The best beef in all of the Pampas

After a five hour bus ride, I reached the Atlantic coastline and the city of Mar del Plata. Everything went smoothly with the bus ride, except that I wasn´t exactly sure where I was going to stay that night and I was getting into town around 10pm. Good thing people stay up late here. When I got off the bus, I grabbed a bottle of water and made my way towards the nearest Locutorio. A Locutorio is a private payphone/internet cafe that it seems are everywhere in Argentina. In fact, I´m typing from one right now.

I´d read a description of a hotel in my Lonely Planet book and decided to give them a call. It was described as ¨central¨and ¨a backpacker´s favorite for years,¨ so it seemed like a good choice. An elderly woman answered the phone and proceeded to talk my head off, but I could make out enough to know that they had a few rooms open, so I hung up and began the ten-block trek to the place. Once I got to the address, I looked around but all I could see was a Pescaderia and some small, now closed, Laundromats. Where was the Hotel Niza anyway? Maybe it had moved locations since the book was published. Or worse, maybe it had gone out of business in the ten minutes it took to walk there. Then I heard a door open immediately to my left and an old, bald man with a large bandage on his head appeared. ¨Llamaste por telefono, chico?¨he said.

¨Si,¨I replied, because I had llamaste´d by telephone. I made my way inside the small lobby of the Hotel Niza where the old woman from on the phone was standing at the desk, smiling. She told me how the place was hard to find and that I wasn´t the first person to get lost. Luckily I had stopped in front of the door. Anyway, I paid the equivalent of $35 for two nights and was ushered to my room by the old man. I was eager to set my bags down and relax for a while before going out for dinner.

I didn´t know I´d be sleeping in a closet, although at this point I didn´t mind. I set my bags on the creaking hardwood floor and shook the old man´s hand. Then, when I asked why he had a bandage on his head, the old man just sort of laughed and shuffled off. As I was standing there confused, he spun around and pointed to a door a little down the hall. It was the bathroom, he said.

This bathroom was funkier than James Brown.

Everything was there: the toilet, the sink, the mirror, the shower. Unfortunately they were all combined into one 5x5 stall. I really needed to take a shower after my day of traveling, so I did. Looking back on the order of events, I probably should have used the toilet before the shower, and the sink before that, because now the whole place was flooded with water. How was I going to clean all this water up? That´s when I saw the long broom handle in the corner with an old rag duct-taped to it. This must be the squeegee. I spent the next five minutes bailing out the watercloset (quite literally) into a nearby drain, then returned to my dry bedroom to unpack my things and get ready for the night.

The Mar del Plata nightlife is akin to walking around the Gaslamp in San Diego or, actually more like the Venice boardwalk on a summer night. There are many great street performers, most of whom use only their wit and the audience members to craft memorable performances. The cafes are numerous and packed, and heladerias (ice cream shops) can be found on every corner. The ice cream is cheap and tasty, and I suspect that the industry behind it is one of Argentina´s strongest. [Let me make clear that I´m not attempting to poke fun at Argentina´s struggling economy, it´s just that everyone eats ice cream here.] I went into a Tenedor Libre for all-you-can-eat meats and fried foods, and ice cream, then continued walking around the pedestrian areas of downtown with a toothpick in my hand.

I stopped down by the beach where, even at 2am, people were hanging out on the sand, listening to the waves and street performers up on the boardwalk. It was getting late so I returned to hotel Niza to sleep.

When I awoke the next morning I checked my ears for spiders, then made my way outside to see the city in the sun. It was very hot, and the beach was packed solid. There was literally nowhere to lay a towel down near the water and, as I didn´t want to call attention to myself and my belongings by being the only non-bronzed body on the beach, I walked north about a mile to what the old woman at the hotel said would be a more secluded area. But it was equally packed so I got my camera out and decided just to take pictures of the madness. That´s when I saw an older woman sunbathing with about half a dozen dogs around her. When I approached her to ask for a photo, her dogs began barking incessantly at me, but I snapped a couple pictures anyway. So much for not calling attention to myself. I made the trek back to the hotel because I was beginning to feel a little sunburned and had forgotten my sunscreen.

I ended up sleeping until around 8pm, when I was supposed to retrieve my laundry that I´d taken in earlier that morning. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, then realized that my whole face was on fire. Why is it that I never use sunscreen? This wasn´t as serious as in Costa Rica, but it still hurt real bad.

I got my laundry and brought it back to the hotel. The old man answered the lobby door and asked me what happened to my face, apparently it was very red. I wanted to ask him again about his head, but instead I told him that I´d gotten too much sun. I took another funky shower and made my way to a restaurant called El Palacio de Bife, or Beef Palace. I looked at the menu over a middle-aged couple´s shoulder, and I could tell they weren´t happy with the prices. The man told me it wasn´t cheap. I said it was pretty expensive, and this is a rough translation of what ensued:

¨Pretty expensive? This is a robbery. Do you see the price of an empanada? $1.50 pesos...I know a place around the corner where you can get four for the same price.¨

Then, stupidly, I said ¨si.¨

¨Ahh, a foreigner, huh? Where you from? USA, huh? Well, listen. This place is a robbery. I know a Tenedor Libre where you can pay half the price for as much food as you want! How do they expect people to afford a place like this?¨

By this time, a small crowd had gathered around the menu, and us.

¨I´d never pay for food at these prices, even if it were the best beef in all of the Pampas! Of course,¨ he tapped me on the shoulder, ¨if you´ve got the dollar, then you´re alright.¨

The crowd erupted into laughter as the man and his wife sauntered off into the night. I didn´t really say anything to anyone in the semi-circle around me because I felt sort of awkward about the whole thing, so I just pretended to look at the prices on the menu for a little bit and then I scurried away.

I took the man´s advice and ate at the nearest Tenedor Libre where, sure enough, I could eat as much food as I wanted for half the price as The Beef Palace.

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