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Published: October 26th 2017
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How little did we know about the gastronomic treat we were going to get ourselves into after entering Argentina. Directly after crossing the small bridge, which was the actual border, everything felt different, the people spoke a different Spanish accent, the food was different, to be honest it felt a lot less Latino and very much more European. Although immediately we missed the Latin feeling we absolutely savoured the wines, the cheese, the ham and sausage, the empanadas and of course the beef.
We got ourselves to the town of Salta first where we dove straight into an amazing store where we had our first taste of Argentine bubbly wine and a picada which is a plate with tapas like cheese and charcuterie and then ordered a nice Malbec before moving to another place for dinner where we had an amazing kind of cheese fondue with again very tasty Malbec The next day lunch was our first taste of one of the famous Argentine cuts of beef straight from the open fire grill. Suddenly we felt this was something we have missed the past eight months. Don't get us wrong we still feel our travelling life is a luxury, not
having to work, not even having to cook or clean, and we have especially enjoyed all the local food in all the countries we have visited. But still ... eating the rich tasty cheese, chorizo, sumptuous steaks and drinking lovely locally produced world class wines made us feel rewarded. Did we deserve this? Oh yeah we did!
From Salta we went to a small town called Cafayete. Before we ended up in the north of Argentina we had never heard of this place nor the region but we found out that there is actually a Rough Guide itinerary called 'Wine and Dine', there is also a 'Ruta de Vino' and the small town of Cafayete is the center of a wine producing region with vineyards all around the place and a distinct grape variety called 'Torrontés' that's unique for this region. And they even have Torrontés and Malbec ice-cream! Enough reasons for us to visit Cafayete and spend a few days visiting wineries and vineyards, learning about the wine producing process and of course tasting the wines. On foot or by bicycle we visited the valley and hills surrounding it while looking for the beautiful bodegas. Our last night
a Torrontés festival was organised by the local wine museum (yeah this was the cultural part!) where around 15 small local wineries and cooperatives were presenting their wines to us. Thank you!!
Next stop was Cordoba, a pleasant big city with a lot of small century old coffee places, a huge park, nice plazas and a monument for Evita Peron. From Cordoba we day toured to Alta Gracia the hometown of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara and to the lakeside town of Carlos Paz where we spotted the cuckoo dressed in an Argentina football jersey ;-)
We were looking forward to visiting Buenos Aires for quite some time and were not disappointed. Buenos Aires is a big city with a very European feel, enormous parks, wide avenues, great innumerable restaurants, the best empanadas of the world, a friendly mix of people from all over, and did I mention the great innumerable restaurants?! We based ourselves in San Telmo which is a traditional neighbourhood with colonial streets, old buildings, quite bohemian with an art and artisan street market and a square that transforms from a flee market to tango dancing. We already found the empanadas in Argentina the best of Latin
America but now we found this small empanada restaurant that must be the best of the country. We had again great cuts of beef straight from the grill and we opted for a delicious cheap lunch at one of the street stall food carts at the back of the office area surrounding Buenos Aires' docks. So 'Yes we did enjoy BA!'
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