Category Archive

Despite the high profile robbery of Francis Ford Coppola’s petit-hotel in Palermo Viejo (Soho) two weeks ago, the area is nevertheless booming…

This weekend the weather was absolutely gorgeous and the streets of this small area of Palermo were packed with tourists, hipsters, regular ol’ Portenos, your editor, and his beautiful wife. The area has it’s detractors, but we’re not drinking the haterade…

No, Palermo Viejo is probably the most appealing neighborhood in Buenos Aires. Plaza Serrano, the hub of this little sub-barrio, can get old quickly, as it tends to get too busy, too touristy. But you can easily avoid it and enjoy the boutiques, the wares of the street-vendors, the bars, restaurants, and charm of the surrounding streets.

With the lower building heights, usually no more than three stories, the place just gets more light… it also allows for car pollution to escape more easily…

We’ve sometimes hesitated to give Palermo Viejo much acknowledgement in this blog because it feels like kind of a cop-out… The neighborhood has too many foreigners… It’s too gentrified… That may be true, but, those factors can also make the place more appealing. To each his own we say.

But if I were to place a bet on a neighborhood, we’d put our money there… but it can be tricky as there’s little for sale, plenty for rent, but little for sale… But we’ve seen some deals around.

Especially if there’s a dip in the economy here after the election, we’d watch this area like a hawk for any good deals…

We apologize for going missing in action the past two weeks… Our excuse(s)? Meetings and travel in Europe, a move within Buenos Aires, and turmoil in business have kept us busy buried little bees…

We’re recovering our composure and will get back to our regular blogging duties as best as we can starting today dear reader.

In recent news, we moved to a new apartment that has TV. We’ve been told that the mayhem level in Argentina is going up in advance of the approaching presidential elections… that various factions have an interest in arousing the displeasure of the populous. So, the professional protesters, the ‘piquetaros’, labor groups, and other political mafia organizations are mobilizing to instill a feeling of unrest.

We didn’t see it before, but, on the evening news these days there is a fair amount of chaos around Argentina. The news is obviously sensationalized. But there’s a good amount of real footage of real trouble. And the robbery of Francis Ford Coppela’s house was the icing on the cake this week.

Anyway, our daily life here in BA moves on uneventful, in terms of outside disruptions. The weather has transformed into perfect spring. Life is good. Perhaps we should return to the bliss of no TV…

In so many ways Buenos Aires is calm and safe. In so many ways it can be just the opposite…

News just came in that Coppola’s home and office was broken into last night, his employees tied up and his laptop, containing work for his new movie, stolen along with other electronics… Ouch!

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Movies/09/27/people.coppola.ap/index.html

From the Clarin in Spanish: http://www.clarin.com/diario/2007/09/27/um/m-01507593.htm

Visit this blog for more about Coppola in Buenos Aires:

http://trendypalermoviejo.blogspot.com/search/label/Francis%20Ford%20Coppola%27s%20hotel

We hosted our first Argentine-style ‘asado’, for 20 or so people, on the roof of our apartment-building here in Buenos Aires on Friday.

Argentines take their asados seriously. Our spanish teacher was going to be there and our Argentine colleagues. We were a bit nervous about embarassing ourselves, and at first, most of our fears were realized…

I don’t know what it is, but, there’s something about being in a foreign country that sometimes causes you to lose all your senses… this happened to us on Friday when starting the fire for the asado… We’ve started hundreds, maybe thousands of fires in our day, back on the farm in Virginia and elsewhere. We know exactly what to do. But in the frenzy and pressure of hosting this asado our instincts and good sense just went out the window…

There we were having hastily thrown some charcoal and sticks into the parrilla grill, blowing and fanning a pathetic smoky pile as our guests started arriving… It must have seemed to the Argentines who were there that this was going to be some kind of slip-shod yahoo yanqui bbq. We could see the concern and pity on their faces… 

Luckily for us, an American friend who’s married to an Argentine helped us with the shopping, tipping us off to the items that we were going to need to do this thing right… And so when the fire finally got going (with some input from just about every male guest) all the other elements started to come together as well… The drinks and music were flowing from bottles and speakers. And with the perfect warm spring night air of Buenos Aires things turned downright pleasant.

Maybe it’s genetic, but a weird dicotemy started to manifest itself during our little shin-dig… The Argentines all seemed to drift over to the parrilla where the meat was cooking and the Americans and Anglos all seemed to huddle around where the beer and wine was… Imagine that…

Anyway, cliches aside, we thought a pretty good time was had by all… And that’s the story of Gringos’ First Asado. 

If you’ve been thinking about visiting Argentina… If you want to experience the vibrant culture, the friendly people, the opportunities, the beautiful and diverse landscapes… then you won’t want to miss this tour organized by my friends at Agora Travel this November 3rd-16th.

This tour is unique and exclusive (only 16 people) as it is done with a private chartered plane, so, you can travel quickly, comfortably, and hassle-free around Argentina, covering more destinations than you could with traditional airlines (especially Aerolinas Argentinas!).

The tour is also interesting in that it is oriented towards investment opportunities around the country: apartments in Buenos Aires, developments, vineyard and forestry projects, and rural estancias …

Over the years Agora Travel has established some excellent contacts in Argentina. This tour gives you access to those trustworthy and knowledgeable professionals, which is extremely important for you to be able to invest with confidence…

The investment aspects aside, the tour covers some of the most enchanting locations in Argentina: Buenos Aires… Bariloche… Mendoza… Salta (pictured above)… Misiones… the Iguazu Falls…

Basically this is a trip of a lifetime, a chance to explore the best that a beautiful country has to offer…

Click here to get all the details: http://www.agoratravel.com/investsouthamerica/wb/

FYI: We’ll be speaking to the people on this tour in Buenos Aires. We don’t know what we’ll say but, we’ll do our best to offer some interesting “off-the-blog” insights to Buenos Aires and Argentina, what we don’t want everyone to know about…

Caetano Veloso doesn’t look like a rockstar. He resembles more a middle-aged tourist… And he doesn’t dance like you’d think a Brazilian rockstar would… instead his onstage moves were more like those of a drunk accountant at a wedding. But he and his band absolutely rocked the Gran Rex in Buenos Aires.

Most of the songs were technically impressive with tricky time-signatures and a lot of change-ups. It resembled American jamband/rock music,  but with a large blend of styles and some brazilian flare…

Argentines are generally very reserved at music concerts, but Veloso brought them to their feet on quite a few ocassions…

We and our friends were all very impressed with the concert. If you get a chance to see this guy somewhere we’d recommend it.

We’ve been working and traveling heavily of late… which has cut down significantly on our posting… But we’re going to fight this trend and do our best to start posting regularly again.

We enjoyed our trip to North Carolina, it was familiar, easy, and relaxing… plus great to see friends…

But we’re happy to be back in Buenos Aires… where we have to stay on our toes in terms of the language, of course, but also in terms of opportunity… We met a guy at the wedding in North Carolina who had just returned from Argentina. He was extremely bullish and excited about our new home country… Evidently his business mentor told him, “if I were a young man, I’d move down here immediately”. He was trying to figure out how to persuade his wife to move the family (three kids) down… We, of course, identify with his enthusiasm. But we didn’t do him any favors when we accidently dropped the bomb on his wife by saying, “So, you’re planning to move to Buenos Aires?” “No.” was the abrupt reply… That little faux pas probably set him back a couple weeks in his plans, but, he still seemed confident that he could persuade her…

There are opportunities out-the-whazoo here. A couple of Americans recently opened The California Burrito Company on Lavalle in el Centro. When we went there the place was packed, business looked brisk, and the burritos were tasty… We’ve met a number of foreigners and Argentines involved in real estate, and the opportunities in this arena are virtually endless. There are places in Argentina where land is selling for less than $5 an acre…

We must admit to you dear reader, that we’ve been a bit tight-lipped about some things because we don’t want everyone to know about these opportunities… For that we apologize, but we’ll reveal all, or nearly all, in due course… Also, we don’t want to mislead you. As one Argentine friend said, “Argentina has opportunities, but it’s opportunity from crisis. Don’t forget that.”

We’re working with our Argentine financial writers, as that’s our biz, to prepare a report about what to expect in the markets around here in the short, mid, and long term. There’s anxiety here on the eve of the presidential elections, and certainly some pessimism. There’s inflation no doubt. Will it expand? Contract? What’s going to happen…? We don’t know any better than anyone else. But we won’t let that stop us from making some predictions…

Hasta la proxima.

It’s been a surprisingly cold winter here in Buenos Aires, not just for us, but for Portenos as well. It’s been one of the coldest on record… of course, it’s not that bad, but does take us delicate Floridians by surprise…

Anyway, we’ve been letting you down this past week dear reader, it’s becoming a bad habit with us…

It was a busy week, half of which we spent up in the northwestern corner of Argentina, in Salta province, on business. It was refreshing to get out of the city and Salta is way out… Where we needed to go, it’s a five hour drive, mostly on dirt roads, from Salta city. The land is like the southwestern US, high-desert. The big open sky was perfectly clear for our drive and the landscape was beautiful. But as we got close to our destination, the sky began to get sort of fuzzy up ahead…

There still wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but the wind was picking-up and we realized that the fuzzyness was airborne dust. By now the sky was dark with dust clouds and we watched as seemingly sentient walls of dust moved back and forth across the mesa. As we continued on our way one of these walls of dust slammed into the side of our truck and briefly blacked-out visibility from all windows… But the dust walls seemed to content themselves by staying to the other side of the valley. When we arrived at our dusty destination the roar of the wind was impressive and constant. It sounded like there was an ocean a couple of feet away repeatedly crashing against invisible rocks. The loud and powerful wind continued all night long and it seemed sometimes that the doors and windows might give way… We’ve ridden out powerful hurricanes before, and this was something similar. The next morning it was sunny and beautiful, with a light breeze…

Before this trip we had looked forward to showing off the new Castellano speaking and understanding skills that we thought we now had… But nay, it was not to be.

We were terrible. Maybe it was all the dust in our ears, or the altitude. Whatever it was, we spoke horribly, making even very simple mistakes… We could barely understand anything. Maybe it was that Saltanian accent, or the farm subject matter, that was throwing us off… No, no excuses can explain away the fact that we’ve made much less progress in the Spanish-language department than we thought we had. Luckily for us a bilingual friend was there to help out. But our plan of being linguistically independent and incisive, shedding the tourist foreigner label, becoming nearly Argentine with a slight accent, a Porteno out visiting Salta… was soundly dashed…

Until next time… and next time we might even write about something remotely useful…

At The Walrus English bookstore in San Telmo, our better-half picked up a copy of the historical chronical of the Buenos Aires Herald. This over-sized periodical contains headlines and story excerpts about Argentine history in English since September 1876… this is very useful for us to have a general idea of what’s been going on around these parts since then…

One hundred years ago the Herald was very British. Some of the excerpts from that time say things like, “The Prince of Wales visited dear Argentina and the entire country rejoiced in the splendor of his presence. Throughout his stay the people could forget all their worries, at least for a short while, and they loved him for that.” We exaggerate, but, only slightly…

Anyway, we’ll spare you any pompous commentary on the history of Argentina, other than to say that it’s been a wild ride…

The Herald has been a nearly continuous daily source of English-language editorial about events in Argentina for all that time. We salute them for that. However, some of the articles we read in the paper these days are a little shakey… perhaps written by non-native speakers. Well, with our 4th grade-level Spanish competency we dare not criticize…

Hasta la proxima.

Oh dear reader, we’ve really failed you this week… We’ve had to neglect our blogging duties in favor of more seemingly pressing day-to-day affairs…

But to bring you up-to-date… The weather got cold, we caught a cold. The next day the weather warmed and we recovered… We’ve been semi-diligently attending our spanish classes. One off-site conversational session was held at the tea-room of the newly renovated Hyatt Palacio Duhau, talk about fancy pants…

The Hyatt bought the place from a wealthy family just about two years ago. Renovations commenced immediately and the result is impressive… While the dollar plummets against all major world currencies, you really can still get bang-for-your-buck here (that probably won’t last long).  A tea, which includes four different polished silver vessels, costs $12 pesos, or $4 dollars, a beer is $5 dollars, all the while you’re waited on hand-and-foot in high-style. 

A harpist played in the background, old ladies with old money socialized, and yours truly butchered the conversational Castellano… There couldn’t have been a more elegant setting for a Maryland/Virginia countryboy to be linguistically enriched, that’s for sure.

More to come soon, we promise…

One of our contacts here is a New Zealander involved in real estate. He reports to us that there is a phenomenon of Kiwi farmers selling off their farms in New Zealand and relocating to take-up farming in South America where the costs of land, labor, and expenses are lower.

One favored location is Uruguay. There are evidently quite a few farms for sale in Uruguay for reasonable prices. So, these Kiwi farmers relocate with their families, selling off the pricey New Zealand land and buying a functioning farm down here.

New Zealand agriculture is highly sophisticated, primarily because the government lifted all subsidies for farming and agricultural products, so Kiwi farmers were forced to compete on the world market. What happened was that they did exactly what people have to do when competing in a free-market… they worked hard, they innovated, they were efficient… or they went out of business. The result was, predictably, that New Zealand is now a world leader in agriculture, having pioneered some highly successful methods of farming…

Could there be a lesson here for other countries? In the United States big-farm subsidies have lowered prices for junk food and for food additives like high-fruitose corn syrup, which have made these items ubiquitous in the American food supply… And we would wager that this is a major contributing factor for the expanding waist-lines of the American public. A big conspiracy no doubt, no pun intended… But, this is all fodder for another post, let me get back to those innovative Kiwis and their new farms in Uruguay…

So, when the New Zealanders relocate to South America they find themselves in the midst of a new and different culture of course. One issue that our acquaintance had noted was that if a Kiwi woman worked on the farm as Kiwi women are prone to do, they find themselves sometimes ostracized by Uruguayan women who wouldn’t be caught dead socializing with someone who does manual labor, let alone do manual labor themselves…

So, this culture clash can sometimes be an issue for these immigrants from down under. One could cry foul at the lack of ‘progressiveness’ amongst these Uruguayans, but that would be a waste of time… Instead these Kiwis have opted not to stray too far from the major cities, Montevideo, Colonia, Punta del Este etc so that they can go into these cities to satisfy their social inclinations… and as long as they get a good manicure before going to any parties… no one will be the wiser that they may have sweated during the week.

Anyway, we hear that the fancy farming techniques of the New Zealanders are paying off. They are grabbing market share for certain agricultural products. This spells trouble for inefficient and mismanaged farms in the area… and could create some resentment. We, on the other hand, praise these innovations and efficiencies born of the free-market and hope that this wacky idea spreads in South America and the rest of the world.

We’ve written before about the perplexities of San Telmo… and during our time in BA we’ve visited there quite a few times, and we’ve talked to quite a few who’ve lived there… (we’re by no means experts, and as always, we won’t let that stop us from pontificating) but we still have no resolution on our feelings about the place.

Readers have asked about the barrio, and because of our own secret fascination, we feel compelled to continue ruminating about it…

What we can say is that it feels on the verge of gentrification, but it’s certainly not there yet for better or worse. It’s rumored to have the largest expat community in Buenos Aires, but we have no confirmation of that theory. We believe Palmero Viejo may out-edge San Telmo in density if not number of foreigners, but we have no evidence for that estimate either.

Real estate prices, though lower than the more established barrios of Palermo, Recoleta, Puerto Madera etc, do take into account the interest of expat investors. So it ain’t dirt cheap for BA, as it once was, but certainly cheap by world standards…

Now most Argentines we’ve talked to about San Telmo practically despise the place… they wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole… “It’s dangerous.” “It’s a good couple degrees colder than the other barrios.” “It’s dirty and full of poor people.” etc. Now, we’re doubtful of the temperature claim, but, in general it is pretty dirty, the people are poorer than the more upper-crust sides of town, and it does seem more dangerous, (yet we rarely hear of much happening there)…

We’ve gone there a couple times when we’ve looked around and just wanted to get the hell out. It looks really dingy. There are a bunch of sketchy looking dirt-bags hanging around… The ugly buildings that are unfortunately ubiquitous amongst the nicer ones seem to stick out to us. The shops only seem to have a bunch of useless junk. “Ugh. Take me back to Recoleta!”

But, other times we go there (the Sunday market is nice, when not too crowded) and we are really impressed. The architecture of the nice buildings just seems to stick-out to us. All the funky little shops seem so authentic, yet hip. There’s art and bohemian flavor in the air.  “This is the real Buenos Aires!” we think.

The Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde phenomenon in San Telmo is pervasive for us. We never know what we’re going to get when we go…

So dear readers we leave it to you. It depends on your taste. We’re not making a move to San Telmo any time soon. But we may well be jealous if you do…

As part of our onging sincere, yet lazy, efforts to gradually immerse ourselves in Argentine culture… We’ve decided to only read the giants of Argentine literature, who we’re embarrased to say we haven’t read before, like Jorge Luis Borges, Ernesto Sabato, Julio Cortázar, and Aldofo Bioy Casares. [And some Márquez too, though he's not Argentine.]

So far we’ve cracked into the ‘Labyrinths’, a collection of short stories by Borges. We’ve realized that you don’t go casually flipping through a Borges story… If it’s a light, quick read you’re looking for these stories are not it…

Some of his work like ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ takes commitment and perseverance to stay on top of what’s going on… We read the classics in college and majored in philosophy (and math). From what we’ve read so far it’s an understatement to say that Borges is extremely well read, a formidable thinker, and wordsmith… a deservably world-renowned writer… We can’t wait to dig into more of his stories…

[NOTE: We're reading these in English... We bought some English-language books this weekend from a nice little shop in San Telmo, called the Walrus. It's on Estadous-Unidos at Peru.]

It’s snowing today and really coming down… No sooner did we finish our last post about how mild the climate is than the temperature dips to historic levels and a snowstorm kicks up the likes of which hasn’t been seen in 89 years… I’m looking out the window at snow accumulating on palm trees…

The weather practically eclipsed a national holiday today, when Argentines celebrate their independence from Spain… The streets and shops were dead, which usually happens during holidays here. We had to go over to the tourist area of Recoleta for lunch. We were actually well rewarded for the decision.

At the ‘Balcony’ Steak House across from the Four Seasons we had a killer sirloin… one of the best steaks we’ve had in a while… It was 30 pesos or $10… Definitely grassfed beef, unlike the feedlot beef that Yanqui Mike recently noticed has been slowly edging into the Argentine marketplace. That would be a travesty if the famed Argentine beef would be degraded to lesser quality following the plight of the US market… But we’ll worry about that in a future post.

Signing-off from snowy BA…

It’s no secret that they eat late here in Argentina, but for whatever reason the reality of this fact takes time to sink in…

We hold out for as long as we possibly can, till around 8:30 when the restaurants will actually let you in, and then we’re usually the first or second people there… When we finish dinner at around 9:30-10 we know that things are only just starting to pick up.

It takes some getting used to.

One secret to holding out till so late to eat is maté. We’re always impressed by the feeling of well-being after drinking maté. Also, this yerba tea helps stymie your hunger…

When we were in Salta, a gaucho who worked on the farm we visited would pretty much only drink maté throughout the day and then eat a big dinner… He was slim and trim… He inspired us to invent ‘The Gaucho Diet’, a new and exciting diet craze consisting of drinking maté, horse-back riding, spending many lonely days out under the big open sky, and wearing cool traditional outfits…

Or maybe it’s just the maté. Whatever it is the Argentines eat good food, lots of meats and carbs, things that taste good. They eat late. They do everything that Americans are not supposed to do… yet, it’s very rare to see a fat Argentine…

Last night we went with some Porteno friends to the Opera Pampa show at La Rural. As usual we had no idea what it was we were going to see, and our assumption that it was an ‘opera’ in the traditional sense was completely faulty…

Instead it was a live action theater production telling the story of Argentine history through song, dance, battle reenactments, and impressive horseback-riding…

La Rural, situated next to the US Embassy in Palermo, is a nicely restored complex that was once a sort of livestock convention arena… It has some stands that surround a rectangular riding rink and stage. From the stands we watched the dancers and horseman act out various stages in the taming of the pampas and the establishment of Argentina.

We had a pretty good general idea of how Argentina was founded and this show confirmed our view of how similar it was to the founding of the US… colonization of a bountiful new world, the purging of the natives, the fight for independence from the colonizing nation, the battle between the federalists and anti-federalists, the settling and taming of the wild west, and the hardwork and prosperity that followed… Of course, the colonizing nation was a different one which made the legal and government structure different, but the similarities are many…

Now back to the show, as we said the horseback-riding was quite good. The horses that they rode were Criollos a very well dispositioned Argentine breed, a decendent of the horses that the Conquistadors brought. In the show they did demonstrations of Argentine equestrian events. They also did tricks, like having the horses all lie-down in unison, and galluping into formations…

All in all it was an enjoyable show that we would recommend to visitors.

We’re going to try and round-up some pictures from someone… unfortunately our new digital camera slipped off an ottoman the other day and is no longer functioning. It was a disappointing loss, before we’d gotten even a fraction of our money’s worth out of the thing… uggghh.

There’s little hope of it being fixed and I don’t know if we can bring ourselves to buy another one in such short order. But for you dear reader we trouble and toil, perhaps we’ll get a cheap little gizmo, so at least you’ll have some pictures to look at to distract from our boring writings…

Our better half was concerned that our last post might give the impression that we are a raging alcoholic… Since many of our friends, relatives, and business associates may at some point or another read this blog we felt we better set the record straight. But the real story is in some ways more embarrassing than the label of a chronic imbiber…

Last night was our second time going out to a night club the entire time we’ve been here. And it proved to be even more of a disaster than the first time. We realized that we had indeed not been out dancing in ages, so to ward off the moniker of the old married couple that we are we decided to stay up late and go out on the town.

We opted for Opera Bay in Puerto Madera where there are a couple different levels with different music and dance floors where we thought we’d have a greater chance at finding some music that we like. We got there at 12:30 and it was as dead as a door-nail. But this is Buenos Aires, and we figured things don’t get going till the wee hours and we followed another couple in, paying the $10 cover…

But we very quickly realized why the place was dead and that it wasn’t going to get any better… We went up to the bar to order drinks and we were told that because of the election they could not serve alcohol. Thus the ban ruined our little attempted night out… and thus we were irked…

As a reader recently pointed out the mayoral election is very important to us foreigners as it is the mayor who makes the majority of the decisions that affect us… like the laws regarding real estate investment… We are extremely ignorant of Argentine politics. So, please excuse the ignorant ranting of our last post. We’re going to do a little research into the mayoral race and figure out who’s who and what it means…

Hasta la proxima.

Today we found ourselves visiting a broker on behalf of a client. This particular broker has penthouse offices in one of the taller buildings in Buenos Aires. When the elevator arrived at the top floor we stepped out onto a glass encased landing with large glass doors with gold handles. No one was around. We looked across the entry way to a fancy conference room with floor-to-ceiling windows and an incredible view of the Puerto Madera harbor and the Rio Plata.

We stood there gawking at the view for a moment then came to our senses… We knew there must be a little call-box around there somewhere. It was hidden off to one corner. “Hola. Senor Bonner para Senor So-and-So”, we said into the box. “Si, Senor” said the box. Then a neatly dressed secretary came and opened the door for us.

The broker came out and we were surprised that he was about our age, about our same stature, with unruly hair like ours, but much better dressed… We had a quick and productive meeting on behalf of our client. He asked us how we were taking to Buenos Aires and we told him how much we liked it… They take pride in their city, so that usually wins some points. Anyway, our business was already done and it was time for us to leave.

They had to practically push us out of the office as we wanted to stay around and take in that view for a while longer… But back down to the busy streets we went. Hustling and bustling, noisy, wonderful streets…

We’re self-conscious about our rate of immersion into Argentine society. We’re not learning Spanish fast enough. We’re not making enough Argentine friends… Blah, blah blah…

Our better half told us to just relax and it will happen of its own accord over time… Sage advice of course…

Your editor likes to put pressure on himself to get things done… And yes we do need to ramp-up our efforts in the Spanish language department. But other than that there’s really not much we can do to enter Argentine society other than what we’ve been doing… which is living, working, and trying to pay attention…

Things are coming along just fine.

We continue to make more business contacts because business is what we do. And we’ve enjoyed meeting and working with Argentine businessmen and women. They’re mostly English speakers, but that doesn’t make them less Argentine…

But we are particularly embarrassed when we meet with an Argentine business person who is about the same age as us (as if that really makes a difference) and we converse in English instead of Castellano… of course, no business would get done if we were speaking Spanish, which is why they choose English. But here we are in Latin America asking them to speak our language, how embarrassing… I don’t know if Castellano is the official language of Argentina or not, but it doesn’t really matter, as an immigrant you know you’re at a disadvantage not speaking the national tongue even if you can get by okay for a while… They say necessity is the mother-of-invention, and not-really-necessity, well, that’s our situation…

Sharing mate with people is an Argentine cultural experience. You drink it out of a wood gourd, sometimes elaborately decorated, with a metal straw. We’ve had mate with gauchos in Salta in northwestern Argentina, farmers in Buenos Aires province, and portenos (Argentines who live in BA).

At first we didn’t know what all the fuss was about… Mate is very bitter. The first couple sips from the gourd are like drinking boiling grass water. But once you learn to deal with the bitterness, mate is really quite rewarding. There are the social rewards of bonding with other people while sharing mate, but also a noted feeling of well-being after drinking it. It makes you alert yet relaxed…

My wife and I have taken to having mate, like tea time, around 4-6pm… It’s an acquired taste, for sure. But, little rituals like having mate are special in that they make you slow-down, talk, and reflect… something most of us should probably do more of…

The subject of American coffee came up again at a dinner we went to last night with an American expat and his 6-month pregnant Argentine wife… She revealed to us that the Argentine nickname for American coffee is ‘umbrella juice’, perhaps a tad more flattering than the French ’sock juice’…

But umbrella juice is coming to a street corner in Buenos Aires soon, fellow blogger Alan Patrick reports… Starbucks will be opening up here in the coming months…

 They said it would never work in Paris. But, of course, it did. We’re quite sure it will flourish in BA as well… especially if it’s true that there are 70,000 Americans now living in Buenos Aires according to our new expat friend. That’s a lot of umbrella juice drinkers! But it’s not the foreigners that will make it work, it’s the irresistable fashion of carrying around those cups and the convenience of getting that fix on the go…

More to come from way south of the border…

We covered a lot of ground this weekend, visiting touristy and not-so-touristy sights.

This is what a “strip-mall” looks like in San Telmo… 

The other side of Puerto Madera, where locals come on Sunday to relax with their families.

Street performers draw crowds along the banks of where the Puerto Madera land reserve begins…

The tall and modern buildings are springing up like weeds…

The stairway of the Decorative Arts museum.

A walk through Plaza de Mayo past the Casa Rosada…

A corner of the famous Cafe Tortoni.

“Everyday in Buenos Aires is a relentless battle for cambio.” That was what an acquaintance told us when we were newly arrived in the city… It struck us as silly then.

 But, oh how true it is… The conspicuous $100 peso note ($30USD) inspires fear and loathing in the hearts of cab-drivers and cashiers across the city… The reason for this is partially because of all the counterfeit currency in circulation. But it boarders on the ridiculous as you’re driven to desperate lengths in search of small bills…

 Yet again, upon arriving at our destination with nothing but one of these dreaded hundreds we had to run around in the night, like a chicken with our head cut-off, in search of the coveted cambio.

Yes, we were prepared earlier in the night. We had cambio. But cambio has a way of disappearing like you wouldn’t believe…

We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Last night’s taxi ride brought us from our first tango show, the ultimate Buenos Aires tourist event… With a visitor in town we figured we might as well take the plunge. So we signed ourselves up for a dinner and show at Esquina Homero Manzi in Boedo. Manzi apparently was a famous tango lyrics writer in the 40’s. He wrote his first show when he was 14 years-old…

The ambiance seemed authentic. The music and the dancing were very nice. We weren’t bowled-over by it. But it was memorable. The food, however, not so much…

It’s inspired us to check out some more tango shows in San Telmo. We bought the musicians’ CD at the show. And we’ll probably listening to more tango music… All and all a good experience, just next time, we’re bringing more cambio…

We’ve found a nifty software to create social networks a la facebook… So, we’ve created The Buenos Aires Social Club.

The membership ranks are a bit thin at the moment, ie. my wife and I are the only members… and she’s a member by default… Anyway, I’ve put the word out, so, hopefully that will change in the near future.

We feel like english-speaking BA’ers will appreciate this, as many of the current online social options are archaic and not very fun…

Take look and let me know what you think: http://basocial.ning.com/

Last night we attended our first ‘expat’ event here in BA… held by the ‘Young Expatriates Society of Buenos Aires’… YesBA.

We’ve met assorted (and sometimes sordid) expats in assorted places over the years. They’re an interesting breed. But not always in the way that you’d expect…. Sometimes they’re surprisingly regular people who hold the same views about most things as the majority of people do in your hometown USA, or UK. They seemed to have been beamed into their new environment and remain wholly untouched or effected by it.

Other times though, they’re totally off the wall and original.

We met one such character last night. Actually we had arranged to meet him there… the infamous, Yanqui Mike an American blogger who married an Argentine and has lived here for 4 years.

Because of his marital ties Mike is immersed, and committed to Argentina, on a much higher-level than most expats. We got some interesting insights about the country from him as we hoped we would…

Before he arrived we were trying to guess which of the guys there could be this Yanqui Mike character. Was it the guy in the bright red shirt long hair and suspicious goatee? Or what about that one drifting aimlessly around the bar looking at the ceiling? No. It must be the guy who just came in with the purple beret… “Hey Mike!?” “Oh, sorry!” Nope, not him either…

He, of course, found us immediately from our picture. And he looked everything and nothing like we expected…

Many Americans move overseas to reinvent themselves. And they do obtain an instant exoticness when doing so and a whole world of new stimuli to make things interesting… But all of this quickly fades. Things become regular and normal, ho hum. It still depends on who they are inside as to whether they’ll be happy in a new place or not.

Well, that’s enough obnoxious philosophising for the day… Till tomorrow…

We set-off on Sunday to take the fast-ferry, that runs hourly, from Buenos Aires to Colonia, Uruguay. But we were late getting over there and the seats were sold-out on the next two boats… So, we strolled along the banks of Puerto Madera, then we just kept strolling all the way to the antique market in San Telmo… a place that continues to seduce us…

San Telmo is like an older, yet attractive, forbidden seductress… We at first baulked at her overtures. “It’s too dangerous there”, we thought. But over time we’ve found that the architecture, those beautiful buildings, the authenticity of (most of) it… it’s the ‘real Buenos Aires’ as one reader recently put it… is indeed desirable. And it’s still very cheap.

We’ll get you some pictures and a more thorough report on the place soon…

Well it happened… Just like that Bush twin who famously got her purse stolen at an outdoor restaurant in Buenos Aires, my sister got her’s stolen today… And your editor was present and accounted for when it happened, just like the bungling Secret Service…

Being the trusting country-girl that she is, my sister put her purse under her chair when we ate, a tempting mark for some thieving dirt-bags…

 A suspicious man came up while we were eating and drawing our attention to the flyer in his hand asked for directions to a restaurant. My wife and I immediately knew something was up… Locals don’t ask foreigners for directions. We waved him off saying we didn’t know, keeping an eye on him. Our stuff was secure, or so we thought, and we didn’t think much of it…

When we were getting up to leave my sister realized her purse was gone. Of course, we knew immediately who did it, at least we knew one of his scuzzy little pals had slipped a hand under my sister’s chair when we were distracted… it only took a second, as the cliche goes…

But at least we took pleasure knowing that they didn’t get much for their trouble. My sister is a recent college grad and flat-broke. She had about 40 pesos in her purse and really nothing else… credit cards were immediately cancelled. The only real problem is her driver’s license which will be a minor hassle to replace…

I wish so badly I’d caught them in the act. I was wearing some hard-soled boots at the time. And I think I picked up a few moves from watching that street fighting video about 20 times…

We went to a dinner party last night in the San Telmo neighborhood, hosted by an American couple who have lived here for 3 years, a friend of a friend (we hadn’t met before)…

When we were given the directions we were told that the taxi driver might advise us against going there, that it’s dangerous, but to ignore him…

Sure enough, the neighborhood did feel sketchy. (We’ve been there during the day, but this was our first time at night.) The lights are dim. The buildings are dark.

When we arrived at the address of the party we thought we must be in the wrong place… no lights seemed to be on… We looked up and down the desolate streets, looking for signs of life…

 But then a head popped out of the next door over and said in a slight New York accent, “The doorbell’s there, but this is the entrance. Come on in.”

The house was in a grand colonial style with a  lot of outdoor living space. The outside was lit with candles and some dim lighting. There were plants and waterfountains. It was nice.

We met the other guests. All accept one Argentine wife were Americans…

For the most part everyone was very well travelled and interesting, which was good, because earlier in the day at an outdoor bistro near the Recoleta cemetary we found ourselves within earshot of some very loud American tourists sharing intimate details of their lives to some other American tourists they had just met… ughh…

At the dinner party we never really got a good look at the house. The lights were always too dim and we didn’t want to be too nosey…We understood that it was under construction. And all the background that we got on it was that they had bought it from an African friend who was divorcing his third Argentine wife (he had two at the time evidently) and that they promised him they wouldn’t tear it down… There was apparently little in the way of electricity, little plumbing, and no heat when they bought it. But the part that we went into for drinks had evolved far from there and was quite comfortable…

Our burning question that never got answered was, “Why San Telmo?!”

Every Argentine we talk to says to steer clear of the place… It’s dangerous…

But we really do know why… the buildings are beautiful. San Telmo used to be rich. But in the late 1800s the place was over-run by yellow fever. The rich people fled to the north and their houses were taken over by the poor people and it’s been that way ever since.

You can get a lot for your money. I don’t know how much these people paid, but I’m guessing not a lot, and the place was huge… and they had another empty lot that they were turning into their garden. It was going to be nice.

San Telmo as we understand it has a lot of artists and musicians, a rapidly growing bohemian culture. It’s also home to Buenos Aires’ famous tango houses. So, culturally San Telmo may well be rich and vibrant. We’ll have to spend some more time in the area to find out… 

What gets me though is that you go out your door at night and you feel like you’re on the set of Blade-Runner… that’s a little hard to swallow… Especially in a city that’s cheap even in the nicest areas, you can be somewhere nice and safe. But who knows, maybe we’re missing the boat in San Telmo…

We’ll continue to report to you, dear reader, about the happenings here in BA, where it’s almost always an adventure…

Last night we had a delicious white wine with our dinner that has become our favorite white… It was a torrentes, made from a unique Argentine high altitude grape.

We discovered the torrentes wines on our first trip to Salta last year. We visited, what’s considered, one of the highest altitude wineries in the world (~8,000 ft)… Colome, in the foothills of the Andes (pictured above).

Torrentes wine is crisp without being tart. We highly recommend it, if you can get your hands on a bottle…

Here are more pictures from Colome, which in itself is a very special place…

Buenos Aires is a big bustling city. There’s a lot of noise and people out and about almost around-the-clock.

When we first got here, we were, admittedly, uptight about the place…

But when you get used to it, when the daily scenes become more familiar, it’s surprisingly easy to relax here…

Today, the sun came out. It was cool and crisp yet warm in the sun, as autumn sets in for us here in the southern hemisphere. The weather put everyone in a good mood. It was a pleasure just to be out in the streets.

We talked to a friend today about the appeal of Palermo Viejo… that it’s a relaxed place… The buildings are low. The narrow cobblestone streets slow the cars down (sort of). The people are young and carefree. It’s like a small town in a big city… When we had lunch there the other day we heard English from nearly half of the surrounding lunch tables… some of it a lispy sort of English…

The area has a lot of gay English and American men… which we take as a bullish sign for real estate in the neighborhood. As in New York, San Francisco, London, and probably in many other cities we’re not aware of, gay men have pioneered once downtrodden areas into hip and desirable neighborhoods…  

Anyway, we think that Palermo Viejo, and especially Soho, is still a viable and sustainable real estate hot spot. We’re going back to the area tomorrow to scout out some more properties…

But, Palermo Viejo has some definite negatives that we should also point out…

First, a lot of it is ugly and rundown. It’s still an “emerging neighborhood”. You can be on a very attractive street, walk over a couple blocks and… uugghh, it looks like hell…

Second, it was a poor neighborhood so many of the houses’ interiors have been hacked up to accommodate poorer families, as I wrote about in my post ‘Sausage Houses — The Problem With Soho’ 

The last drawback is that it is arguably less safe than other areas like Recoleta and Puerto Madera. There are less people in the streets, which implies slightly less security. But we’d wager that the real security difference is negligible, as the place is home to loads of foreigners, but it’s something to consider.

We’ll spare you further ramblings about Palermo, dear reader, but we’ll undoubtedly come up with something else to bore you with tomorrow… till then…

Tributo a Emerson, Lake, and Palmer By The Gauchos

Iron Maiden, The Trooper, By The Gauchos

http://gauchosalta.blogspot.com/

We’re headed out the door to an Argentine asado, a BBQ, in the suburbs… We enjoy living in the city, but already miss the quiet, majestic, wide-open spaces of rural Salta…

Today we met with a quirky Argentine writer who’s half French. She thinks it’s funny that we, me and my colleague, find Argentina a desirable place to live while according to her most Argentines want to get the hell out! The main-drawbacks in her mind are the government and the economy. We certainly understand her point.

But to us there’s just something interesting about Argentina… something adventurous… a ‘yo no sais quoi’ about the place. And we’ll do our best to ignore and side-step the government as much as possible, just as we’d do in the US !

 Many Argentines that we’ve met have lived abroad at one time or another, but the weather and quality of life brings them back…

 There’s an authenticity and a relaxed earnestness about life here that makes it appealing. We’re not going anywhere with this, but thought you’d like to know…

Hasta manana…

Fellow expat blogger, Alan Patrick, has created a very nice self-guided tour itinerary for the city center at http://www.buenostours.com/buenos-aires-tour-1-city-center-suggested-walking-route

 Alan is a former walking-tour guide, so, he knows what he’s talking about.

 We have some family and friends coming into town tomorrow, so, if we have the time (they’ll only be in town briefly) we’ll take this tour with them…

After this weekend, dear readers, you’ll get a needed respite from our prattle… We’re headed up to Salta province in the northwest of Argentina where we’ll have very limited internet access, so during that time we will not be updating this blog… but rest assured we’ll let you know all about it upon our return…

Happy Easter!

Yesterday’s property appointment was rescheduled, so instead of seeing any nice architecture or hot real estate, you’ll have to endure a bit of annoying rambling, on our part, about the ‘help’ situation here in Argentina…

We’ve noticed how most upper/upper-middle-class Argentine households have a maid that usually lives with the family. And most houses are designed with a service section of the house… service staircase, maid’s room, and laundry.

In many cases the maid’s room is a converted garage, the designated maid’s room, or something similar… a perfectly fine, if spartan, living area.

Other times, the maid’s room is a depressing little hollow in a basement, storage area, or a converted closet… where when you see it you want to get the hell out of there as soon as possible, it makes you uncomfortable…

I think in most cases this comes about because the household is operating in a very utilitarian manner… Why spend any money on the maid’s area? 

Where am I going with this? Good question… I guess I’m just relaying a bit of culture shock…

Obviously, there’s a class system in Argentina. Perhaps less so than many other countries. But, certainly more so than the US and what we’re used to .

If you look indiginous here I think life is going to be harder for you than if you’re of more European descent… Unfair but true. The planet still has a long way to go before there’s any real racial equality, if we humans are even capable of it…

We were going to avoid this subject because it is a charged topic for Argentines and because of our scant knowledge of the accompanying history… However, at Discovering Buenos Aires our ignorance is one of our endearing traits, almost our raison d’etre here in BA, so, we’ll cast aside our better-judgment and give you our take on this 25th anniversary of the conflict…

We recently read an article over at the International Herald Tribune, which if we weren’t living in Argentina, we probably wouldn’t have noticed anything, but since we are here in Argentina it seemed to us that the article was slanted unfairly towards the Brits…

The Anglos have the attitude that Argentina should give up it’s silly claim on the islands. But, geographically (and historically as you’ll see), one would think that Argentina would have rights to the islands 300 miles from the Argentine mainland.

However, British imperial claims die hard even if they be thousands of miles away from Britain… British institutions are indeed strong and foster economic growth, ie. Hong Kong,  but does that give them ownership of dirt they “found” a million-miles away in some else’s backyard?

As we understand it this war was completely avoidable, as most tend to be, and because of the pigheadedness and arrogance of the countries leaders (mostly trying to score political points) just under a thousand had to die…

Also we hasten to mention that the Malvinas are desolate, fairly useless, little islands that no one would really need to fight about anyway…

Fellow blogger Yanqui Mike has some background details (which are accurate according to other sources, not that we don’t trust Yanqui Mike…)

“With independence, they [Argentina] got the Malvinas from Spain as a package deal.

“The UK then signed a treaty recognizing Argentina’s independence.

“The newly minted Argentina sent a governor, built a prison, and started to farm and trade. A few years later, the settlers gave birth to some babies…the first people ever born on the islands.

“Now comes the yanquis [USA]. The Argentine governor of the islands had placed some pretty strict rules on the hunting of seals. Not long after, he caught a US merchant ship illegally hunting seals and seized it.

“The US consul in Buenos Aires protested that his government didn’t even recognize Argentina’s ownership of the Malvinas.

“The US sent a warship to get the ship back but the yanqui captain overstepped his orders and destroyed the entire Argentine settlement.

“The UK then took advantage of the confusion and seized what was left of the islands without firing a shot. They later deported all the Argentines. That was 1833.

Of course this was a sore-spot for Argentina for many years… And more from Wikipedia about the period leading up to the war…

“…Argentina was in the midst of a devastating economic crisis and large-scale civil unrest against the repressive military junta that was governing the country. The Argentine military government, headed by General Leopoldo Galtieri, decided to play off long-standing feelings of nationalism by invading the islands, although they never thought that the United Kingdom would respond. The ongoing tension between the two countries over the islands increased on 19 March when 50 Argentines landed on the British dependency of South Georgia and raised their flag, an act that is seen as the first offensive action in the war. On 2 April, Galtieri ordered the invasion of the Falkland Islands, triggering the Falklands War.

“Britain was initially taken by surprise by the Argentine attack on the South Atlantic islands, but launched a naval task force to engage the Argentine Navy and Air Force, and retake the islands by amphibious assault. After combat resulting in 258 British and 649 Argentine deaths, the British eventually prevailed and the islands remained under British control. However, as of 2007, Argentina shows no sign of relinquishing its claim to the Falkland Islands (the claim is included in the National Constitution).”

The victory was a political boost for the Thatcher government and a wave of nationalism swept the UK… The loss was politically devastating to the military dictatorship of Argentina, which was forced out and a democratic election took place shortly thereafter.

Because of the attack by the military junta Argentina’s claim to the islands has been discredited to this day. But the historical rights of Argentina over the Malvinas are undeniable. Of course, the people of the islands, the Falklanders, who have been there for generations and consider themselves British also have their rights.

Argentina is still healing from the wounds inflicted by the military dictatorship. The loss of the Falklands War was a painful part of those troubled times. But Argentina should not suffer forever because of the sins of unelected leaders during a period of turmoil.

There must be a diplomatic solution to this, similar to what Britain negotiated with the Chinese in regard to Hong Kong… The British can only ignore Argentina for so long.

Welcome friends and new readers from American Writers & Artists Institute!

Today is a rare rainy day here in Buenos Aires, a good day to reflect on what we’ve been doing and to bring you AWAI’ers up to speed…

We’ve been here two months and we’ve gotten pretty comfortable with things. Our business down here is starting to come together. Speaking of writers, we just hired one the other day, an unusual woman… unusual in that she’s been a longtime reader of our company’s publications… which gives her more understanding than most about who we are and what we do… and it also probably means that she’s one of those semi-nutty, introverted, odd-ball people who are always difficult to work with, but we’re used to that…

Her job will be to write a daily email newsletter in spanish about world markets and issues that interest the Latin American investor.

The big problem with this whole endeavor is that your editor, to his embarrassment, does not speak, read, or write competently in spanish… And during our two months here, to our greater embarrassement, we’ve made very little progress in our Castellano (Argentine spanish) skills. (We had to get rid of our spanish teacher when she couldn’t jive her schedule with ours…)

We’ve been preoccupied with the nitty-gritty of getting things started here… But the validity of that excuse may be fading.

Some of our family will be visiting soon and I’m sure they’ll expect us to be somewhat immersed in BA society… but they’ll find that we’re generally clueless as to what’s going on… Of course, the same was probably true in the US too…

Anyway, we’ll have to change our schedule and our priorities to make real progress in the adopted-tongue. But that’s something we’re determined, sooner or later, to do.

In the meantime we look forward to writing to you in the mother-tongue about the whole process… and keeping you updated on the goings on way south of the border…

 I’m posting this picture that we took at the park the other day of a man teaching his daughter to ride a bike, running along side her…

There’s nothing really notable about this scene, which is the point… Judging by some of the emails and comments we occasionally receive though this blog, I feel it necessary to explain that life is very ‘normal’ here.

Argentina is not a ‘third-world country’ by any means. The vast majority of people you see in the street are regular, well-dressed individuals, like anyone you’d see anywhere. The scenes that you see throughout the day are normal everyday activity like you’d see anywhere. Most people who read this blog I’m sure understand this…

And once you figure out how to navigate a few irregularities, and things you’re not used to, you can live as free and as happily here as you can anywhere.

You can indeed live here without speaking spanish, you can do it through the contacts listed in the Argentina Owner’s Manual and at International Living… That’s pretty much what we’ve done. There are services that can take care of any hassles, like setting up a phone line, internet, and utilities. Then there’s an entire English-speaking network of Argentine professionals, lawyers, consultants, real estate agents etc. The upper-class mostly speak English, it’s sort of a status thing…

While I think it’s ridiculous not to learn Spanish… It’s not like it’s Japanese… It takes time to learn, but you can get by just fine in the meantime. Plus, there’s a large and growing expat community here… While I don’t recommend it you could pretty much live in an English-speaking world in the middle of Latin America if you wanted to…

We’ve recently been scouting out some property in the hot, hip area of Palermo Soho… We like the bohemian flavor of the Soho neighborhood, the shops, the restaurants, the attractive classical buildings… but those buildings are deceiving…

The problem has something to do with meat (as many things do in Argentina)… casas de chorizo…

Palermo Soho used to be a poor neighborhood, filled with large low-income families. So, as the families grew they would further divide up the house to make room for the new family members. They just keep adding walls, like sausage links and viola… sausage houses…

You wouldn’t know it when you look at these houses from the outside, but they can be troublesome inside (I didn’t see inside all these particular ones, so I don’t know)…

It’s certainly not true of all. But many we’ve found have very poor interior layouts… Of course, you can renovate and it can be done cheaply here… but that takes time and money.

Anyway, in the competitive Soho real estate market you’ve got to pay attention and be quick on the draw to find that special property…

By the way, another expat blogger at http://movingtoargentina.typepad.com/ pointed out a segment on NPR’s ‘Marketplace’ radio program today about Soho called Soho on the Cheap.

‘Twas the day after St. Patrick’s Day, and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even my spouse
Clothes from last night flung around the room without care
And a splitting headache, the legacy of St. Patrick, was there
—

Okay, that’s enough of that…

In the Retiro neighborhood where we live there are a number of Irish pubs on Reconquista street. They had closed off the streets and a conspicuous number of English-speakers began to gather…

We met up with a friend and found a less busy, but not empty pub (called John John) in which to partake in the revelry… The music shifted back and forth between traditional Irish, 80’s pop, and thumping techno. After a while we decided to look for something more authentic which we found… I forget the name of this other pub, but they had a great Argentine band playing live Irish folk music. They were very good… and the Kilkenny and Guiness flowed…

Before too long the streets were getting packed with teeny boppers, drunken Anglos, and assorted party-goers. We decided to make a graceful rather than less graceful exit. We were back home by around 1am… but our tolerance is low these days and we suffered the next morning.

But the weather was so nice we were lured outside by the early afternoon… We had a wonderful walk around the city and went to see a house that was on my interesting property ’watch list’…

We had lunch at a surprisingly good French restaurant called Croque Madame (a gourmet lunch for two with coffee and dessert was $25), which is actually part of a museum, but we didn’t bother to see what the museum was…

We strolled through some of the Palermo parks and on a nice day like today we strolled slowly…

 Then when we reached Recoleta, at the Sunday open-air market, they were having a music festival with a couple bands playing. Hippy Argentines were lounging in the grass, throwing frisbees, doing hippy things…

It was very pleasant. And I’m almost always impressed with Argentine musicians. They have some great talents here…

It got off to a rough start, but it ended up being one of those special Sundays…

A Day in Buenos Aires

Nicely done video tour of various sights in Buenos Aires…

My wife pointed out that many of our recent posts are about mansions, social c