Welcome to Argentina

I really didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in a Chilean prison. I enjoyed our time in Chile, but… The one exception was dealing with the bureaucracy and paperwork of clearing the motorcycles through customs.

Now here I was standing in line at the border, holding 10 copies (yes, 10!) of my temporary import papers, waiting to clear my bike out of Chile. I could feel my blood pressure rise as different disaster scenarios played out in my head – extra charges, being sent back to Santiago for some missing document… generally being told “you can’t there from here”. I could picture myself with my hands around the throat of some rat-eyed customs official – being dragged away – Liz shaking her head sadly… again.

“Buenos dias”, said the smiling Customs Agent when I got to the front of the line. I gritted my teeth, and handed him the import documents, my passport, drivers license, insurance and ownership.

“Why so many copies?” he asked. He looked genuinely puzzled, sorting through the pile of import documents. I shrugged. My Spanish wasn’t nearly good enough to give him the full explanation.

“You only need one cpoy.” He stamped my passport and documents and entered a few details in his computer. I had to go to a couple of other windows for more stamps, but I was on my way in less than an hour.

Once again my imagined disasters never materialized. (A friend of mine calls this ‘living in the wreckage of your future’.)

Argentinian customs was even quicker, the Argentines being much less procedure bound.

“Welcome to Argentina!” The Customs Agent reviewed my documents and handed me my temporary import permit. I was done in less than half an hour and sitting in our apartment in the resort town of Bariloche shortly after lunch.

Liz, on the other hand, had an 8 hour bus ride, including standing in line, in the sun for 2 1/2 hours. It takes a while to clear a whole bus load of people through the border. Like I say, it’s always better on a motorcycle…

As any real estate agent will tell you, it’s location, location, location. And Bariloche has the location, situated on the shore of clear, blue Lago (Lake) Nahuel Huapi, with a mountain backdrop. The view from the balcony of our Airbnb condo was stunning.

Bariloche is a four seasons resort town, much like Whistler or Aspen. Like southern Chile, the Bariloche area has been influenced by German and Swiss immigrants who settled in the area in the early 1900’s. They’ve certainly cultivated an alpine look and feel. It makes for a bit of an odd mix with the latin Argentine culture, but it seems to work. It’s certainly a prosperous community.

The European influence also led to Bariloche becoming the chocolate capital of Argentina. Avenida Mitre, is lined with chocolate shops. I lost count but there were at least a dozen interspersed between the high end fashion stores. The best according to local sources is Mamuschka, started by a Russian family and now run by the third generation (who no longer speak Russian). According to Liz, it’s the best chocolate she’s ever tasted.

But the foundation of Argentinian cuisine is meat, so much so that there are two words for what we would call barbeque – parilla, which is a more general term and asado, which is more of a social event, and refers to slow roasting various cuts of beef, sausage and entrails. Both must be done over wood coals. It’s something between an art and a religious devotion. I would say it’s a matter of life and death, but it’s more important than that. The idea of a propane BBQ would be considered heresy here. I’ll write more about this later, but I was told that the first rule of asado is that if one person can carry the meat, there isn’t enough.

To sample this first hand, we had supper one night in “El Boliche de Alberto”. The menu has about 20 different choices of meat. Steaks come in two sizes – large and hanging off the plate. Sides are optional and limited to potatoes, rice and/or salad – no vegetables, not a spear of broccoli to be found. Even in the grocery stores the choice of green vegetables is extremely limited. I’m not saying it’s impossible to be a vegetarian in Argentina (or a cardiologist for that matter), but it would be a challenge.

Oh and yes, the steaks we ordered were amazingly good.

When not eating, or recovering from a meal, we spent some time exploring the national parks that surround Bariloche. This is the drier side of the Andes. The mountain sides a well forested, but it’s not the rainforest of Chilean Patagonia. The valleys and foothills beyond are semi-arid, but no less beautiful.

On one outing, driving on the Seven Lakes route, through Nahuel Huapi National Park, we stopped in at the home of an indigenous Mapuche wood carver. In some ways it reminded me of chainsaw carvings we see at home, but the work was finer and figures more varied, drawn from Mapuche lore. It was one of those times when I really wished my Spanish was better. I would have liked to know more about the mythology and symbolism. On the other hand, maybe it’s better to simply appreciate the work for what it is, rather than getting bogged down in anthropological minutiae.

More than anything, Bariloche was a great place to relax, catch up on laundry and unwind for a few days. Our next leg would take us to Mendoza – Liz by plane, and me on a 3 day ride north along the legendary Ruta 40. And that will be the next installment.

Here’s the link to more photos of the Bariloche area.