Argentine
father and son, in
native costume, in the
Andes Mendoza wine region |
Argentina: A
World-Class
Great Bargain Destination
By Sally Ogle Davis and Ivor Davis
 N
a first visit to Argentina two stark and contrasting facts are
immediately apparent: The pitiful state of the local economy and the
absolute bonanza of travel bargains on offer for North American
tourists.
Friends told us about
making hotel reservations in Buenos Aires for $200 a night which
when they arrived were now $80—same hotel, same room, different
exchange rate.
Once, the peso was pegged—one
to one–to the US dollar. But with the peso devalued in December
2001 to a third of its value, a middle class population that put
their savings in the bank in US dollars and got them back in pesos,
and a government that doesn’t even bother to hide their corruption
anymore, Argentina has fallen upon very hard times.
But there’s no need to
feel guilty if you take advantage of this sorry state of affairs to
take your next vacation in the Big Apple (Buenos Aires that is, not
New York).
Everywhere we went people
urged: “ Bring us tourists.” And it is to tourism and wine the
country is looking to get them out of the worst recession in a
century.
Most tourists start into
Buenos Aires, but we were headed first to the wine country of
Mendoza, the province in the northwest closer to Chile than to any
city in Argentina.
We wanted to experience
what we’d been told was the magical drive across the Andes into
Argentina. So we flew
on a wide-bodied Lan Chile jet to Santiago. After a short rest, we
started the 365 kilometer climb over the highest mountain range in
the Americas.
This road of sheer drops
and hairpin curves is not for the faint of heart but the scenery
more than lived up to its billing.
It was in 1561 that the
first Spanish conquerors used this road from Chile to found Mendoza.
Today climbers come from all over the world to scale Aconcagua , the
highest mountain in both the Southern and the Western Hemisphere.
We were overwhelmed by the
sheer magnificence of the mountains. As the snows start to melt in
the spring (our fall), spectacular waterfalls line the route. The
rock formations are staggering in their range of colors.
Nevertheless, it was almost
a relief to descend, after a six-hour drive, from the mountains into
the bucolic landscape of Argentina’s Mendoza province—land
of green orchards and vineyards stretching across a vast alluvial
plain, ending abruptly at the sheer rock wall of the Andes.
As far as the eye can see,
the alluvial plain is quickly filling up with vineyards dotted among
orchards of plum, apricot, peach, apples, quince, walnuts and
almonds all ready to supply North America in winter when our sun
fades and the summer fruits dry up.
The spectacular Salentein vineyard
in the foothills of the Andes in
Argentina |
This country was endowed by
its creator with the most fertile most beautiful land in all of
South America, and it became a melting pot where immigrants from
Italy and Spain, brought with them along with their work ethic,
their agricultural knowledge, especially of wine growing. By the 19th
century, Mendoza was selling wine to the rest of Argentina and
sending barrels in horse carts across the mountains to Chile.
Soon Argentina, a country
four times larger than Texas and five times the size of France.
became the fifth largest producer of wine in the world and the third
largest per capita consumer after Italy and France.
Here’s the rub: There was
little incentive to improve the quality of the wines from the
rough table
stuff favored by
the locals because they drank everything they could produce
themselves. Not any longer.
Now with Argentina in dire
financial straits, wine exports
could be their salvation.
Foreign capital is pouring
into the Mendoza Valley as industrialists and entrepreneurs race
each other to invest in what they see as the coming boom. If 100
percent of the available wine growing land was producing, Argentina
could exceed the outcome of France and Italy put together.
Extravagant state of the art wineries in various stages of
construction already dot the landscape.
Our destination was one of
the grandest wineries—Bodega Salentein with Dutch capital
and a local president, Carlos Pulenta, whose family has been making
wine in this valley for almost 100 years.
Salentein have planted
thousands of hectares
of Malbec—the rich grape that came unappreciated from France and
became the Argentine favorite (think a richer, more dense Merlot) as
well as Cabernet, Merlot and Shiraz.
Their wine maker Laureano
Gomez with the advice of a visiting big shot, the renowned French
enologist Michel Rolland who visits Salentein five times a year, is
even experimenting with Pinot Noir on the lower foothills of the
Andes.
Elegant beaux arts mansion at the
Four Seasons Hotel in Buenos Aires |
The Salentein winery, an
imposing stone building, is built in a
cruciform—hence the local name for it “a cathedral of
wine.” Its interior designed by Bormida and Yanzon, a leading
Buenos Aires firm, in which the four wings of the cross
converge in a circular amphitheater lit mystically from above
by a huge skylight, looks as if virgins might be sacrificed at
midnight masses. But this is a temple only to the god of wine.
After a tour, we sat
tasting the rich reds in which the concentration of fruit was almost
overwhelming, as we admired the immensity of the mountains through a
large picture window, appropriately so since the vineyards are
irrigated with pure water from the melting snows of the peaks.
Posada Salentein in the
middle of the vineyards provided a comfortable base for some serious
wine tasting around the area. This small country inn with simple but
comfortable rooms with breakfast and dinner included was ours for a
rate of $55 per person per night. (For details check their website: www.bodegasalentein.com.)
From here we can arrange
trips for hunting, fishing, skiing , rafting, horseback riding,
parasailing, off road desert riding, mountain climbing, rappelling.
We just about managed a
hike in the Andes foothills, where a small military outpost near the
Chilean border greeted us like long lost friends. In fractured
Spanish with lots of arm waving and broad smiles we talked
international soccer.
An hour from Mendoza and we
were in a different world: Buenos Aires airport right in the
heart of town. Within
minutes we were relaxing in our hotel room.
With the dollar so
powerful, we decided to sample the very best Buenos Aires has to
offer: The Four Seasons. With top hotels searching for guests—local
businessmen can no longer afford to travel—they have come
up with a package which was too enticing to turn down even though
our budget does not normally run
to Four Seasons.
For $1,000 we found a
remarkable package: three nights at the Four Seasons BA in La
Recoleta, the city’s most fashionable district, and then three
nights at their Carmelo resort just across the Rio de La Plata in
Uruguay.
To get to Carmelo you take
a 15-minute flight by private plane or an hour ride on a high speed
ferry, The Buquebus, followed by a 50-minute road trip to the resort
in the Uruguayan countryside, for three more nights at this gorgeous
country lodge, with golf course and spa. (Phone: 54 (11) 4321 1200
or check their website: www.fourseasons.com.)
In BA, the Four Seasons
is actually two hotels in one—a modern highrise in front and
behind—a magnificent Beaux Arts Mansion, built in 1916 by an
Argentine businessman for his new bride, and sympathetically
restored with its Louis X111 inspired gilt moldings, high ceilings,
and imported parquet floors in tact.
The celebrity jet set from
Madonna to Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas, and the hotel’s
personal favorite Emma Thompson, favored the Mansion while they were
filming in BA.
A city like Buenos Aires,
that produced the tango and Eva Peron, knows a thing or two about
seduction. Despite their difficulties it’s still all too easy to
be seduced by BA, though
it’s enormously difficult to leave a fine restaurant late
at night to find children going through the bagged garbage in the
upscale neighborhoods looking for things they can recycle or sell.
For the tourist, everything
produced locally is guilt-inducingly cheap. Food is superb—and the
prices unbelievable.
The Four Season’s chef
Ashley James, who hails from Wolverhampton, England, presides over a
kitchen full of fresh ideas and even fresher produce. Unfortunately
it is not getting the attention it deserves because of the economic
downturn.
Alhough the hotel is at the
top of the price tree in the city, a business lunch at the hotel—an
elaborate antipasto buffet , a la carte main course, dessert coffee
or tea—costs a mere 13 U.S dollars.
At the other end of the
scale, on advice of the hotel’s general manager, we sought out
something simpler: Guerrin on Avenue Corrientes l368 (no
reservations needed), the oldest pizzeria in BA, owned and operated
by the same Italian family for over 100 years.
Mime artist in downtown
Buenos Aires |
There wasn’t a tourist in
sight as we sat crammed in with the locals on a warm night in a
crowded restaurant with fans whirring overhead and the waiters
greeting the regulars like old friends.
We shared a giant pizza,
with a large salad, another order of empanadas, a half bottle of
wine, a beer, and two flans for dessert—all of it wonderful and
the bill came to $6.50—Yes, that’s six dollars and fifty cents.
Doing everything in three
days in BA was impossible. To
help us maximize our time, we used the services of a guide at $25 an
hour. While that may sound pricey by Argentine standards, Evelyn
Kollmann of Viennese descent and an English teacher, was well worth
the money. A car and
driver is included in the price. (Her email address is: evelynkollmann@fibertel.com.ar)
Our first stop had to be
the Recoleta cemetery and the tomb of the Duarte family.
Never heard of the Duartes? Their most famous offspring—even
though she was illegitimate and not, strictly speaking, entitled to
the name—was one Eva Duarte, the poor girl from the sticks who
married the dictator Juan Peron and became a combination bitch
goddess and saint.
(The Andrew Lloyd Webber
musical about her life was a smash hit around the world.)
The best informed
Argentines will tell you that it was Eva and Juan who started the
rot in the country by paying the peasants with handouts so that they
stopped working the land and learned to rely on the government who
let them down in the end.
The cemetery is a city
built to house the blue bloods of Argentina who have passed on. The
tombs are grandiose villas for the dead, some of whom are
undoubtedly spinning in their marble sepulchers at the idea that
they have found their final resting place alongside the upstart
woman they so despised when she was alive.
Another must see is Casa
Rosada (so called
because originally it was plastered with a substance made of mud and
colored with ox blood.) It stands in the Plaza de Mayo, still pink
though this time from a more conventional paint. It’s where Juan
and Eva waved to the masses gathered below and where director Alan
Parker shot Madonna as Evita for his 1996 movie musical.
Still the seat of a
government universally despised, the building is protected by
barricades to take care of the crowds who protest in the square
daily. Anti government
graffiti decorates almost all the civic buildings in the square.
Nobody bothers to paint it over; it would simply appear again the
next day.
Every Monday “the
grandmothers,” relatives of those who disappeared under the
l976-83 military dictatorship, march in a circle while the crowd
looks respectfully on. Today the grandmothers are outnumbered by the
homeless and the unemployed.
In search of something more
cheerful, we moved on to La Boca, one of the most colorful
areas of the city down by the old port where immigrants from Genoa
were disgorged from rickety ships in the late 1800s, and set up
homes and restaurants along the waters edge.
Today the Italians have
mostly moved on, leaving the highly colored houses, many of them
built of the original corrugated tin and painted in primary colors ,
to artists, painters, sculptors and entertainers.
There are the ubiquitous
tango dancers–it was from the bars and brothels of the area that
this most Argentinian of all art forms sprang—mimes, living
statues , performing dogs and all the rest of it. Think New Orleans
at bargain prices.
The art is colorful and
often skilled. Here’s the place to buy an original oil or
watercolor of typical Argentine scenes for as little as $10.
For more sophisticated
souvenirs, the Feria at San Telmo takes place on Saturday and
Sunday throughout the year. This antique district, 11 blocks of
Avenida Florida , the main shopping street of BA, has cobbled lanes
lined with antique shops, restaurants, coffee houses. It is also
home to the National Historical Museum.
Weekend visitors make a
beeline for the squares, filled with peddler’s stands, where
treasures can include everything from old tango sheet music, to gold
and silver jewelry to small silver pieces from the arts and crafts ,
deco and Beaux Arts period.
The stores house some of
the finest art deco furniture and silver I have ever seen outside a
museum but the bargains are on the street. I brought home a silver
gravy boat and saucer in the Mackintosh style in perfect condition
for $80.
Tango dancers give visitors
free lessons on the street |
Much of this loot of course
comes from the homes of middle and upper class families who have
sold whatever they can just to stay afloat. With pensioners existing
on under $80 a month and surgeons earning less than $200 a month,
the hurting is across the board.
Gone are the days when the
Argentine rich traveled to the capitals of Europe with their own cow
in tow for milk because they found European dairy products inferior.
Gone too are the days when
Argentines, because of their European origins, lorded over the rest
of South America as the best dressed, best educated most
sophisticated country on the continent.
But BA still feels more
Paris than Rio, albeit Paris with Cuban prices. And though in need
of a face lift—something that requires more money than the old
dowager can currently put her hands on—Evita’s city is still the
sexy capital of an immensely attractive country.
Go see it while the
bargains are hot. |
Be
aware that if, like us, you land in Chile with an American passport,
you will have to pay a $100 tax per person even though you’re just
heading straight out to Argentina.
