Food Coma

Before reading this blog, I suggest that you get some visqueen or something to cover your keyboard from the saliva that might drip out of your mouth.

I am writing this dispatch from an internet cafe in Once, the Jewish neighborhood in Buenos Aires. If you know anything about Argentina´s reputation as one of the best places in the world for meat, you know exactly where I am going with this one.

As someone who keeps kosher, I have had very few problems being a vegetarian in South America. You might have to walk to a few different restaurants to see if they have a vegetarian dish, but it´s not that bad. And, to be honest with you, the meat that I have seen so far hasn´t been that unbelievable appetizing looking. That was until two days ago in Salta, the first city I went to in Argentina.

I went to a restaurant with three other backpackers. They all ordered large portions of meat. I ordered the vegetarian pizza (which, for some odd reason, came with ham). Just looking at the meat on their plates, I couldn´t resist the urge for meat that much longer (The only meat I have eaten in two months was lukewarm piece of chicken at the JCC in Quito). So I booked a bus ticket to Buenos Aires, one of my favorite cities in the world and a place I knew I could find tongue-hanging-out-of-my-mouth good meat.

My original plan was to take a bus to a city north of Argentina, but I reasoned that a great steak is worth going six hours out of my way.

I spent the day visiting some of my favorite Buenos Aires sites from my Spring Break trip to this outstanding city last year (Teatro Colon, a protest of the madres de la plaza, the most beautiful water company building in the world, the only kosher McDonalds outside of Israel). I took someone I met while traveling on the Ian Robinson Reality Tour. Then, when dinnertime hit, I booked it to the Mi Parilla Restaurant on Tucuman in Once. (For those who were on the trip last year, it is the meat restaurant around the corner from Hotel San Luis. The waiters carried huge knives on their belts.).

I sat down at the table and skipped over all parts of the menu but one: the meats. Looking at my choices for meat, I would not be able to take myself seriously if I didn´t order a large piece of meat. There was no time to fool around with burgers or sausages. I ordered a ¨tiro de asado¨ (cut of roasted meat) and waited anxiously.

After I finished ordered, three unkempt Israelis walked into the restaurant speaking Hebrew well above the restaurant´s noise level. We exchanged pleasantries as they passed, and they asked me where I knew my Hebrew from and where I was from. The next thing I know is I´m talking Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball (truly a shame that Moni Fanan left the team last week. He´s a Maccabi institution) and about the Red Bull boycott of Israel.

We fill the time between ordering and dinner with conversation, but when the food arrived, I was all business. No fooling around with ketchup. Just attack, and appreciate, meat. I did a number on this animal.

Because I rarely eat meat at home, I understand what it´s like to be a vegetarian. Aside from shabbat dinner, I would almost consider myself a vegetarian. But what differentiates me from vegetarians is that I still crave, and can eat, meat. So, if I were a vegetarian and I saw my friends dig into that meat in Salta, I wouldn´t have the same desire for beef.

Is it weird that I have more photos up about a meal than for Galapagos and Machu Picchu? No, it´s not.

A brief recap

Well, while the photos load, I´ll give you a bit of an update on what I´ve done lately and what the next step is in my journey. Before Salta, I had spent three days in San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. It is the driest place on earth, has the second largest salt flat in the world, and is close to the highest geyser in the world. From there, I took a 12-hour bus ride to Salta, Argentina. Actually, it was a nine-hour bus ride because the bus forgot to pick up seven passengers, including me, at San Pedro de Atacama. So, they paid for a van to take us from San Pedro de Atacama to the the Argentinian border, where the bus had been waiting for an hour as the passengers enjoyed the John Wayne classic ¨Trails of Hate.¨

That night, July 8, we arrived in Salta. The next day was Argentinian Independence Day. So, we (all the backpackers in the hostel, collectively) thought it would be a pretty happening bar night. Even though people were out in the middle of the week, there were no signs that people were out to show their pride for Argentina´s independence. We did go to a bar named after Barney Gumbel from The Simpsons. That was pretty cool.

The next day, I walked through the center of Salta to observe the Independence Day festivities. They´re more into gauchos, Barney the Dinosaur, smiling suns, and blue-and-white ribbons than fireworks. But there was still quite a bit of life. At 1:00, I boarded a 20-hour bus to Buenos Aires.

Jimmy John´s day-old bread is to Ann Arbor as Salon de Té is to San Pedro de Atacama

Like any tourist city, San Pedro de Atacama is obviously going to be more expensive than other places in Chile. And, given it´s desert location with limited natural resources and direct access to fresh food, food will obviously cost more there. But, for a backpacker trying to live on a budget, San Pedro de Atacama is a place where you expect to go over your budget (I did).

But that doesn´t mean you can´t try to stick to your budget.

After completing a thorough check of the city´s restaurants, I struggled to find a vegetarian, or any, meal under 2500 Chilean Pesos ($5) [On a backpacker budget, that translates to gourmet. In Peru, I had gotten used to a three-course meal for $1]. I did find one restaurant that cost just $3 for a vegetarian omelet, toast, and jam.

In the course of my stay in San Pedro de Atacama, I went to this restaurant five times. In fact, when my friends wanted to find me, they looked at the restaurant first before checking to see if I was at my hostel.

Well, I´m being kicked out of this internet cafe.