Beef, beer and bombachas

ARGENTINA

Here we finally are!

We love your buses! Dulce de Leche! Facturas! Asados! Cheap Beer! and Mate!

We have been here a month and are loving it.

To start with we spent 5 days in Mar del Plata, a city 3 hrs south of Buenos Aires with great beaches and nice climate. Here Carolina introduced us to Dulce de Leche - a sweet, sweet caramel spread that you eat by the spoonful if you are naughty! there are different grades of Dulce de Leche, but luckily we had the Dulce de leche queen with us to guide us in the right direction! We also had facturas, little mini pastries that are best bought and eaten the same morning with coffee.

Caros relatives cooked us a bbq Argentinian style on the Sunday and we got to try chinchulinis (cows intestine), matambre (flank), asado (ribs), chorizos and many others that I´ve forgotten the names of!

We´ve been introduced to a new drink that only Argentinians and Uruguayans drink - its called Mate. You drink it out of a hollowed and dried out gourd with a steel straw called a bombilla (pron bombisha) and it tastes a bit like tea except a bit more bitter. Its a very communal drink because everyone drinks from the same gourd and you pass it around after topping up the water. Its great, but it doesn´t have much caffeine so sometimes I have to resort to coffee.

We are now at the farm about 300km from Buenos Aires in the Pampas. The pampas is flat grassland that stretches for 1000s of km down Argentina. It has rich soils great for growing maize, soya, barley and wheat and beef cows! mmmmmm

The farm has a beautiful old house about 100yrs old. It is built in a u shape with a brick patio on the interior u and a wisteria and grape vine covering the patio. It is fabulous at this time of year for sitting under and drinking mates and eating Carolinas lemon cake and doing the occasional spanish lesson. ...

We have been helping Caro set up a vege and herb garden and a chook house, and Jamie has been cutting firewood, and cleaning and patching holes in the ´Aussie tanque´ - which will be the swimming pool. The house seems to be surrounded by birds and wildlife. There is a resident hummingbird that is driving Jamie crazy while he tries to get a photo of it. I think he has taken a real dislike to this beautiful little bird! This is a cantalaria, a very cheeky little bird with a nice song:

He has a wonky wing feather

Sapo - these toads are everywhere and you have to be careful not to step on them at night-time. This one got a bit lost and ended up inside..

A beautiful mariposa (moth) we spotted on the potato plants

There´s a pair of woodpeckers nesting next to the house - very cool to watch them feeding

Sapos hide behing the pots on the patio during the day. Have to move them if the doors are open, or they end up shuffling around the house during the night!

Weve also had many fab bbqs Argentinian style while here, drinking Quilmes, the most well known Argentine beer, and watching the embers cook our beef!

We have been cooking on the open fire 4 nights a week, the weather is soo good. Owls in the trees above us, and hundreds of fireflies flickering in the paddock next door, like crazy christmas lights..

Caro and Facus´ family and friends have been really welcoming, and had us along to their frequent gatherings and asados. They´ve also been patient with our lack of language (Castellano, as Spanish is called here) and have taught us lots of useful slang and insults.

Jamie has been helping Facundo with his weekly dairy farm visits

and also to move the snakes away from the house!

Our efforts to find work have brought a few interviews so far, but things tend to happen pretty slowly here.

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Mañana a El Campo de Familia Gil, 25 de Mayo, Buenos Aries Province, Argentina.

(Morning at the Gil family farm, near the town of 25 de Mayo, about 200km from Bs. As)

0830 Breakfast of buttered tostadas (baguette slices toasted over gas grill) with dulce de leche, (caramelised milk) marmite, (Jamie) or vegemite (Katie). Coffee. Bowl of sugar coated rice puffs (closest thing to muesli available) and rolled oats, with fresh milk from the dairy farm Facundo visited yesterday. Breakfast taken outside the kitchen under grape and wisteria vines. Temperature about 17 degrees. Hummingbird hums about briefly.

1030 Katie and Carolina are clearing weeds and rubbish from what will be a herb and vege garden. Jamie has been digging through the tool shed and discovered some vintage loppers and some rusty files. Drains the Australian tanque (5m diameter corrugated iron tank beneath the windmill - soon to be our swimming pool) a little below the leaks that announced themselves yesterday. Plans tar and fibre bandage repairs.

1230 Katie has dug a new potato-bed, while Carolina has planted fifteen tomato plants in a row in their new bed. Pile of disregarded wire and plastic drums has grown quite large. Katie has moved several wheelbarrow loads of firewood behind the garage. Jamie has been working on the new steps for the pool (from an old children’s slide, filched from one of the farm sheds buried in the wild trees behind the house)

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here's a letter Jamie composed for 'uncle' Gerry Foxley after he featured on NZ news for supporting moves to make nudity legal on Foxton Beach..

La Nudista Asociación de Argentina (N.A.D.A.) Travieso, pero simpatico..

21st Oct 2008

Dear Mr Foxley,

Firstly to congratulate you on your proud and principled display for the rights of nudistas across the total world. The media attencion of your case has increased the issue of naturalism here in Argentina and we believe across the Latin America.

Unfortunately here we suffer the shame of possible criminality upon showing the love for our bodies and those of our brothers in the public places. This horrible situacion must surely be changed and can be achieved by such brave men like yourselves. For this goal we seek maximum exposure to the public profile.

Therefore we invite you to become a representative for our Asociacion. A group of young gentlemen from La NADA are travelling to New Zealand 14^th-24^th February 2009 for to explore and enjoy the freedom of your beachs. We would like you to meet with these men and collect some friendly photographs for the use for media attencion. I hope you will enjoy the company of these gentlemen at the same time.

A representative of our Asociacion will contact you before the La NADA Hombres arrival.

With thanks and joyful expectacions

Jose Manos Caliente

President La NADA