Thursday, December 28, 2006
Christmas
Imagine arriving December the 24th, at 5:30 PM at a gas station, and you want to change the oil of your car…..Only in San martin de los Andes, Argentina…From Junin de los Andes we drove 87 kilometers over dirt roads with scary curves and deep voids until the very sympatic San martin de los Andes. Heavily influenced by German architecture, it serves as a base for another ski paradise; Chapelco. But even in December, when it’s summer here, the temperature hardly rises above 18 degrees.
It is here where I finally changed the oil and filters of my car. Luckily, we are traveling with extra oil, filters, pumps, light bulbs, fuses and other parts, so there is never a problem in getting hold of spare parts. Afterwards, we walked around the small center and tried to find a restaurant for our Christmas dinner, something almost impossible. But restaurant Kaimen was serving a Christmas buffet, and we made a reservation with the owner, and old wrinkled German looking man, who probably escaped the Nuremburg process. He said he was serving home cooked food, and so Kaimen it would be. At midnight, he served Champaign, and all the waiters and cooks came to the dining room, wishing us a merry Christmas. Through a very chilly night, we walked back to our small hotel, where I, before hitting the sack, watched an excellent Christmas episode of the Simpsons.December the 25th, we left San Martin de los Andes at 10.30 AM, and took the Ruta Nacional 234 on our way to the Republic of Chile. Three and a half hours through the National Park Lanin on a mud track that led us along yellow and blue flowers, red fire bush and blue lakes until the Argentine border control.
On our way, we saw whole families camping at lakesides, doing what Argentineans do best: Barbecue. With Capital “B”, because barbecue in Argentine is almost religion. A woman never touches Parrilla, (the Argentinean word for Barbecue), and every man has its own way to light the coals, how to roll the newspaper underneath the coals to lit the fire with only one match, how to season the meat and how to actually grill it. Surely there exists a special way to eat parrilla too, but that I don´t know yet....Hours and hours are spent here just discussing Parrilla. Anyway, after the formalities at the border we drove on, and again, at the Chilean border the regular formalities. We had to throw out our peaches and prunes, because these Chileans are dead scared of all kind of diseases a peach or prune can bring to their country and people. I was asked to open the back of the Land Rover, and when the customs officer saw the mess, he found it quite all right, and went back into his office, thinking of home, his wife and kids and Christmas dinner…
Then it was another two hours on Ruta 215, while the Oscar Peterson Trio was playing on the MP3, to the small village of Frutillar, overlooking the lake and the famous Vulcan of Osorno. There is a pretty modern building at the lake, looking a bit like a mixture between a lighthouse, the bow of a ship and a theater. Inside, to our surprise, was a nice bar. We enjoyed cappuccino in soft sofa’s, reading newspapers and magazines. Afterwards, we visited the art gallery. Later, for dinner I had a German fare; Kassler ribs with sauerkraut. A lot of restaurants here advertise German cuisine with Strudel and Kuchen.
After a good rest, we woke up next morning with heavy clouds and rain falling from them. The volcano, which I wanted to make some pictures of in the early morning light was completely hidden by fog, clouds and thunder, and so after a delicious home cooked breakfast with raspberry cake, French toast and – unfortunately, instant coffee – we headed to Puerto Montt, the largest city in the province.
The outskirts didn’t look too good; old, wooden barracks, stray dogs and dirt, but hey, when it rains, everything looks kind of sad. We decided to find someplace to sleep in the center, so there wouldn’t be the need to walk through rainy mud covered streets. The President Hotel at the harbor looked okay, but we always have the issue of the car; it’s pretty high with the roof rack and bicycles and headlights and stuff. The car didn’t get into the parking, and so we moved on, and very unlike tough travelers and drifters like us, we checked in a comfortable Holiday Inn. It was like an oasis, with even bigger beds and softer pillows than the Pestana in Curitiba.
Anchelmo is an old neighborhood with the fish market, and for us the only attraction in the center of the city, if you stay only for one day. A fish market is always nice to visit and photograph, so we got into a cab, and went there. Luckily, it was already time for lunch, and I was getting a nice appetite for oysters, mussels and clams. Even the sun came through, and gave an special light to the scene.
Little stands with smoked salmon, trout and conger eel, smoked mussels, hanging on a twine like a necklace, jars with escavèche, local cheeses, we saw it all. A lot of little restaurants where the National Health Service wouldn’t come close to, with women in white aprons inviting us in to taste the best merluza, the freshest oysters and simply the best food in Chile. We walked around a bit, and decided that Sonia, on number 20 looked the cleanest to us.
So there we sat down on wooden benches, at wooden tables. There was a menu, but nearly half of it wasn’t available, so we simply asked what was the best to eat here. Curanta, the girl said, and so Curanta it would be. It is a mix of mussels, clams, other unidentified shellfish, cooked in a pot with potatoes, smoked pork ribs and some weird looking pasta, made of bread and eggs. It comes with a cup of the broth, with a lot of cilantro.
It was, in one word, delicious. We ate it with some spicy tomato salsa, and drunk “Te frio”, the cheapest white wine in the house, served in teacups. Now this “cold tea” has some history, and here we go:
From the early days, when the fish market operated, the little stalls didn’t have a license to sell alcohol, so they served white wine in teacups. If you wished red wine, you ordered “Te caliente”, hot tea.
The late afternoon we walked a bit around the center, and went to bed pretty early, as next day we would go back to Argentina again.
# posted by pilgrim of the south @ 3:40 PM 
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Yo escribo en español, Fernanda te lo traducirá, lindisimo relato de viaje, es como si lo estuviéramos viendo...... con sensación de presencia. Me alegro que disfruten este viaje !!!! les mando un beso a los dos!!!! nos vemos en Punta del este?? los esperamossssss
Marta
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Marta
# posted by 
: 4:56 AM
: 4:56 AM << Home
