Mendoza, Argentina

Oh, the beef. So much beef. Our introduction to Argentinian cuisine has been a good one, at least for me. In our first two nights in Mendoza, I almost certainly ate more steak than I had in the entire previous year. No joke. The first night we said we would do it right. There was an all-you-can-eat place down the street from our hostel, so we figured 'What better way to try all different types of Argentinian food at once?' There was one flaw with this reasoning, and a major one - we couldn't tell what half the food was and couldn't even ask if we wanted to. So, we cautiously dove into whatever food looked edible. Some of them didn't turn out to be, including some kind of meat dish I had that certainly wasn't beef and I'm afraid to think what it might have been, as well as what we think was squid tentacles (we purposefully tried these) that tasted like cheese of all things. They did, however, have plenty of beef. I only knew of two different cuts - lomo (tenderloin) and bife de chorizo (sirloin). So, I got lots of these and only these, both because I didn't know how to order anything else and was to afraid to accidentally order the dreaded morcilla, or blood sausage. I know people swear by that stuff, but I'll pass. Maybe I should have mentioned that most of the restaurants in Argentina, at least one's serving steak (which is most), have large wood-burning grills, or parillas, in the front window. On the parillas they have all different cuts of steak, chicken, sausage, you name it. It's amazing. Anyways, the lomo was fantastically tender and charred, and the chorizo was pretty good too. Steph pretty much filled herself up with pasta and dessert, we especially liked the caramel-filled crepes with ice cream. We could get used to this! The second night, however, was the real meat-fest. Despite our (read: my) overindulgence from the night before, we decided to take part in a cookout that our hostel was having, if for nothing more than to socialize with some other travelers. For about 10 bucks each we were promised "meat, beef, salad, wine, juice" and some other stuff. Turns out it's really just wine and beef. There was a bowl of lettuce with vinegar dressing and some sliced tomatoes, a pitcher of tang, a couple bottles of wine, and lots and lots of beef. I'm not sure what cut it was, but it was delicious and the guy kept bringing more and more of it. Even Steph, avid red-meat hater, ate about the equivalent of a 12 oz steak! It's not even like she had a sauce to drench it in - this was straight beef seasoned with nothing more than salt and pepper. We shared our meal with a couple from England. The wife ate even less steak than Steph, so me and this guy sat there and ate 3 or 4 huge plates of steak. No kidding I ate at least 2.5 pounds of steak. It was so good. Even Steph ate it! Come on, you know that's good steak!

Even more than Argentina is known for steak, Mendoza is known for it's wine. Outside of Europe and California, it's probably one of the premiere wine-producing regions in the world. I could care less, of course, since I don't like wine, but as the saying goes "when in Rome"...so we decided to take a wine tasting tour one day. We forgot our camera, unfortunately, but actually had a really fun day. The tour was only about $15 each and included transportation and a tour guide in Spanish (so basically just transportation). We visited a little family-owned vineyard, what I would call a corporate vineyard that bought grapes elsewhere and made mass amounts of wine, an olive oil factory, and a liquor/dulche de leche (caramel)/marmalade/chocolate/ anything-else-they-felt-like-making factory. I was a little mad since we told ourselves we weren't going to buy anything and instead bought at least one thing from each place, but all of it only cost another 15 bucks so I couldn't really complain.

Mendoza park - notice the canal behind the bench, used to flood the city with water for irrigation (it's in a desert)

Our last day in Mendoza we went for a walk - an epic day-long walk around and through town and out to a huge park called Park San Martin, just outside of town. This park was massive and we were enjoying our meandering-around as we made our way across to the zoo, that is until we got lost. It was the map's fault, to be sure. Even so, we got lost and we turned around and headed what we thought was the right way. Then we realized we were lost again and headed back the other way again. We only had to get lost one more time until we finally found the zoo. We had been nowhere close. I had apparently underestimated the size of this park.

entrance to Park San Martin

Steph's favorite "twiggy flowers" in the park

Anyways, we made it to the zoo and began what would be an interesting, sad, funny, fascinating, depressing visit. The zoo had an amazing variety of wildlife - monkeys, chimps, lions, tigers, pumas, bears, leopards, baboons, elephants, hippos, birds, etc etc. But, many of them were in cages that were just depressingly small. The zoo had tons of room - why do you have to put a lion in a cage the size of a hotel room? And the animals that did have open-air "habitats" were treated to nothing more than concrete and rocks and an empty moat. The sight of an animal pacing their enclosure in a trance-like state makes me sick.

poor elephant had the most barren enclosure of all - and not a friend to share it with

lion enclosure

Despite all that the zoo was pretty interesting. The small cages did allow us to get almost frighteningly close to some of these amazing creatures. We could have reached in and touched a lion if we wanted. I got to hold hands with a monkey again (I think they wanted to pull my finger in the cage to bite me). They had some animals from South America that we wouldn't normally see at a zoo like some ugly condors. We came to find out that their security wasn't so good. We're standing there looking at about a hundred baboons stuffed into this big enclosure when a lone baboon walks up the hill towards us. At first we assumed he had escaped and was on the lam. We were debating whether we should let them know or risk harboring a fugitive. Then we see that he's not alone. There's a bunch more baboons and a lot of monkeys running loose around this place. So I guess the zoo staff (none of which were ever seen in the park) was aware, maybe there was just nothing they could do. Every trash can in the place was emptied and looted.

monkey want camera

who knew condors were so ugly

never seen one of these before - it's but was like florescent

some weird cretures. the middle pig/elephant is a tapir and the hairy things on left and right are capybars - thelargest rodents in the world

a whole herd of white deer

We knew that right outside the zoo you could catch a bus to that would take us all the way back into town. Problem was, you could only pay with coins. We didn't have enough coins, so we tried to get change at the little corner convience store. No dice. We tried with the zoo ticket booth and then the parking lot attendant. Still no go. So we decided to walk and sure enough, we walk the wrong way. We walked about half a mile into what can only be described as the ghetto before realizing we were going the wrong way and turned around. Turns out the convience store lady had change she just wouldn't give it to me, so we bought two lollipops in separate transactions to get the change we needed for the bus. Then we accidentally did something wrong and never ended up paying for the bus. Sheesh.  We ended up back to the hostel to get ready for our bus to Buenos Aires! Which brings us to now. We are in Buenos Aires (and have been for two days but are still really behind in blogging). Tomorrow we head north to Iguazu Falls so we will try to post again before then, though our bus claims to have wifi. I'd be surprised.