Two Beers and a Pretzel

My uncle was right.  I clearly had not been to a real Argentine steakhouse.  Two of my UK dorm mates, Carlos and Jonathan, wanted steak.  Jonathan recommended a place he’s been to a few times, so we walked to El DesNivel in the San Telmo neighborhood of Buenos Aires – about 2 kilometers South of the hostel.

It doesn’t look like much, and it’s not in the nicest area.  Perfect, the best restaurants are usually out of the way and nowhere near the busy tourist areas.

I ordered a sparkling mineral water, black pudding sausage (congealed beef blood wrapped in intenstine), a salad, steak with peppercorns and thin sliced potatoes.  The blood sausage tasted kind of like liver, but was very thick and syrupy.  Very good.  Then the steak came.  It was surrounded by thick sliced chips and had some kind of sauce on it.  I’m always suspect of steaks that come with sauce, but this was phenominal.  The sauce complimented the beef without masking any flavor, or adding too much of any other flavor.  The beef was brilliant.  The whole meal was $14 USD.

The presentation was minimal, the service was overtaxed, but the beef was sooooooo good that I’m already planning a return visit when I’m back in BA in a month.

I’ll rate this my 3rd best steak ever.  The CraftSteak in Vegas for Steve’s bachelor party last October was easily #1 (free – thanks to Ethicon for treating “Dr.” Maley and “Dr.” Danekind), followed by the another night out with Steve – surf and turf at some beach side bistro in Acapulco ($9.  However, any memory I have from Acapulco may be biased because I totally fell for one of the girls we were with).  My own home grilled creation is officially 4th.

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Actually, I may be in South America longer than planned…  I found a tour that takes you all over Argentina, glaciers, wine country, everything – including overnight busses and hostel’s for under $1000 USD.  18-22 days.  This includes the End Of The Earth – Tierra Del Fuego, and the southernmost town in the world – Puerto Toro.   If I do that, I have to take a guitar to Cape Horn and record myself playing Gordon’t Lightfoot’s other shipwreck song for dad (props to anyone else who can name it).

They say from the port there, you can book last minute boats to Antartica and back for about $1500, where pre-booking from the USA runs more like $5000.  Two more weeks, but if you’re going to go, you might as well go all the way!!

We’ll see…  If I keep taking diversions like this I may not see all the places I want to see by July.  I may need to find a telecommuting job for 15 hours a weeky by March or April and extend this trip to 2 years.

Holy cow, it’s 2:30am!!  Goodnight.

Last night I was invited to go out with multiple groups, but that soccer game drained all the energy from me.  I overheard a few guys talking about cocaine and figured “Aha!  That’s how they have the energy.”  I slept from about midnight until 1:30 pm this afternoon.  I feel much better.

Aside from blogging and recharging my computer, I’ll probably just catch up on some reading.  I bought Henry Kissinger’s book Diplomacy back in Copan, Honduras, and have been reading it on the long bus trips.  It’s pretty good, but I haven’t gotten to the part where he was actually active in government yet.  I’m up to the Suez crisis right now.

After my previous post about my steak experience, my Uncle scolded me that I did not go to a real Argentine Steakhouse.  So tonight I will try the “real” thing with a couple of Brits.

I did go out for a while looking for new, cheap headphones for my iPod.  No luck there, but I found a pretty cool mall that had an entire level dedicated to an art exhibit.  Some of the art was pretty cool.  A big theme was industrialization destroying the environment.

And, for everyone back at my old job, they have a GAP in Buenos Aires – just a perfume kiosk, but it’s there…

Then, on the way home I finally snapped a pic of the “Open 25 Hrs” shops that are on every block.  Essentially a convenience store that doesn’t really have anything convenient unless you want candy or soda pop.

Tomorrow I fly to Brazil to meet up with my Aunt, Uncle and cousin for the holidays.

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Camera News.

The Olympus 1030SW is holding up very well, minus the paint chipping off.  It’s a little limiting for the artsy photos I like to take, but it’s nearly indestructible and makes a decent weapon in a pinch.  That, and Ingrid & Erinn helped prove the value of a submersible camera to me at Tabacon!!  Those water-slide videos are priceless.

My Canon G9 made it to my Uncle without the $200 tariff I might have had to pay.  Tomorrow I’ll have a manually controllable camera (exposure, shutter speed, aperture, etc) that can capture RAW files, has optical image stabilization, 35-210mm equivalent zoom range (6x), wider aperture (f/2.8-4.8) but still highly portable.  It actually has auxiliary wide and telephoto lenses that you can add on, but I’ll try to resist temptation…  I will need to get a spare battery and a car charger – possibly a spare memory card, but that’s all minor stuff.

The best news is that my monster 15 pound bag of SLR gear made it home without incident.  It was all fully insured, but I  was still dreading the prospect of explaining the loss of $4000 of camera gear to my insurance agent.  I’m very glad that I did not opt for the latest and greatest of everything before I left (Canon 50D with L quality lenses).  It’s way too easy to get into the consumer mindset back home where you want the ‘best’ of everything.  Yes, the SLR takes much nicer photos, and I loved having it in Europe and California, but it’s a whole different atmosphere here in Central and South America.

Every time I see anyone toting all that camera gear, I think “boy am I glad I sent it all back home”.  Aside from looking like an obvious tourist and target, they also seem detached from the moment they’re living in.  Perhaps I’m just realizing that a snapshot and having fun with new friends is more important to me than spending 50% of my time trying to get the perfect photo.  Don’t get me wrong…  I’m not knocking anyone who really enjoys taking pro-quality photos.  It’s just not practical for me on an around the world trip.

I just need to see another active volcano with the G9 to get ‘that’ picture, then I will not regret any of this camera indecision.