Glenelg Country School offered Allie’s 8th grade class a summer trip to Argentina. Nearly 20 students signed up, along with a dozen parent chaperones and four teachers. I was eager to sign up with Allie and looked forward to my first (and so far, only) trip to South America. Allie and I extended our itinerary to visit Jill and her family in the Galapagos.
Recounting this journey 14 years later was an interesting exercise in selective memories. This post was primarily reconstructed from the photos we took and the memories I retained. I didn’t take notes on the trip and though I have many scraps of receipts and maps from the journey, they provided little additional information. This was also the first trip I took with Allie but without Barb, which added a layer of bonding and special memories, and it was great visiting Jill in the Galapagos. The journey as a whole was terrific, one of the highlights of my life mainly for the chance to see new places and share time with Allie.
Monday, June 9 – Baltimore to Buenos Aires
We met the group at Baltimore Washington International Airport and flew Delta Airlines to Atlanta then on to Buenos Aires. The flights were long but not eventful. We left at 5:25pm on Monday and arrived in Buenos Aires at 7:45am the next day. It was odd to travel so far and only change one time zone.
Logistically, we were assigned to smaller groups under the guidance of one of the GCS teachers. Allie and I were grouped with Miss Maragakes (Allie’s favorite) along with her close friend, Sydney. Part of my assignment was to look after Sydney on behalf of her parents, Faith and Rick (mostly Faith) who could not take the trip. Ellen Moxley quickly ditched her family to hang out with Allie and Sydney, so effectively she was a member of our group, too. I didn’t know the other kids or the Harris family very well before the trip, but we all got to know each other pretty quickly through the week. A whole set of little alliances and rivalries played out through the trip, partly generated by the kids but just as much by the parents. Fun!
I discovered that going on a school trip is more complicated (for better and worse) than going on a standard tour with strangers. There’s a whole different level of group dynamics between the kids, parents and teachers based on years of knowing one another. Those dynamics played out during the trip and carried forward to life back in Howard County and future academic years. It was something I didn’t expect and haven’t really experienced since, but it helps explain why school trips can be so formative and memorable. Witness my school trip to Manila and Barb’s ski trips in Germany.
Tuesday, June 10 – Buenos Aires
We met our Argentine tour guide and bus and went directly to the misleadingly named Hotel Dazzler Tritone, a budget hotel whose only merit was being centrally located in town. We were not dazzled by the hotel or our rooms, but we weren’t there to luxuriate in the hotel anyway. It was quickly back on the bus for a city tour.
We started at Plaza de Mayo, the political heart of Buenos Aires. We dutifully admired the Casa Rosada (Pink House), home of the President, the Cabildo (City Hall), and the Metropolitan Cathedral, though we didn’t know much and learned little more about any of them. We took note of a number of signs and protestors camped out in the square (the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) seeking details of their disappeared sons. There were also signs lamenting the loss of the Malvinas (Falkland Islands). There was a lot we didn’t know. Our guide didn’t help a whole lot.
Were they really washing windows?
The tour bus stopped for us to take a short walk in the colorful La Boca section of town. Buenos Aires is made up of a number of distinct neighborhoods, each with its own character, evidently. We drove onward through San Telmo, Puerto Madero and La Recoleta, among others, though their distinctions didn’t really register in bus ride. Buenos Aires generally struck me as a very European city, quite pleasant but also quite large and not easy to navigate on our own.
We were impressed by the flower sculpture in the United Nations Park. This mechanical sculpture by Eduardo Catalano opens, closes and moves with the sun, thanks to construction assistance from Lockheed Martin. It was an interesting public-private hybrid of art and technology that evidently has worked on and off since it first bloomed in 2002.
I don’t recall specifics of dinner that night, but I think this first evening was when we had our first injury of the tour. One of Allie’s classmates, Shiv, was very excited to be on his own, literally bouncing between the beds in his room when he miscalculated and cracked his head open on the bed frame. Fortunately, one of the Mom chaperones had some nursing experience and was able to mend him sufficiently but there was a concussion-watch that evening. I wasn’t directly involved with any of this but we all heard about it the next morning.
Wednesday, June 11 – Buenos Aires
Today’s focus was Argentina’s gaucho culture with a visit to Santa Susana Ranch about an hour our of town. The kids (and the adults, for that matter, though I chose not to) got the opportunity to ride horses around the wooded areas of the ranch. Some of the kids had more experience with horses than others. Ellen hopped right on and felt at home. Allie was more cautious and ended up with a horse that mostly just wanted to stop and eat. Shiv, already our trip’s problem child, let out screams of terror and joy as his horse galloped off into the woods. Eventually he came back unharmed, thankfully.
After the horse rides, we toured more of the ranch, including the gift shop where the girls were introduced to mate, the Argentinian herbal drink. They were not big fans. None of us were though the little containers with strainers and metal straw were intriguing.
Later, it was time for a proper Argentinian barbecue with great hunks of very tasty meat and sausage. We were introduced to chimichurri sauce accompanying the meats and I was immediately a fan; the meats themselves were a little tough and overcooked but chimichurri made everything better.
There was also a folklore show featuring lots of stomping dancing. The gaucho dancing, evidently called malambo (see NY Times article with more detail) seemed more German than I expected, a sort of cross between clogging and flamenco. Definitely very assertive and energetic. A little went a long way.
Finally, the ranch hands put on an impressive show of proper gaucho riding involving a variant of jousting, galloping at high speed to put a small pin in a moving target. The photo doesn’t do it justice.
It was a good, full day and most everyone slept on the bus ride back to the Dazzler.
Thursday, June 12 – Buenos Aires
Our final day in Buenos Aires featured a full-day excursion to Tigre, including boat rides along innumerable channels of the Paraná Delta. This first involved another lengthy bus ride, documented by this short video Allie made of Sydney and Ellen. Why, I don’t know.
After the bus we boarded a slow but reasonably comfortable boat to chug through the Parana Delta tributaries. Parts of it reminded me of touring the Intracoastal Waterway in Florida with lots of expansive homes and pleasure boats tied to docks. Other parts seemed more like Amazon jungles and mangrove swamps.
Eventually we came to riverside estate where we stopped to have lunch and took a group photo.
In the evening, we had a final Buenos Aires dinner and show at a tango restaurant. Or I guess more properly, at a restaurant that featured a tango ensemble, a final dose of Argentine culture. We had a good meal, watched the tango dancers and enjoyed the music. I have to admit I wasn’t exactly entranced by the tango dancing. It looked like a lot of work and not especially romantic despite its reputation.
Friday, June 13 – Buenos Aires to Iguazu Falls
We caught a 10am flight from Buenos Aires to Iguazu (technically, the town of Puerto Iguazu though we didn’t see much of the town at all), about 90 minutes away on the borders with Brazil and Paraguay. We checked into our hotel, the Raices Esturion, and promptly loaded up for the afternoon’s adventure in the Iguazu Forest. We took quasi-military trucks for about 30 minutes over extremely muddy, rutted roads through some of the poorest areas we’d seen until we got to a jungle stopping point. It was like going back in time.
Once we got out of the vehicles the guides rigged us up with rappelling gear. We were all a bit nervous about what was coming next. Allie and many of the kids had experience rock climbing and rappelling, but most of the adults did not, and evidently there was no other way to where we were going other than rappelling. Once suited up, we walked down a very steep, muddy incline which felt like it would have been easier to rappel down but we were just getting started.
Sydney, Allie and the others rappelled down the 30-foot cliff one by one. It took quite a while but we all made it. Recounting this 14 years later, I’m honestly not sure if I rappelled as well — I think I did but I’m not sure. Thankfully, there are no photos. In any case, whether I did it or not, it was not my favorite experience and I’ve repressed it if I did. As I think about it, I believe they must have offered the unwilling adults a way to walk down; I think I would recall more squealing from the various adults if they made everyone do it.
Video of Mr. Bernstein rappelling down. I don’t know how to rotate the video to make it so he’s going in the right direction.
At the bottom of the rappel, we were rewarded with views of several waterfalls, a foretaste of what we would see the next day. We walked through the forest until we came to a clearing with a view of the Parana River and Brazil on the other side.
It was back on the trucks for another short ride to a zipline location. This time I definitely opted out, but Allie and most of the kids climbed up the rickety stairs for a relatively short zip through the treetops.
Videos of zip lining.
When all was said and done, we’d had a fine, adventurous afternoon. We were happy to head back to the hotel to shower, change and have a good meal.
Saturday, June 14 – Iguazu Falls
This was our day to actually see Iguazu Falls. I thought Iguazu was the world’s largest by volume but Wikipedia says it’s #9, behind Niagara even. I find that hard to believe. I didn’t really know what to expect — Allie, Barb and I had seen Niagara Falls and I thought that was impressive, but Iguazu was much more massive, a total of 275 waterfalls well over a mile in width.
We started with a train ride from the parking area to a long walkway heading to the Devil’s Throat, or Garganta del Diablo, the heart of the falls.
The Devil’s Throat walkway started out calmly but after a lengthy stroll we started to hear the roar of the water building, building, then building some more. The viewing platform seemed like it was in the middle of the massive horseshoe of the falls. It was really quite overwhelming, but with all the mist it was hard to get a full sense of the scale of the falls…just that we were in the midst of the world’s largest washing machine on full rinse cycle.
The river just seems to fall down a hole.
It’s impossible to convey the sense of scale in a single photo, especially in the days before my cell phone’s panorama setting. The video is better, and includes the roar of the falls.
I think this was supposed to be a photo but I forgot to take the camera off the video setting. It worked out anyway. “Say cheese!”
I thought once we’d seen the Devil’s Throat we were more or less done, but the day was just beginning. We headed to another series of walkways that covered a much broader expanse of the falls. These Upper Falls walkways gave a better sense of the incredible scope of Iguazu…and you couldn’t even see the Devil’s Throat area from here. It was like a dozen Niagaras spread across the horizon. There were multiple vantage points to shoot pictures and we tried them all.
From the Upper Falls, we then went down for a look from below. Get the hoods back on.
A little nature along the walkways.
We exited the lower falls platforms via the small path along the river, offering a few more spectacular views.
We next gathered for a high speed boat ride to the falls. I put my camera away as it was guaranteed to get wet. It would have been hard to get good photos anyway given the speed of the boat and the mist in the air, but the ride was fun.
We headed back to the hotel, wet, tired but exhilarated. It had been a stellar day, a true once-in-a-lifetime experience that exceeded my expectations. I think the reason it remains so special in my memory is that the day kept unfolding in new chapters, one highlight after another. It was far beyond the typical tourist experience of seeing a famous sight for a few minutes and then being done. “Overwhelming” is the word that best describes Iguazu Falls.
Saturday, June 15 – Iguazu to Buenos Aires to Mendoza
We were supposed to fly from Iguazu to Bariloche (via Buenos Aires) for two full days in the Andean resort area comparable to the Alps. I’d been especially looking forward to this segment of the trip. Mom and Dad had long sung the praises of Bariloche; Dad had heard of it as an especially beautiful place for trout fishing and long wanted to visit. They finally did so in their one retirement trip to South America in the 1980s and it sounded quite lovely. Our Argentina Itinerary shows what we were supposed to visit in Bariloche.
Unfortunately, we learned that a volcano eruption in Chile was spewing so much ash in the air that all flights in and out of Bariloche were suspended. There was a chance we could make it but we wouldn’t know for sure until we returned to Buenos Aires. We caught a morning flight from Iguazu. I don’t think the photos below were staged; I believe everyone was pretty well exhausted after our two days in Iguazu. Well…maybe Sydney was faking it — she seems to have a bit of a smile going on.
By the time we arrived in Buenos Aires it was clear there was no way we would be able to go to Bariloche in the next couple of days. To their credit, our tour organizers (whoever they were…I don’t know which company we used) scrambled and pulled an alternate itinerary out of their hat. They gave us a few hours to kill in Buenos Aires while they made arrangements, then brought us back to the airport for an afternoon flight to Mendoza.
For the couple of hours in Buenos Aires, we went to an area with a large open air antiques market, food stalls and musical entertainment, most likely the Feria de Recoleta. We watched a tango performance and wandered the stalls for souvenirs. I don’t remember eating anything which seems unusual for me. Maybe we weren’t there all that long. Or more likely they took us to a restaurant to fill some time. I remember going all as one group to a place in Buenos Aires in the middle of the day, and perhaps this was the day.
Later in the afternoon we were on a plane to Mendoza. We knew nothing of Mendoza other than it was described to us as the home of Argentina’s wine industry which was enough of an enticement to the adults in the group. We were fully in the hands of our tour company to find things for us to do for a couple of days and had no idea what to expect.
Sunday, June 16 – Mendoza
They found us a decent hotel in Mendoza but I don’t have notes of which one. With no pre-arranged meals, everything was a little more haphazard than it had been the first few days on the tour, but we all made do. In the morning, our first stop was at a gas station where we could grab some basic necessities like water, coffee, snack foods and pastries for breakfast. I was surprised to see that the pumps at the gas station were for compressed natural gas (CNG) and that many of the Argentine cars and trucks were retrofitted with cylindrical tanks to use it. It’s an alternative fuel that is more widely used around the world than I realized but has never caught on in the U.S.
We had a morning bus tour of the city though honestly I don’t remember seeing much of the city. Our tour mainly focused on the General San Martin Park, a large park dedicated to General Jose de San Martin. It was quite impressive but there’s only so much value to gain from riding around it in a bus.
We drove to a high point in the park to the Monument to the Army of the Andes. The guide tried to give us the basics of Argentine history and the role of San Martin but I’m afraid most of it went in one ear and out the other. We did take advantage of the monument for group photos.
To the delight of the kids, we stopped at a McDonald’s for lunch. A lot of the menu items were unexplainedly “No Disponible” (not available) but it didn’t much matter as long as there were Quarter Pounders with Cheese.
To the delight of the adults, our next stop was the Zuccardi Winery. This large family operation was one of Argentina’s biggest when we visited. Since then, they’ve expanded their operations and were voted the World’s Best Vineyard in 2019 and 2020 by at least one source. They gave us a full tour followed by tastings of wine for the adults and olive oil tastings for those under 18. It’s good to be an adult. The wines were quite nice; I’ve had an affinity for Argentine wine ever since but find that I rarely spring for the relatively expensive Zuccardi label. Maybe I’ll do it more often now for old times’ sake.
Monday, June 17 – Mendoza
We had one more full day in Mendoza and didn’t know what to expect. The tour guides said we would go to a nature park which sounded fine but a little vague. We took a long ride, more than an hour through dry, dusty foothills toward the Andes.
The land started out brown and desolate but things got prettier as we got closer to the mountains. As we rose above the dusty plain the air became a sparkling clear blue and the Andes loomed white in the distance.
Eventually we passed a reservoir and came to our destination, the base camp for Argentina Rafting Expeditions (TripAdvisor). This was a surprisingly large and modern operation that offered a variety of outdoor adventures.
We were given the option of activities in the morning: going horseback riding or trekking and rappelling. Allie chose to go horseback riding first. They went off for a couple of hours riding through the foothills. I’m sure it was pretty, but we didn’t get any photos of that journey.
Sydney and I chose the trek and rappel, though I reserved the option not to rappel. This involved about a 45-minute hike to a cliff by a small waterfall. Everyone had the chance to rappel down the approximately 50-foot cliff. I said “No, thank you” but became the designated photographer for the group so I have a lot of shots. I will spare you some; this is but a sample.
The rappellers had to climb to the top of the cliff which was a small challenge in itself. I went with them to the top and was immediately convinced that I made the right decision not to rappel down. But to their credit, most everyone else did.
Some highlights of the rappelling shots, including Sydney’s.
Plus a video…why I happened to get Jim Moxley and no one else, I’m not sure.
The trek back was equally long and hot but a bit prettier.
After the trek and a bite to eat, I followed Allie and the others students as they headed off to zipline (the adults were not invited to zipline which was probably a good thing). The place actually had a number of impressively long zip lines set from one hill to another.
The place had a professional photographer with a good telephoto lens who sold us some of his shots so we have these nice ones of Allie with the mountains in the background.
This was an unexpectedly fun and adventurous day, especially since it was pretty much an impromptu time-filler. Our two days in Mendoza were at least as much fun as Bariloche likely would have been. I’d still like to see Bariloche someday, but I’m very glad we got the chance to see Mendoza. It’s a bit of a hidden gem in Argentina’s tourist route.
Tuesday, June 18 – Mendoza to Buenos Aires
We caught a morning flight back to Buenos Aires and the rest of the group headed directly back northward toward home. Allie and I said our goodbyes at the airport then caught a cab into town for one more day and evening in Buenos Aires. I’d booked a room at the Tryp Hotel, much nicer and more modern than the Dazzler. Allie and I headed out to better explore the downtown area of Buenos Aires.
We came across the Gringo featuring “American” and other hot dogs in varieties that we had never heard of. Allie and I couldn’t resist the little treats and they turned out to be delicious. America should indeed have hot dogs with all these toppings! We also encountered the Palace of French Fries (“El Palacio de la Papa Frita”), a restaurant that seemed to have Barb’s name on it. We couldn’t resist taking a photo though we did resist actually having any fries after filling up on hot dogs.
At the end of the day, for our final meal, we sought out a proper Argentinian steak restaurant. Between TripAdvisor and our hotel concierge, we settled on El Establo Parrilla where we had nicely cooked steaks with chimichurri and the works. A fitting end to our Argentinian adventures.
Wednesday, June 19 – Buenos Aires to Guayaquil, Ecuador
For our final morning in Buenos Aires, we sought out the Cafe Tortoni, the most famous old cafe in the city. On our way, we encountered a street protest/march. It was a little chaotic and I’m not sure if it was an entirely legal protest. We were happy to duck into the Cafe Tortoni where things seemed calmer. We couldn’t afford to get involved in a domestic confrontation because we had flights out that afternoon to take us to Ecuador.
There was no way to get to the Galapagos in a straight shot from Buenos Aires, or even in the same day, so we arranged to spend the night in Guayaquil, Ecuador. We caught an afternoon flight, first to Santiago, Chile, then onward to Guayaquil. We bid hasta luego to Argentina, had an uneventful stop in Santiago to change planes (I can’t really say we’ve been in Chile because we never got beyond the transit lounge) and arrived around 9pm at our hotel, the thoroughly acceptable Hampton Inn Guayaquil. It felt too late and we were too tired to officially explore Guayaquil. Instead, I braved going across the street to snag a couple of meals from Kentucky Fried Chicken which we enjoyed in the hotel room before collapsing.
This class trip to Argentina turned out to be one of the most enjoyable vacations I can remember taking. The days at Iguazu Falls and in the mountains near Mendoza were particular highlights, not least because I didn’t have especially high expectations for either day but was awed by the sights and enjoyed watching Allie soak in both places with her buddies. I was pleasantly surprised that Buenos Aires felt like a comfortable Mediterranean city, a mix of Italy and Spain, I somewhat ashamedly say from my white American vantage point. I would like to someday go back and spend more time there, plus I’d like to finally see Bariloche and the southern Alps.
The package price for the trip at $2,800 per person including airfare was not bad. The meals together with the other parents were nothing spectacular but the wine was cheap, the evenings enjoyable and there was no particular impetus to outspend or show off to one another. I didn’t necessarily get along with all the parents but found several I could spend time with and could usually avoid the others as needed…and vice versa, I’m sure. The kids were generally well-behaved and there was a minimum of interpersonal dramas. It was a no-pressure tour; we didn’t really learn a whole lot about Argentina’s history, but we had a good time and all made it out alive. Plus, we had another leg of our own journey: onward to the Galapagos!
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