Valle de Uco

This picture doesn't begin to do the scenery justice.  Yes, those are indeed the Andes rising up directly behind the vineyards.  The closer you get to the mountains the better the quality of grapes, according to Tomas Achaval and he's found himself some great land to grow incredible grapes. 

Tomas

Tomas invited us down to the Uco Valley, an hour south of Mendoza, to see the vineyards where all the magic happens for his Nomade wines.  This valley is compared by some to the Napa Valley of 30 years ago for the quality grapes and the quiet roads.  The added incentive (as if we needed one) was the crew was grilling asado in the vineyard that day.  

Salud and 

Buen Provencho!

Gustavo, the jefe or vineyard foreman, cooked a massive amount of steak, ribs and chorizo over the bonfire.  We all stood around the table and I learned how to cut the steak, ribs and chorizo with a big gaucho knife, using a piece of bread in my left hand as a plate.  Eating with our hands, chatting and drinking malbec grown from this very vineyard made for a great picnic.

Here's me with the jefe (far left) and crew.

Tomas y yo

After lunch, we walked the new Las Mulas vineyard (named for the historic place close by where the army used to raise the mules so important for crossing the mountains) where Tomas grows merlot.  To get there, we drove up dirt roads, walked across a meadow past a white horse grazing, picked wild yellow plums and drank water from the cold, cold streams. Absolutely heaven.

We then headed into the lab to taste wines from the barrel and do some blending with Tomas's enologist.  After our siesta.

Los Andes

After the fast life in Buenos Aires, we've enjoyed a quiet week in Mendoza. Located at the base of the Andes, this pretty green town is an oasis in the middle of the semi-desert. Irrigation in the form of snowmelt from the mountains ensures leafy trees and showy fountains in the main plazas which are arranged like a five die. And of course, the snowmelt waters the grapevines as well. The relaxed pace in town goes like this: businesses open from 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. then close for a three hour lunch/siesta break, then open back up from 4 p.m. - 10 p.m. People start strolling to the sidewalk cafes for dinner around 11 p.m. The response to telling someone I had to be at an appointment: "Ah, they can wait."

Sunday we drove within 15 km of the Chilean border to visit Aconcagua, which at 23,000 feet is the highest peak outside of the Himalayas and twice as tall as Washington State's Mt. Rainier. We congratulated an expedition coming down on their mules from the summit after the two-week trek. We also stopped to pay our respects at the Cemeterio Andinistas, where climbers who fell on the mountain are buried. One gravestone reads "Here rests our eternal friend, who loved the mountain more than the world."

Weekend Argentine-Style

Argentines keep a frenzied social calendar and survive on an unnatural lack of sleep.  This weekend I tried my best to keep up. It all began in the VIP section of Madonna's Sticky and Sweet tour with our new friend Coli. My big brother Patrick met him on the Greek island of Ios 15 years ago and we immediately became great friends. Coli is the saxophonist in the popular Uruguayan band La Vela Puerca (www.velapuerca.com.uy) and is working as a translator for the Material Girl's tech team.  She put on a serious show and I got goosebumps when she sang "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" with a massive blue-and-white-striped flag hanging behind her. The entertaining night turned into morning as we talked philosophy over beers in an outdoor plaza with Coli until 5:00 a.m. I didn't realize it was so late (er, early) as the square was packed with customers as the bars continued to serve 'til the sun came up.

After a quick nap, we dragged ourselves out of bed to hit the contemporary art museum MALBA, showcasing Latin American artists.  My new favorite painter is the Mexican, Covarrubias.  We ate a leisurely lunch in the garden and spent a few hours in front of the canvases. www.malba.org.ar

Late afternoon found us in the cheap seats at Campo de Palermo for the semi-final polo match of the Argentine Open, or "El Albierto." This is the final and most important tournament in the international polo circuit, as Argentines are the undisputed masters of the sport. La Dolfina beat Pilara (both Argentine teams made up of four players) 18-13 in eight 7-minute chukkers. Argentines do not stomp divots at halftime (there didn't seem to be a halftime) which was why I had really wanted to go in the first place. The crowd was strangely quiet during most of the game, giving only polite golf claps when either of the teams scored. I've fallen madly in love with Adolfo Cambioso, the captain of La Dolfina and you can see why here: www.ladolfina.com. After the event, we drank free champagne with the fancy crowd on exclusive side of the stadium and I waited in vain to congratulate Adolfo.

A progressive dinner followed in the upscale Palermo neighborhood with a new friend Peter:  tennis star, ladies man and international man of mystery. We met him at the polo match and learned he mainly jets around the world practicing his eight languages. He left us to go to a private party at MALBA because I couldn't overcome yet another fat steak.  How do these girls do it?  Food coma and lack of sleep prevailed.

Sunday morning we strolled in La Boca, one of the oldest barrios of Buenos Aires, where the tango was born in brightly-painted brothels and taverns. This impoverished neighborhood is now a tourist trap, but we slipped into the elegant Fundacion PROA musuem to see an incredible Marcel Duchamp exhibit.  www.proa.org  

With only a few hours left in Buenos Aires, we finished our afternoon in San Telmo's famous and extensive outdoor Sunday Antique Market. The neighborhood becomes a pedestrian zone one day a week and street performers tango and vendors sell all sorts of fascinating things like tiny toy soldiers, copper watering cans, old photographs and these beautiful 100-year-old glass bottles that were used to dispense carbonation. I thought I really needed a few until I learned they each cost $100 and up.

Standing at the counter of a local asado joint, we dined on cheap and delicious chorizo and steak sandwiches.  Afterwards I sank thankfully into my fully-reclining seat for the 13-hour overnight bus ride to Mendoza.

With a touch of pride, the portenos say "Buenos Aires, te mata" (Buenos Aires kills you).  I am ready to be a country girl.

Eight Angels, a Lion and Carlos

Taking advantage of a dark and stormy afternoon, Christian and I visited the Recoleta Cemetery.  World-renowned for funerary sculpture and being the most expensive real estate in Buenos Aires, this is the final resting place for presidents, poets, generals and Eva Peron.  Feral cats roam the walkways and bougainvilleas climb over immaculate and decrepit mausoleums.  I loved all the many wing styles of the angels and hope to someday have a lion like this guarding me.

The following day, the weather lightened up and we headed out of town for Sunday BBQ.  Tomas Archeval, of Nomade Winery and former CEO of Chandon South America, invited us to an asada with his family.  We ate sirloin, tenderloin, chorizo, blood sausage, pork, and more tenderloin.  All washed down with his full-bodied Malbecs and Syrahs.  All in the name of research, you understand.  Check out his wines at www.nomadewines.com. 

Monday we wandered the streets and ended up at Clasica y Moderna, a cafe/bookstore with live music - tango guitar from the 1930's on this occasion - and spent a mellow Monday night in Bs.As. with the locals.  To give you a taste of the melancholic and soulful sound, here is a snippet of Carlos Gardel singing about the city he loved.  When he tragically died in an airplane crash in 1935, millions went into mourning and several female fans on different continents attempted suicide.  He remains popular today and portenos (people "from the port" of Buenos Aires) often say "Gardel sings better every day."

The Paris of South America

Argentina has been described as a nation of Italians who speak Spanish, dress as though they are French and like to think they are British.  Famed for steak and mate, polo and plastic surgery, tango and gauchos, Patagonia and the Pampas, Malbec and Torrontes, Iguazu Falls and the Andes, gnocci and gelato, Evita and Diego Maradona, arrogance and generous extravagance, this is a great big country with flamboyant personality.

Having left the beach and flown through Mexico City (with only a few hours to take in Diego Rivera's murals in the Palacio Nacional and one final late-night taco run), we arrived in NYC to celebrate Thanksgiving with family. A brisk walk through Central Park gave us a taste of autumn and the Rockefeller skating rink was open for the holidays. I thoroughly enjoyed entering my little brother Matthew's world in Brooklyn and the creative hive that is the Opera Lofts:  artists, poets, actors, business savants, hipsters and one massive great dane named London share a shabby-chic set of lofts in Bushwick. I spent Thanksgiving morning with this inspiring crowd making the rounds of a progressive dinner.

Thanksgiving afternoon, I dined with Christian's family and dashed to catch the flight to Buenos Aires.  Twenty-four hours later we enjoyed our first asado feast of Bife de Chorizo Mariposa (rump steak butterflied) washed down with Malbec - mind you, at an prime outdoor table at midnight with a line still waiting to get in.  First impression of B.A.:  the city really doesn't sleep and it does indeed echo elegant Paris with wide boulevards, sidewalk cafes and neoclassical architecture, yet there is also a hint of sultry spring-time Sydney with Jacaranda trees everywhere blooming purple.  

Liberacion de Tortugas

Christian holding a tortuga only a few hours old

At sunset on Ventanillo Beach this evening, we helped "liberate" 119 freshly hatched baby turtles, which had been incubating for 45 days and hatched earlier today. The endangered golfino turtles are helped along with their first big day by a cooperative of volunteers.  When the mother turtle comes ashore to deposit her eggs, the volunteers dig up the newly laid eggs, transport them to a corral safe from predators, and once hatched, send them on their way down the beach under careful watch.  Along with about ten other visitors, we assisted with the turtles' first sea voyage.  The event was intense,  jubilant and emotional - I choked up when a few stragglers seemed too tired to make it to the water.  One little guy couldn't summon any more strength and died on the sand.  We gently picked up the slow kids and placed them in the receding surf.   Even so, the tide often sent them tumbling back up the beach - surely an unleasant experience.  But again and again, they flipped over and headed with determination towards their aquatic destiny.

"My man doesn't need turtle eggs"

A poster to help educate against eating endangered turtles,  a traditional food in Mexico believed to make men "strong."

Heading towards the sea

118 tortugas en route to the waves

D.H. Lawrence, who spent quite a bit of time in Oaxaca (of which he wrote about in The Plumed Serpent and Mornings in Mexico) penned the following poem in 1921.  It is very possible he was describing the ancestors of the turtles we met today.

Baby Tortoise

You know what it is to be born alone,
Baby tortoise!
The first day to heave your feet little by little from the shell,
Not yet awake,
And remain lapsed on earth,
Not quite alive.

A tiny, fragile, half-animate bean.

To open your tiny beak-mouth, that looks as if it would never open,

Like some iron door;
To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower base
And reach your skinny little neck
And take your first bite at some dim bit of herbage,
Alone, small insect,
Tiny bright-eye,
Slow one.

To take your first solitary bite
And move on your slow, solitary hunt.
Your bright, dark little eye,
Your eye of a dark disturbed night,
Under its slow lid, tiny baby tortoise,
So indomitable.
No one ever heard you complain.

You draw your head forward, slowly, from your little wimple

And set forward, slow-dragging, on your four-pinned toes, Rowing slowly forward.
Whither away, small bird?
Rather like a baby working its limbs,
Except that you make slow, ageless progress
And a baby makes none.

The touch of sun excites you,
And the long ages, and the lingering chill
Make you pause to yawn,
Opening your impervious mouth,
Suddenly beak-shaped, and very wide, like some suddenly gaping pincers;
Soft red tongue, and hard thin gums,
Then close the wedge of your little mountain front,
Your face, baby tortoise.

Do you wonder at the world, as slowly you turn your head in its wimple
And look with laconic, black eyes?
Or is sleep coming over you again,
The non-life?

You are so hard to wake.

Are you able to wonder?
Or is it just your indomitable will and pride of the first life
Looking round
And slowly pitching itself against the inertia
Which had seemed invincible?

The vast inanimate,
And the fine brilliance of your so tiny eye,
Challenger.

Nay, tiny shell-bird,
What a huge vast inanimate it is, that you must row against,
What an incalculable inertia.

Challenger,
Little Ulysses, fore-runner,
No bigger than my thumb-nail,
Buon viaggio.

All animate creation on your shoulder,
Set forth, little Titan, under your battle-shield.

The ponderous, preponderate,
Inanimate universe;
And you are slowly moving, pioneer, you alone.

How vivid your travelling seems now, in the troubled sunshine,
Stoic, Ulyssean atom;
Suddenly hasty, reckless, on high toes.

Voiceless little bird,
Resting your head half out of your wimple
In the slow dignity of your eternal pause.
Alone, with no sense of being alone,
And hence six times more solitary;
Fulfilled of the slow passion of pitching through immemorial ages
Your little round house in the midst of chaos.

Over the garden earth,
Small bird,
Over the edge of all things.

Traveller,
With your tail tucked a little on one side
Like a gentleman in a long-skirted coat.

All life carried on your shoulder,
Invincible fore-runner.

Sarah Takes Up Birding

A hobby involving nature, travel, history, mythology, ecology, not too much sweat AND I get to keep something called a life list?  Count me in!  

My first true birding outing took place in Laguna Manialtepec, which proved a good place to begin.  The sheltered laguna hosts a mangrove forest, myriad flora and fauna and connects to the ocean.  Our guide Eve, son of owner Lalo of Lalo Ecotours, took us out in an outboard motor boat and pointed out many migrating birds that, like us, have moved here for warmer climes.  I think I even recognized a few of the great blue herons from the rookery outside Christian's place in Vancouver.

In three hours we saw 67 different species including Black-necked Stilt, Northern Jacana, Willet, Long-billed Dowitcher, Elegant Tern, Inca Dove, Orange-fronted Parakeet, Cinnamon Hummingbird, Amazon Kingfisher, Great Kiskadee, Scissor-tailed Flycather, Mangrove Vireo, Woodstork and Great-tailed Grackle.  We also spotted a massive green iguana sunning himself on a dead branch at the top of a tree and another large black iguana sunning himself on a rock.  

Alas, the peregrines do not arrive until December...

Pelicano (Pelican - it is very handy that many words in Spanish are similar to their English counterpart)

Snowy Egret on sandbar separating laguna from the ocean

American Anhinga or "Snake Bird" 

Gabilon Negro (Black Hawk)

Green Heron

Van's PXM Surf International 2008

Today we capped a wonderful week in the beach town of Puerto Escondido watching the finals of the Van's PXM Surfing Tournament (PXM is the airport code for Puerto).  This sleepy town is home of the famous Mexican Pipeline.  As contenders caught waves, the announcer kept repeating "Oh my brother, oh shit, check it o-ut..."  Christian captured this great photo of Lorenzo, the hometown boy and local favorite, after his first place victory.  He beat out competition from Australia, Peru, Chile and the U.S.  Other festivities around the five-day tournament included bikini contests, volleyball tournaments, skateboard competitions, motorcross events and yes, cock-fighting. 

To get an idea of the scale of the Mexican Pipeline:

Playa Zicatela is for pros or people with a screw loose, so we spent early mornings at the smaller and more tranquillo Playa Carrizilillo, known as the most intimate beach in Mexico.  Here the waves were smaller and I could swim and Christian could take a surf lesson. To keep up our strength, we've been happily feasting on coco natural for breakfast and fresh red snappper grilled whole or wrapped in tacos for all other meals.  

While the fun continues, work actually does get done south of the border.  See Christian in his office:

Surreptitious Photos of Colorful Oaxaqueña Women

Jardin Etnobotanico

Centro Cultural de Santa Domingo

(Jardin Etnobotanico resides in the back courtyards)

Francisco Toledo, one of Mexico's premiere living artists, resides in Oaxaca and has been a force in preserving and building up the cultural heart of the city. He is responsible for opening the Centro Cultural de Santa Domingo and starting a ethnobotanical garden on the grounds. (His other projects include the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Oaxaca, the Graphic Arts Institute of Oaxaca, the Jorge Luis Borges Library for the Blind, the Centro Fotografico Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Ediciones Toledo, children's libraries in Indian communities--and successfully blocking McDonald's in the historic center.)

We had planned to attend a tour of the garden on our last Saturday in town. A few days before, I met a new friend Amelia in her salon. During my pedicure, we were chatting about the 22nd Feria del Libros de Oaxaca (the 22nd annual book fair), a two week festival setting up in the streets. When I told her about my love of books, she offered to put me on the guest list for the gala Friday night in the garden, as she is on the board of one of the libraries in town. Of course, I happily accepted.

Alejandro and Amelia

The following night, Christian and I met Amelia and her husband Alejandro in the garden, transformed for the evening event by a large tent, white couches, candles and an incredible Cubano band. During the five course dinner, we chatted with Amelia and her husband (in Spanish) and danced until I turned into a pumpkin at 1:30 a.m. 

Christian and I at the Gala de Feria del Libros

The following morning, we returned to the garden for a sunlit two-hour guided walk through the different species of cacti, maguey (agave) and flowering plants.  I wish I had a stronger background in botany!  For anyone interested, I just finished a fascinating little book by neurologist Oliver Sachs called Oaxaca Journal about his trip to Oaxaca with the NYC Chapter of the AFS - The American Fern Society.  As geeky as it sounds, it was a great insight to the history and flora of Oaxaca.

El Jardin

Sculpture by Francisco Toledo adorned with marigolds

Tiny Flowering Cactus

Massive 1000-year-old Biznaga Cactus

My Two Favorite Women in Oaxaca

These two women (possibly sisters?) are often in the Zocalo selling scarves and woven handicrafts.  I bought a cream scarf from them for $30 pesos (less than $3 US).  I look for them every time we walk through the plaza.

A Very Good Reason to Learn Spanish

This empty bottle of Pechuga Mescal stands as evidence of my cultural immersion into the world of agave. We picked up this particular brand at our Pochote Market, a local organic market on Friday and Saturday mornings. After sampling a few different flavors we purchased the above bottle and enjoyed it sitting on the terrace over a few consecutive evenings. I did a bit of investigation about pechuga and what we thought was the distilling process. My teacher enlightened me with the translation:  pechuga means ¨breast.¨

Apparently, this rare and ancient type of mezcal results from the following ingredients:  wild mountain apples and plums, red plantain bananas pineapples, almonds, uncooked rice....and an entire raw chicken breast, bones and all.  The chicken balances out the fruit, they say.  While I'm not sure I would have chosen this bottle had I understood the distilling process, I guess it isn't any worse than a worm in my bottle.

El Tule

Over 2,000 years ago a sapling shot up and over the years grew into El Gigante, or Arbol de Tule. Thought to be the largest tree in Latin America, this cypress tops fifteen stories. As you can see, the tree dwarfs the church. The day we visited, young girls and boys dressed in white streamed around the trunk after receiving their First Communion.