make a good product, so I think this was a good move for us. They were costly though—between buying the original tires (which are expensive), shipping to Argentina, and paying customs on the packages (50% of declared value!), well, they’re probably the most valuable part of our bikes now

Ramon’s family was kind enough to include us in their Christmas celebration. I have to digress a little here about some changes we had to make in entering Argentina. Everything here happens MUCH MUCH later than we are used to in the US. We usually finish our bike rides here in the early afternoon, and when we roll into town, it’s like entering a ghost town. People take the siesta very seriously here, and it’s because they are up until 2AM (or later) every night! OK, back to Christmas. We went with the family down the street to celebrate Christmas eve mass at 10:30PM. Then we had our Christmas dinner at 11:30PM. We contributed a little bit of smoked salmon (sent by my folks) to add a little NW flavor to the dinner. Then we went out to Balcarce, the clubbing section of Salta. The bars were all open, and the streets were full of people! Ramon assured us that not many people were out, since it was Christmas after all. Then we came home at 4:30AM, and the next day Ramon told his mom that we had an early night! I’m not sure that we will ever truly adjust to the Argentine lifestyle, but we have made some more practical arrangements in the meanwhile…we’ve started buying empanadas (little pastries filled with meat and potato) the night before to eat for breakfast the next day, and we have been taking midday breaks on our rides to stop for lunches at restaurants, in order to hold us over until the restaurants reopen at 8-9PM.

After a relaxing few days in Salta, it was time for us to say goodbye to Ramon and his family. We also had to say goodbye to their collection of cats and dogs, including two litters of recently born and very cute kittens (we really wanted to steal one to take home as a playmate for Sera). As our way of saying thank you, we made dinner for them before we left. We couldn’t think of anything really typically American to make, so we made chili and cornbread. We spent quite some time at the supermarket buying stuff, and it was a bit touch-and-go for a while, because we had to substitute for some things that you can’t find in South America. In the end though, both turned out well, and Ramon’s mom was particularly impressed by the cornbread, so we gave her the recipe we got from the internets. The chili recipe is one I copied from a Martha Stewart Living magazine, and is really good; if anybody wants it I can email it to them

We are now starting to enter Argentine wine country. We rode two days to Cafayate through another canyon, the Quebrada de Las Conchas. This ride was very beautiful…or at least I think it was. The day we rode through the actual canyon, the heat was incredible, up to 46 C (115 F) according to my bike computer, and I think I may have had a small brain meltdown along the way. The Quebrada has lots of famous rock formations like the Devil’s Throat, the Amphitheatre, and the Toad. There were plenty of tourists in cars stopped along the way to mark them for us, but we only stopped at a few to take pictures, being much more interested in where the next shaded place was for us to get out of the heat for a few minutes. The thing to do in Cafayate is visit wineries, of which there are at least six in town. Unfortunately, this isn’t the best time of year to do tours. With this being the holiday season, most of them were closed to the public for New Years. The one we did manage to get into was completely dead since grape harvest season isn’t for several months yet. So we took a 15 min tour through the machinery, tried some less than spectacular wines, and called it a day. The wine highlight so far of Cafayate has been the wine flavored sorbets (they have a cabernet and torrontes, a local style of white wine).

Our path to Mendoza will keep us close to the Andes and hopefully at enough altitude to keep us somewhat cool. We are also hoping that we have better luck at the wineries in Chilecito and Mendoza than we had here in Cafayate.