And P.T. Barnum sends his regards

Another Argentina trekking photo. This one is not terribly flattering, nor does it show the severe beauty of the cordillera beyond the treeline. I like it, though, because it shows off my ridiculous manicure and because, not long after it was taken, I successfully convinced the rest of the group that toast is illegal in parts of the United States.

O hai, I updating ur argentina posts

Yay! I am chock with thrill. As regular readers may or may not recall, someone on this blog (*cough*) was dumb enough to get her camera trashed not long after she arrived in the Argentine region of P------. And against all laws of karma, one of the women who was on the trip (and who is still in that region, for which she is to be envied, because oh my God the DC summer humidity, it's HERE) has gotten in touch and sent along a generous serving of photos from the trekking we did in the mountains near the Chilean border. F'rinstance, below, there's this one of me, Britling whose name I don't remember, and Sophie, who swore after this trip that she was never ever going camping ever again. (Best quote: "FUCK the bloody view, I just want to get off this goddamned mountain.") We're all wearing as many of our own clothes as possible, as well as ponchos provided for the trek, and we're well fortified with hot wine--mulled was the idea, boiled the reality--lots of asado and chocolate, mate, and a blazing fire. We are also still freezing our nadgers off.



Lots more photos are available on Gel's gallery, here (for the trek in the Andes) and here (life at the estancia). I don't want to post all of them at once, but I particularly like this one of half our guide team looking cheerful and vampiric. Standing travelogue line: "It was when our otherwise impeccably mannered guide turned out to be a member of the ghastly undead that I realized that this trip would not be the beer-and-skittles expedition we had all discussed in the comfort of the club."

Riding for dummies

A guy I was dating once observed that I have more of an eye for horses than for men, and he's not entirely wrong. I am and always have been the kind of person who will jerk upright and look around fast if someone says, "Oh, horses!" (although fortunately my sister never really took advantage of that when we were on long family drives as kids, and thanks for that). My main goal in visiting Argentina was to get out on horseback for long hours, and in that I was amply indulged.

The thing is, though, that riding can hurt. Despite never having had a serious riding accident (thank God, knock wood, and long may it remain so), I've had tweaky knees, twisted ankles, agonizingly stiffness through my back and abs, and after one memorable hour-long lesson, literal saddle sores. That's in addition to dealing with the climate ills that any outdoor sport exposes you to, up to and including the joy of getting soaked by sleet. Riders, like other athletes, will cheerfully retail their injuries to one another and anyone who asks, leading more than one person to ask why the hell we even bother. Possibly this was also a way to ask us to shut up, already, if we're unable to keep ourselves from getting all banged up.

The bottom line, for me, is that riding a good horse is like dancing with a good partner: If you're in synch with the horse, your movements are coordinated in a way that makes you feel larger than yourself and much more powerful. You and your partner are constantly telling one another what you're thinking and how you want to deal with whatever's going on around you. Sometimes, especially in classes, it's work, and you're just doing the same steps over and over to work out how to make a transition more smoothly or why you're not getting the message across clearly, and sometimes, as with any exercise, it isn't what anyone would call fun. But there are moments when you feel a perfect communication, and the only word for that feeling is joy.

Not every horse can do that for every person. At Huechahue, I would say that two or three of the six horses I rode got close, and only one of them made me consider grand theft caballo. The first horse I rode was a bit slow; clearly, he was one of the quieter horses a sensible manager keeps on hand for assessing the new guests' skills. The second had a lot more spark, so much so that a full day of convincing him that he would not, in fact, be allowed prove to everyone that he could beat all the other horses in a race ("Don't let him go," cautioned Jane mildly, "For you'll never get him back") was exhausting. The third horse seemed like a good compromise between those two, but he came up sore after a few hours and was put on rest. And then, oh, and then, I was paired with a tiny criollo mare, and I think I left a tiny piece of my heart with her. She's the first horse I've ever galloped who didn't make me worry about a runaway; she loved to go, don't get me wrong, but she was always willing to listen--provided that nobody got too far ahead of her. A girl has her pride, after all. I absolutely adored her, and the long canters and gallops we did remain some of my favorite memories of the trip. On the trek into the mountains, I rode a sensible gentleman of a gelding who got me up and down some terrifying hills with a minimum of fuss, and a slightly less gelded gelding ("Le cortaron, pero le cortaron mal," was our guide's slightly confusing explanation) who was equally footsure but a bit of a jerk toward the other geldings.

None of the lessons in the ring will equal the happiness that I got from stretching out on the paths in Patagonia, but I'm happy to be back with my usual training partner. I like to think that he enjoys our work, when he gets a break from patiently carrying small children and can show off his cantering and flying lead changes, snorting as he goes, but what I know for sure is that I'm happy to be on his back in the rain, the cold, and even DC's infamously muggy summer heat. It's probably a rider thing. I hope you understand.

Adventures in Mataderos

There are definitely downsides to traveling alone: Meals are less fun, there's rarely anyone with whom you can share jokes, and if you get lost on the way somewhere, it's (a) probably your own fault and (b) up to you to get unlost. But one of the great advantages is flexibility: You get to pick your own itinerary. And so it came to pass that on my first evening in Buenos Aires, I realized that I didn't have anyone to meet for dinner and was completely free to wend my way to one of the western suburbs, Mataderos.

Mataderos, previously known as Nueva Chicago, was originally the major slaughterhouse district of the city. It had something of a seedy reputation, as you might expect from an area called "Butchersville" (my rough translation), and it remains one of the less fashionable parts of town, nearly an hour from trendy areas like Palermo. But it's now home to a museum of the gaucho and, on the weekends, a fair dedicated to rural life. In the non-summer months, there are horsemanship competitions and all sorts of gaucho displays, but even in the summer there's a scaled-down fair that the books said might be worth a trip. I hied me to a taxi, having decided that negotiating the bus system would be too much of a pain, and headed west.

The feria more than lived up to my expectations. I strolled past a tiny park where a movie was being projected on a concrete wall, negotiated my way past the outlying stalls of pressed flowers and macramed leather, and found myself stuck in an unmoving crowd. I had forgotten that it was Carnaval, and a murga, the local equivalent of a krewe or mummer's team, was boogieing frantically down the street. The dancers were all wearing elaborate polyester outfits, despite the heat and humidity: fuzzy hats dripping fringe and sequins, white gloves, white pants, and red tail coats covered with more fringe, glitter, and shine. Their progress was slow, but they made up for it by dancing like capoieristas who've just learned to frug. The crowd whooped and cheered and made way by inches, and after about 20 minutes, they worked their way free and were able to decommission their drummer, shed some layers, and relax. The crowd dispersed toward the main stage, where a troupe of dancers ranging age from 8 to at least 60 began to form up for their set, the guys stomping manfully and the women flaring their huge skirts as they spun.

The rest of the feria was more relaxed, but a good time was certainly being had. Rather than tango, which is ubiquitous downtown, there were folk dances from various parts of the country, and after a few minutes the crowd had spread out to allow pockets of audience members to dance as well; I don't know what the dances were, but they involved a great fluttering of kerchiefs and seemed to be familiar to everyone. After wandering around the stalls to peer at knives and leatherwork and getting a mate gourd and bombilla for my father, I followed my nose to one of the barbecue businesses. The owners had spread a bed of coals in the gutter and propped a grill frame over it; I got a sausage sandwich and a Pepsi for about two bucks, found a free seat at a communal table, and sat down to rest my feet and dig in. Just as I was finishing up and thinking of strolling over to the candy stalls (fresh fruit dipped in sugar syrup, rolled in popcorn, and skewered like kebabs), two gauchos on horseback, rawhide brush shields sticking out on either side of their saddles like huge stiff wings, made their way through the crowd just in front of my seat to display their horses' dancing skills. They were followed by several gauchitos, little kids in full costume and jingling as they walked.

Of all the things I did in Buenos Aires, visiting Mataderos was the highlight: there was a great sense of family fun, of a neighborhood, that was missing in the few other generally touristy places I got to see. I wish I had been there at a time when the horsemanship skillz were on full display--clearly, there's reason to go back.

So much for that plan!

Despite the fact that San Martin and Junin de los Andes both have God's own plenty of locutorios, small businesses that offer both phone and slamming Internet connections, I didn't do any blog work while I was in Argentina. I'll update some of that in the weeks to come (or I will intend to) but for now, I'll settle for a list of things I would and would not do differently next time around.
Things I would do again

• Go back to Huechahue. The horses were amazing, the food was great, the accommodations were comfortable, and the hostess and staff went out of their way to make everyone happy. Full marks.
  
• Ride every day, even when I was feeling lazy. All the slacker fumes were blown away whenever we stretched into a gallop across the sun-blasted fields.
• Do the scary bits, including the belly crawl into a basalt cave and the vertiginous horseback descents. They remain terrifying in my memory, so I didn't exactly prove anything by doing them except that doing frightening things won't kill me. Possibly a philosophy not to be taken to extremes.
• Have hot chocolate and churros. My pancreas begged for mercy and I would not heed, because the sugar was so good.
• Eat steak with fried eggs. First of all, Maciej was right about the meat, and second of all, the eggs are fried in the salted lard from the steaks. Greasy delight. Add a pomelo soda and you've got the kind of meal that will make me happy to be alive with a fork to hand.
• Get a manicure on the eve of setting out. The silliness of neatly painted hussy-red nails on a vacation that involved scrabbling on rocks, yanking on rawhide cinches, and scratching canine tummies was offset by the happiness of having someone pamper me for an hour.
  

Things I would not do again

• Take Aerolineas Argentinas. The airline appears to operate on the razor edge of chaos, stories about hair-raising delays were common, and booking tickets involves a ridiculous byzantine dance that seems designed to funnel work to travel agents. In a country with buses that (a) have beds in them and (b) run every day like clockwork, it's madness to fly if you're not in a tearing hurry.
• Camp in the mountains using borrowed gear. It's possible to camp comfortably, but it's a lot easier with your own stuff, and a Thinsulate mat is much more comfortable than lumpy horse blankets.
  
• Stick my digicam in my pocket without its case. Alas, poor Exilim, the dust finished it off.
• Go to a tango show. They're full of tourists, and unless you actually know anything about tango, one show is much like another. (To be fair, the price of my ticket covered a fantastic insalata capprese and the largest glass of wine I've ever seen poured, possibly because the waiter felt bad that I was there on my own.)
• Buy so much chocolate. I tread on the edge of heresy as far as received wisdom goes, but the Argentine chocolate just didn't do it for me. The ice cream is a different story, and if someone can ship me a gallon or two of Freddo's malbec con frutas rojas sorbet, I will be greatly in their debt.
• Bother bringing contacts. I went through the full song and dance to get a new set, and then it was far too dusty to ever make them worth the hassle.
  

Starting off

When it's a clear cold winter day and nothing seems to be standing between DC and the North Pole except, er, Canada and all the relatively flat states to the north, what is a sensible woman to do to stay warm? Or me, for that matter? There's dressing in layers (check), drinking hot coffee (double check), and running around packing up summer-weight clothing for a two-week trip somewhere warm (awesome, and check).
I started planning this trip several months ago, when the director of my journal announced that our work would change dramatically in March. I figured that taking a long, physically demanding vacation in February would set me up to come back rested and rebooted. Little did I know that her vision of said radically different work process would involve laying off me and two of my coworkers, a decision that came so far out of left field that most of us initially thought that we were being called in to be scolded for using personal e-mail accounts on the work computers. So things at the journal will certainly be changing in March, but after the end of the month, they won't be paying me to worry about it any more. Now the vacation seems like an excellent opportunity to work off some of the anger I feel about the layoffs, as well as a chance to get some sun and warmth into my bones. It's in the 80s in Buenos Aires and somewhat cooler in San Martin, but it's well below freezing here in DC, and the idea of ditching the winter blues for what Idle Words so brilliantly termed "a steakation" now seems little short of genius.
I hope to update with photos and stories once I'm there, but there will probably be a long break while I'm at the estancia. Rural Argentina is not the interwebular hotspot you might expect.
For anyone playing along at home, I'll be staying at Garufa B&B in Buenos Aires, then going to Estancia Huechahue in Patagonia, and finally staying for a few nights at Le Village in San Martin.