Chaska in South America

So, the asado was excellent last Saturday! They ended up being very nice and didn’t order anything too strange. The Argentines eat just about every single part of the cow and there are special cuts and names for every part…honestly, they sell posters with diagrams of a cow with all the different cuts labeled as souveniers. Matt went to have asado with an Argentine friend last week and tasted all kinds of interesting and different cow parts, but my experience wasn’t so bad. I understand why they eat so much beef here…it really is incredible how much better it tastes than any other beef I’ve eaten. I’m not much of a meat eater back in the States, but I really like it here. You don’t even need to put any sauces or anything on it because it tastes so good on it’s own. Anyway, the asado was great and the company was excellent too. As I mentioned in my last post, my friend Carina took me for the asado, along with three of her friends. I was the only non-Argentine in the group for the evening so I spoke a lot of Spanish, which was great for me since I really speak way too much English on a daily basis. Carina’s friends are super funny and cracked me up all night. I really had one of the nicest times since I’ve been in Buenos Aires!
Sunday was a really great day too. I went to a nearby town called Tigre with Carina and another one of her friends. Tigre is a town located on a delta of a river and there are tons of little islands located in the delta with houses, campgrounds, and other resort style places all throughout the delta channels. It takes less than an hour to get to Tigre, so it’s a common daytrip to take from Buenos Aires. It was my first time leaving the city in the past two months that I’ve been here, and I’ll have to say it was great to have a break from the bussiness and noise. It’s amazing how completely different things are even just 10 minutes by train away from the city. We took the train to a town called San Isidro, which is a really wealthy suburb of BA, and we were planning to get on a train called El Tren de la Costa (Train of the Coast), which goes along the coast of the river to Tigre, but the train workers were on strike and the train wasn’t running. Strikes are super common here and all different aspects of daily life are affected by them all the time! We ended up taking a bus to Tigre instead. It was actually really cool to take the bus since I was able to see all the towns in between… it was the first time that I’ve seen houses since I’ve been here since all the homes in the center of Buenos Aires are apartments. Everything seemed so quiet in comparison to the craziness of the city that I’ve become so used to in the past couple months! Tigre is super touristy, especially on the weekends, so it was pretty crowded there, but it was really nice and I really enjoyed it. I included some photos from the trip at the end of this post. One other thing that really made an impact on me from my trip that day was that I was really able to see the gap between rich and poor that is so evident here in Agrgentina if you pay attention. Along the train and bus rides that day, just five minutes or less away from each other, I saw enormous mansions and the typical “villas” (shantytowns). I had heard lots from my students about the villas, which is where thousands of poor Argentines live, but this was the first time I had actually seen them…huge areas of homes made from slabs of wood, cardboard, or any other material that you can think of. It was pretty incredible to see that and then just a few minutes later see some of the biggest, most extravegant houses I’ve ever seen.
This past week was pretty eventful for me, because aside from the asado and Tigre trip last weekend, I also went to a Manu Chau concert this week. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Manu Chau, it’s a Spanish/French band that sings in a lot of different languages. The guys who took me to the asado had an extra ticket and invited me to go with them. My friend Carina went too. I saw Manu Chau in Madrid, so this was my second time seeing him and his band. It was a great concert and I had a lot of fun! This weekend Matt and I are going to Rosario, a city that is located in the Province of Santa Fe and is about three hours from Buenos Aires. My friend Carina is originally from there and has invited us to go home with her for the weekend. We’re both really looking forward to it since we haven’t seen any other part of Argentina yet. I’ll let you know how it was in my next post. I hope you’re all doing well and thanks to all of you who actually read everything I write! I know I write a lot and it takes time to read. I swear I try to make it brief each week, but somehow I always end up writing more than I planned.

Here’s the group that took me for the asado last Saturday night. Carina is the one to my left. The two guys are two of her students and are named Gustavo and Jose Luis. They are the ones who we went to the concert with too. The across from Carina is her friend Mercedes.

Carina and I on a street corner in the town of Tigre. There are tons of shops that sell super cheap wood furniture on this street…I kept wishing I had a house to furnish because it was all so nice and cheap!

Here are Carina, Estefania, and I in front of the “Puerto de Frutos”, which is a little port on the river in Tigre where they have lots more little shops with cheap home furnishings.

Another picture of the Puerto de Frutos.

Here are some cute little boats that were docked at the little port.
Here is a view of the river in Tigre.

We took a boat down the river to see all the homes and stuff that are on the little islands. Here are Carina and Estefania in the boat.

These were all photos taken from the boat. It was really interesting to see all the houses located on the islands and to see the people who lived in them riding their boats around to get from one place to another. This last photo is a floating gas station for the people to fill up their boats!

Tags: Travel

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