Patagonia Peregrination Part 9

Well I guess its that time again where I reflect on my time here and what I think of el Calafate and add some of the random pictures I didn't put in before.....

Let me start by saying I am at a real loss at how to describe this place. Its like some sort of weird cross between what I imagine Nebraska would be like and the Arizona deserts. Just strange.....like no place I have ever been before in my life. Now let me start with a little music since I am not really sure how long I may ramble for in this post......

Do you know how hard it is to find songs about Nebraska or Arizona....it was either that or that country song about there is no Arizona....I think I went with the better one.

Now where do I begin. Hmmmmm. I am sitting here in my hotel room looking out of my window and thinking how weird this whole part of the trip has actually been. Not bad....just so very different from Ushuaia which I wasn't expecting at all. This place is not nearly as cold and doesn't have the same small town feel to it. When I was in Ushuaia I felt like I could have been in some cold town in Northern Maine a lot of the time, but here I don't get that feeling at all. Even though climate wise it is not very different, the terrain and the people just change everything. Some pictures to describe the difference in the scenery....

It looks green but trust me looks can be deceiving. 

The bridge looks like it could be one of those nice New England home made rickety bridges but its just not the same when its desert-like on the other side of the bridge. 

The main street....

Enough about the town itself....I want to talk about some revelations that I had while here in el Calafate....First let me say that my Spanish is exponentially better than it was when I first got here....My time in this small little town has definitely proved that.

Besides the fact that I am able to communicate with the local people that run the hotel without any real nerves speaking or expressing myself makes me so very very happy. Then the best part is when people assume I am a local. Now its always a very touristy person who does this but it still makes me happy. I think its a combination of the fact that I am alone and dressed as if this temperature is normal. The perfect example of this confusion came when I was waiting in line at the ATM. Behind me were two sets of tourists, an Indian couple who looked as though they had been married for quite some time and a young couple who was probably on their honeymoon. The people in front of me were definitely locals, maté in hand, and the person in front of them was an Argentine but not a local. The person who was Argentine but not local had trouble getting money out of the machine....And when I say she had trouble she couldn't get any. She then asked if anyone was from Argentina, I did NOT raise my hand but the people who did assured here the amount she wanted to withdraw was below the maximum so she got fairly aggravated. Then the woman in front of me was able to withdraw with no problem. So I offered that it must be her card because the machine was working fine. Another older woman and I then proceeded to speak briefly about how the woman must have a problem with her card as the machine had worked for everyone else and to withdraw more money then she was trying. It was at this point that the Indian couple behind me asked the other clearly English speaking couple if they knew what was going on. It was at this point that the young woman said, "yea they were just discussing whether it was a problem with the machine or her card but decided it must be her card". 

I couldn't believe it. I had just been talked about as if I was someone who didn't understand the English speaker.....It was both funny and a little aggravating. I now understand what it must feel like to be talked about in a foreign language and completely understand it. It didn't matter so much that they didn't say anything bad it just felt rude that they were talking about me as if I wasn't there simply because I couldn't speak the language. 

The next moment came while I was eating lunch in a café. The fútbol game was on and a keeper made an absolutely terrible attempt to block a shot and the other team scored. At this point this old Argentine man hit me in the arm and began talking about how horrible the keeper was. And then the weirdest thing happened, I responded in Spanish and in agreement with the old man. Who knew I even knew some of those words??

I think the most important thing that I am going to take away from el Calafate is honestly the comfort of knowing that I am much more comfortable with my Spanish then I EVER have been before.

What else about el Calafate??? Well one thing is that I think I might like to have a house like the hotel I am staying in.....I know that sounds ridiculous, but one day when I am filthy rich I will. Only it won't be in the desert in will be in New England. I mean the place is just really cool. I want to put up some more pictures of the hotel with some of the scenery in the daylight so here they are...

The best part about the whole place is probably these two dogs....they are amazing and my favorite and if I could steal one I would.....

Well I guess for now that is all I have to reflect on....so I will get to packing so that I can get my flight back to Buenos Aires.....

What the Hell is Maté anyway?

¿¿¿What the HELL is MATÉ???

If anyone has ever traveled to the southeastern portion of South America no doubt you have heard of maté. This is a customary drink and social activity here in Buenos Aires. From the first day I set foot off the plane I heard about maté...in fact within the first hour I was in Buenos Aires I was actually given a maté.


Okay so I realize in just re-reading the first few sentences that I need to go over some things. First of all, maté refers to both the drink itself, the gourd or cup that the maté is served in, and is part of the name of the plant that you put in the cup or gourd. Now that confusion is out of the way let's move on to the fun stuff.


What do you need to have maté....a list (with pictures of course):


1. Most importantly you need a maté. Traditionally a maté is a gourd that has been hollowed out by the person who owns it. Think about the small decorative gourds in the US around Halloween and Thanksgiving....now think about scooping one of those out like a pumpkin, letting it dry, and then using it as a cup. Now many people here in Argentina and Uruguay still use a gourd that has a metal tin around it or just a straight up gourd. Others have gone the way of technology and now use a plastic silicone version of the gourd. I, of course, use the more technologically advanced silicone maté that many of the other college students in the area tend to have. Below is a picture of my maté.

2. The second most important tool you will need is called a bombilla. For my Spanish speaking friends who have not read my previous blog post and are confused I redirect you with this link bombilla. The bombilla is very important and serves two main purposes. One is to actually allow you to drink the maté. Basically its a metal straw with a strainer on the end. My brother seems to think  it resembles a pipe, but it is NOT in fact a pipe and I wouldn't ever recommend smoking out of anything metal anyway as I imagine it would get very hot. I always think its better to see it so a picture of my bombilla is attached below.

3. The next important thing you will need is yerba maté. Remember since you are in Argentina and Uruguay its pronounced sssshhhhherba(I realize this is not proper phoenetics, but I'm a nursing major not a linguist so I'm sure you can all figure it out from what I wrote). This is the plant that is used to create the maté drink. What is really interesting to me is that the plant is actually part of the holly family. I realize this is probably really boring, but if you have ever had maté and you know that yerba is a type of plant from the holly family then the taste of the maté is sort of what you would expect a holly tree tea to taste like. I digress. The yerba you are about to see was actually found in my apartment when I moved in. I of course was a little startled when I first moved in and found a tin full of dried greens in my apartment as I didn't know what it was but I am now thrilled to have gotten so much free yerba. Below is the tin and the yerba inside.

4. The fourth important thing that is required for maté, here in Argentina, is hot water. Not boiling water but hot water. I say here in Argentina because apparently people in Paraguay and some parts of Bolivia will have a cold maté. What is funny about this is if you ask any of the local Argentines or Uruguayans they actually make a face of disgust when they say...yea but they drink it cold. Almost as if they don't really know how to drink maté properly. And one last picture....this is just of my tea kettle heating up some water.

Now let's say you want to prepare some maté. You have gathered all of the above supplies and often a group of friends to enjoy the experience with you but what do you do first. Well good thing you're reading my blog because I'm going to go step by step in case anyone wants to try and be a copy cat (FYI this is the way I was taught by someone from Uruguay and Buenos Aires).

Step 1

Fill your maté with yerba. Not all the way. Its easy with a silicone yerba because you just fill it up to the line on the side. I was taught almost 3/4 of the way full. Like so:

Step 2

Put your hand over the opening of the maté and shake gently. This gets all of the yerba dust and not goodness out of what you will be drinking. It also coats the inner part of your maté giving you, according to my teacher, a better taste.

Step 3


Sort of hard to see in the picture below, but you actually angle your maté to create a slope within itself with the yerba. In this way you have sort of mound on one side and should almost be able to see the bottom on the other. You insert your bombilla into the lower side so its at the bottom of the maté. Its also important that you make sure that the bombilla is in the right direction. There should be a slight bend in the bombilla. When resting against the side of the maté that bend should bend toward your mouth. If you have a silicone maté this is pretty much idiot proof, but for everyone else just do what seems comfortable.

 Step 4


Add your heated water to the yerba. Now its important to make sure that the water is warm-hot but not so hot that you burn or destroy the yerba. If this happens you will know the minute you taste it that the water is too hot. Here in Buenos Aires I have yet to see anyone serve me maté when the water was too hot.

Step 5


Drink your maté. Yes it is that simple. Put your mouth on the bombilla and sip your maté. If you are from Uruguay keep going till you get that nice slurping sound. Make sure you finish all of the water in a maté before you pour more water in and pass to the next person you have invited over to have some. And keep going until the maté is stripped of its taste. According to everyone here if the proper person is serving the maté, whihc means heating up the water and pouring it into the maté for everyone then it will probably last until everyone is done. Here are the many faces of consuming maté. I know they are ridiculous they are basically for my own amusement.

Phase 1- Uncertainty
Someone has just handed you a gourd filled with green stuff and water and told you to drink out of the same metal straw as everyone else. Really???

Phase 2- Giving in to Peer Pressure
You decide since everyone else is doing it you might as well give it a try. Hesitant you give it a taste and you're a little unsure of what exactly it is you are tasting.

Phase 3- The Decision
Do I actually like this weird taste? Yea I guess its not bad....sort of like drinking tea but a little more.....woody?

Phase 4- The Drinking Phase
This is when someone has decided they like it and there is plenty of water in the maté. You just keep sucking it down with no real understanding that it is not a 7-Eleven Double Gulp.

Phase 5- The Slurping Phase
You have been drinking for a little over a minute and you begin to hear that all too familiar slurping noise. You are running out of water.

Phase 6- The Realization Phase
You finally realize that now any amount of drinking is not going to result in more maté. There is nothing left but the left over wet, green, yerba, mush. Also part of this phase is asking for a refill which will naturally be given to you by any kind maté server. You can now repeat steps 4-5.

Phase 7- The Depression Phase
You have finally run out of hot water. You literally can´t be served any more maté  because you no longer have the necessary fluid to get the yerba goodness into your body.

That was fun wasn't it! Yea so I hate pictures of myself and this is my small attempt to push myself outside of my comfort zone while here in Buenos Aires.



Step 6


Clean out you maté. I have actually cleaned everything out on a piece of paper so everyone can see what everything looks like when all is said and done.

SO I am no expert, but this is a great way to spend time with friends and enjoy a nice treat from South America!

Spanish....or something like it...

This post is dedicated solely to the Spanish language. For the past week I have been in Spanish classes at VOS Buenos Aires. And thank GOD for that. I arrived in Buenos Aires and I knew a lot of Spanish, but within minutes of being in this city I realized I could barely understand a single person here. Not because I didn't know Spanish but because the people here were not speaking anything close to Spanish. The amount of sh/j sounds in this language is like a combination between an Italian and a Portuguese person but speaking Spanish words. All of the ll's and the y's are this sort of j/sh sound. Also, not a single person here, besides the foreigners use the word tu....its all vos. Yes that ridiculous tense that your Spanish teacher assured you that you would never need to know....its common place here in Buenos Aires.


Now for a message from the boring historian/linguist that apparently inhabits some part of my brain on how the Buenos Aires dialect and unique language developed. If history and knowledge are very boring to you then you should probably skip down and ignore the next few paragraphs and skip down to the row of yellow asterisks. 


 Basically, Buenos Aires as I said before is a port town, which means there are a lot of immigrants that came to the country, and still do on a regular basis. A large majority of those immigrants came from Italy and another large portion came from other places in Latin America and yet another influx of immigrants and tourists came from France and had an influence on the development of Argentine culture. When the city developed it basically had two main sections divided by social and economic class. The lower portion of the city was the poor immigrants with little to no education and the upper portion of the city was the wealthy and educated class in the country. Can you believe some people are skipping this information and just going to the yellow asterisks....I mean seriously would reading a few paragraphs and expanding your intellectual prowess about the Argentina Spanish dialect really kill you....some people... Anyways, in the poorer section of the city is where the people began to mix all of their cultures together and create a sort of melting pot. Similar to the United States in the development of truly unique mixed cultures in poorer immigrant populations. 


Part of the development was purely cultural. Certain activities and games developed along the docks and immigrant communities. Most notably, what developed in these communities was the Tango. When I say Tango I don't just mean the dance, rather I mean the dance, the songs, the language/slang aka Lunfardo, and I mean the attitude. I will digress however back to the topic of language since I will be doing a whole post on the Tango....no worries I will link back to this for the history lesson rather than being one of those teachers who talks about the same thing over and over and over again. 


In typical fashion, the communities of the northern parts of the city resisted any and all changes to the "pure" culture that they belonged. I think this is probably the reason Porteños use the vos pronoun and its endings while at the same time changing all sorts of pronunciations. Its like the compromise between the poor and wealth or the upper and lower class can be seen within the language itself. Like we'll pronounce things like we have mouth full of food and phlegm in our throats if you keep using vos and other outdated words.


Its funny how, even though I haven't been here that long, I've noticed that there seems to be this desire in Argentina to separate itself from the rest of Latin America. The majority seem to want to be seen on a world stage as more than just a country with a past riddled with corruption and ruled by dictators. Their language though doesn't allow anyone to forget their history though. Their original conquerors were Spaniards who used the words vos and then immigrant populations came in and with each new population the language changed just slightly in pronunciation but clung to the basic grammar of the Spaniards. Even the development of their slang hints at major points and people in their history. It truly is fascinating! (To me at least)


******************************************************
To those of you that read the history...congratulations


 Suffice it to say I was a little nervous about being here for 3 months before I took my Spanish classes. I still have another week of classes to go, but I am confident that I will be okay by the time I'm done and will be fluent enough in this weird dialect by the time I leave.


Besides all of the fun sounds that the Porteños/Argentines make when speaking there are a lot of words that are totally different and new to me (including some slang which is not necessarily appropriate for everyone so if you might be offended or your parents might not like you reading stuff.....THANKS FOR READING MY BLOG AND GO TO BED)


Okay now a list of some of the words that I find absolutely fascinating(They are all color coded..blue is the word is just slang, yellow is the word is slightly offensive, red is the word is pretty offensive and would probably be part of my normal vernacular with my friends in the US):


Let's start with a fairly tame one just in case someone didn't heed my warning from above...


Che-- This is a term that the Porteños use to talk to each other. I find that they only use it if they're trying to get your attention like, Hey Che.... It is actually a word that again is history related. Where the term actually came from I don't know, but thanks to some Porteños who read my blog I can tell you it is far older than the most famous Che in history. The famous revolutionary that many know as Che Guevara was actually a Porteño who people referred to as Che. For those of you who have been living under a rock....or had a terrible history teacher....Che Guevara was one of the major leaders in the Cuban Revolution and you can often find his face on the t-shirt of your local hipster.


Trucho-- This one sort of means fake. Not exactly. Its someone who is being scheisty really if that makes sense. Sort of used car salesman-esque.


Una buean onda---I had never heard this one and the Porteños use it for a lot of stuff. Basically I would say its like good vibes. It literally means good waves...but its like cool or a good atmosphere or just a general good gut feeling about something.


Falopa--This is a word that of course I learned when searching for internships...its actually like slang for drugs. But it can also be used for drug addict....basically its sort of like druggie.


Gato/a-- You would think that this word is cat....not the case. It is if you're talking about a cat, but if you use it in reference to a female you are basically calling her a big old slut bag. I do not know where that came from and have no explanation for it. If you are using it to talk about a guy you are basically calling him gay, its sort of derogatory but not really. Its like the equivalent of calling a gay guy in the States a fairy. Again...no idea where these came from, but they are what they are.


Puto/a-- In school and in movies I of course learned this word as bitch like I'm sure most of you did. Oddly enough I have never heard someone use it in that sense yet. It does get used to call a woman a whore (punta, which is sort of similar to how I learned it). When used to describe a guy it's sort of a slightly more aggressive form of bitchy queen....which again I guess makes sense.


Culo--This is an easy one for anyone who has ever been in a middle school Spanish class...ass


Quilombo--Another one that I have a hard time giving a definition to so I will simply describe it. Anyone who has ever seen that girl coming home from the bar shitfaced, hair a mess, holding one of her heels in her hand while one is still on her foot, slightly stumbling/maybe holding onto her boyfriend, all while telling some ridiculous story that doesn't matter...she would be quilombo...its sort of like mess.


Borracho--This one I think is straight out of the Spanish dictionary...just a drunk


Bolazo--You might hear a lot of people say this to their friends. It means bullshit basically. Not necessarily a negative connotation. Its like when one of your friends starts to tell an embarrassing story about you and you shout Bullshit that is not what happened and then proceed to tell the story in the same way just justifying your actions. I like this one a lot.


Boliche--The equivalent of a disco in Europe....sort of like a ridiculous night club. Most don't even open until like 1 AM and then they don't get busy until like 3AM so if someone asks you to go to a boliche expect a long night and to be a quilombo by 8.


Colectivo/micro-- Either one of these words actually refer to the, what must be hundreds, of buses that run throughout this city. It really is ridiculous. They are everywhere and stop everywhere. The Guia T is my best friend.


Bombilla--This is the word that I learned meant lightbulb. Again not the case here in Buenos Aires. This actually refers to the strainer straw that you use to drink Mate through. I will have a post on Mate and explain this more.


Dale-- Just sort of the way someone will agree with you. Like alright.


Claro--Another one....its sort of like their yea...but not like a yes yea more like a yea mom I'm listening to you while you tell me the same thing about staying safe and not being stupid in a foreign country for the thousandth time kind of yea.


Mira Vos-- Again the Porteños use the word vos....its like the equivalent of Look at You...in a good way.


Coger-- If you go out to a club or a biloche and you see the two people on the dance floor that are ''dancing'' but you know that someone is getting some that night....that is when this word would be appropriate to shout....sort of the equivalent of shouting ''get some'' at those people in the states.


Chanta-- This one means like a swindler....someone who is sort of smarmy.


Boludo--So when I first learned this word in the States I was told it was asshole. Then I got to Argentina and heard everyone calling everyone else boludo. Little kids, old people, friends, and enemies are all boludo. I was extremely confused so I asked my Porteño friend what the word meant and he looked at me dead in the face, like I was an idiot and said, asshole. Now I don't know about you but I find it fascinating that everyone just goes around all day everyday calling each other assholes. Now naturally the connotation of the word changes depending on how you say it, but I still think its funny because at the heart of it all everyone is still a boludo or an asshole. At least that is one thing these Porteños definitely have right. Its also one of the reasons I knew I would fit in here. Not because I enjoy calling people assholes, but I like the fact that I could be a total asshole and its okay because everyone's going to call me one anyway.