Lets talk about food

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I have to admit, they really are not lying or exaggerating by any means when they (whoever they may be) claim that Argentinian beef is the best in the world. A few days ago on our walk home my travel buddy Gerborg and I ordered two beef el chorizos from the corner cafe-restaurant on our block and took them home. I am really glad we decided to take them home for the following reason: those two 20 ounce mouth watering charcoal grilled steaks were so delicious that I was behaving at the table like a neanderthal who hadn´t tasted cooked meat before ( I will leave the mmm mmmm hmmmmm chorus of sounds to your imagination). Gerborg was no exception, trust me, and we decided it would take some getting used to before we could control our exclamations and eat such beef in public without causing the entire restaurant to go silent in shock. I dont know how they do it, but its not about a secret sauce. In fact, there is no sauce, only sea salt on top and the charcoal does the rest. I had made a salad of sliced apples, crushed candied almonds, and roquefort cheese on bed of greens with a light vinigrette.- but we totally ignored it until after the steak was gone. Did I mention that a beef el chorizo only costs 20 pesos = about seven Canadian bucks? I love buying fruit from the corner market where you ask the grocer for whatever fresh produce you want, and watching how carefully he and his sons treat the food. At this point the whole process till involves a lot of pointing and akward compromises between French and Spanish names (oubergine worked, pommes not so successful) but all in all my Spanish is slowly coming around. Key word here, still slowly.
Tomorrow Gerborg and I will take a bus sixteen hours north to the small town of Fernandez where we will meet up with her German friend. He runs a non profit foundation there, a lot like a vocational training school. The plan is to travel with him and some other workers up into various villages in the Andes mountains to instiall a series of solar cookers and other needed technologies. I am not sure how useful I will be, but there is no doubt about how excited I am to tag along on such a rustic adventure. I know it´s quite cheesy but I can´t get the images from Che Guevara´s journery in Motorcylcle Diaries out of my head, and I hope to have a similar awakening of some kind while on this trip around the same places he traveled.
In the first week of February Gerborg and I will say adios to our lovely white apartment, and take a bus to the waterfalls of Iguazu on the border between Brazil and Argentina. From there, we will be transformed in Sao Paulo into Samba Dancers, and join a float of a samba school at the carnaval in Paratay. Paratay is a UNESCO world heritage site on the Brazilian coast with an amazing Carnaval culture, and we have five nights booked there with some friends Gerborg and I met in France while studying there together. I can´t wait for that reunion or to wear the carnival dresses we bought this week in anticipation of three sleepless nights of dancing and dancing....
Hopefully the internet connection gets better from here so I can upload more photos. Thankfully Gippy is really generous with her camera, and unless I didn´t mention it she earned the nickname Gippy from having evidence of a GPS satellite chip embedded in her head. There is no other explanation for someone having such an acute sense of direction at all times!

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Photos

Lawschool
Watch out Harvard, check out the state law school´s entrance in downtown Buenos Aires

el flor
the world´s biggest flower I guess, and it opens and closes with the time of day...gorgeous with the water reflection on the petals

sunshine
Gerborg on a random bridge by a random park (there are so many, can´t keep track sorry)

for Felix
this one is for Fifi, I hope you see it!

ice cream at midnight
I loved the way this abandoned ice cream cup looked tucked into a graffiti wall while walking home at night...