Buenos Aires Wines? History and Novelty in the Vicinity

In my previous post, I briefly mentioned the greenbelt that once surrounded Buenos Aires; in the interim, I set about making some inquiries about it. I asked my wife whether she could recall any vineyards from her youth and she couldn’t, but Andrew Graham-Yooll wrote me that, in his rather longer experience, “there have been many chacras [smallholdings] on the outskirts of BA over the decades.”

Andrew cites the example of Tigre and the Paraná Delta, which was a major fruit-growing area – in fact, the riverside market there is still known as the “Puerto de Frutos” (pictured above). He also notes that there were vineyards, for both wine and table grapes, in southern Buenos Aires suburbs like Florencio Varela and Monte Grande, and western fruit and vegetable-growing areas like Castelar, Moreno, General Rodríguez and Luján (all within 25 to 70 km from Buenos Aires), “but all of that has been wiped out by the urban sprawl. My photograph below would suggest that, though I’m not sure of the its precise location – it was taken from a flight landing at Ezeiza, on the capital's southern outskirts.

I wrote, in my previous piece, that the nearest wine-growing area to Buenos Aires was in Sierra de la Ventana (550 km away), but I was wrong. To the north, parts of the provinces between the Paraná and Uruguay rivers – sometimes known as Argentine Mesopotamia (a section of which appears below, from the air) - were a flourishing wine-growing area, but political pressure from the Cuyo provinces (Mendoza and San Juan) eliminated the practice until recently.

Now, in the province of Entre Ríos, near the attractive riverside town of Colón (about 330 km north of Buenos Aires), Bodega Vulliez Sermet has begun to produce a variety of reds, including Tannat, under conditions similar to those in Uruguay. On the west bank of the Río Uruguay, Colón is considerably closer to Buenos Aires than Sierra de la Ventana, though still farther away than those in Uruguay itself. The photograph below is Colón's municipal tourism office, now housed in the historic riverside customs house.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to that part of Argentina, but it’s potentially a worthwhile stop for overland travelers en route to the wildlife-rich Iberá marshes or the thunderous cascades of Parque Nacional Iguazú. It’s also a possible detour from Gualeguaychú, the hearth of Argentine Carnaval (due to begin Saturday, January 10th).

There’s another winery, Corrales Vier, in the more westerly city of Victoria (about 340 km northwest of Buenos Aires). When a sommelier friend of mine tried to contact Vuillez and Corrales by email, though, neither one responded – although Vuillez makes a point of advertising its cabaña-style accommodations. He hasn’t seen wines from either one for sale in Buenos Aires, but did have a sample of Vuillez's at a tasting event several years ago.

Maybe these are mystery wines but, the next time I visit Colón or Victoria, I’ll make an effort to stop.

Fishing the Amazon? There's an App for That

Since I began writing for guidebooks in the late 1980s, I have focused on the area known as the Southern Cone for its shape on the map of South America. It includes Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, parts of Brazil and the Falkland Islands, but I’ve always retained an interest in the rest of the continent and other parts of the Americas. Though my experience in the Caribbean is limited to Trinidad, I have traveled in every South American country except Venezuela, and in every Central American except Belize (which unfortunately refused my Argentine wife entry for lack of a visa) and Panama (though I have changed planes there en route to South America).

In the course of my professional life, I’ve worked mostly with print media, and I still feel most comfortable with traditional guidebooks. That said, I’ve produced my own apps to Argentina and Chile (please refer to the ads in the sidebar) and, in the course of maintaining my interests in the rest of the region, I’ve tried to keep up with other developments in the field. Today I’ll bring one of those to your attention.

Fish Amazon

Nearly four decades ago, I first visited the Amazon Basin on a backpack trip through Ecuador, when I rode a dugout canoe down the Río Napo. Since then I’ve been briefly to the Brazilian Amazon, but do not fancy myself an expert on the area, nor am I a fisherman (though fly-fishing is important in the lakes district of Argentine and Chilean Patagonia, and a few other areas in those countries), but I do eat fish.

Once, in response to charges that he was not a musician, a rock critic asked rhetorically whether “You gotta play guitar to know how to buy records?” While I may not be a fisherman, I like to eat fish and, for that reason, I enjoyed looking through Larry Larsen’s Fish Amazon (link goes to iTunes; also available in Android version), since his knowledge of natural history seems to match his love of fishing. From my point of view, I also found it useful because many of the same fish species inhabit the River Plate drainage, where they can be found on the grills of restaurants along the Paraná and Uruguay rivers in Argentina and Uruguay.

According to Larsen, in an email he sent me recently, “The peacock bass (tucunare) are very small in the Paraná but the suribim (“shovelnose catfish,” pictured above, photo under Creative Commons license) and piranha are very large (30 pounds and much more, and four to five pounds, respectively). Payara, jacunda, trieda, red-tail catfish, pacú (“pigfish”) and the others are in there in relatively large sizes as well.” I don’t know all of these species by their Portuguese common names, but I am familiar with the surubí (as it’s called in Spanish) and pacú.

Not so long ago, the Buenos Aires restaurant Jangada specialized in grilled river fish but, unfortunately, it has closed. Close to my apartment in Palermo, though, diners can still sample pacú and occasional other options at Nemo, which serves mostly seafood. Visitors to the city of Santa Fe, however, will find a much wider selection at El Quincho de Chiquito, which specializes in products of the Paraná.

While I don’t fish myself, two locations along the Paraná come highly recommended for those who wish to test its sediment-laden waters. One of those is Paso de la Patria, about 35 km east of the provincial capital of Corrientes, and the other is Goya, about 220 km south of Corrientes.

Argentina's Six-Legged Invaders

There are countless unwanted Argentines in California, but they keep a far lower public profile than the barras bravas (soccer hooligans) expelled from South Africa during this month’s World Cup. Rather, they’re six-legged invaders who arrived surreptitiously in fruit shipments at the port of New Orleans about a century ago, and spread by rail around the country. Today, Argentine ants (photograph courtesy of Penarc) form mega-colonies that extend from the San Francisco Bay Area to San Diego. Coastal California’s mild climate, apparently, is particularly conducive to them, though they are also troublesome in Mediterranean Europe, Japan, and New Zealand.

According to the Smithsonian Institution’s Mark Moffett, the “Indiana Jones of Entomology,” Linepithema humile is an aggressive species that has displaced or even wiped out native ants to the point that California now has an “ant crisis.” Unlike the state’s native species, Argentine ants do not disperse seeds of indigenous plants, for instance, and are unpalatable to native lizards. They also cause crop damage by encouraging aphids.

In their home range in the Río Paraná lowlands, Argentine ants co-exist with other ant species, but in California they don't always co-exist among themselves - in reality, there are competing colonies at war with each other. They distinguish themselves by scent and, along the borders between competing colonies, their mortality rates can be astronomical.

Those mortality rates, though, do not keep them from being a garden and household nuisance - according to Moffett, the average back yard garden in San Diego may be home to more than a million of these tiny creatures. During the rainy season, especially, they stream through cracks in the foundations or gaps in windows, to the point that it’s impossible to leave a dirty dish in the kitchen sink without attracting hordes of them.

Moffett concludes his new book, Adventures Among Ants, with a chapter about the Argentine ant. He also spoke about the book, and Argentine ants, in a recent interview on the PBS radio program Fresh Air, with Terry Gross.

Raising the River: Iguazú Falls at Near Record Levels

On the South American continent, the mighty Amazon is the king of rivers, and too few people realize that the Río Paraná, which drains an area of nearly 2.6 million square km (almost a million square miles) in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, is a worthy runner-up. Depending on which tributary is considered to be its source, its length is just short of 4,000 km (almost 2,500 miles) and perhaps almost 5,000 km (more than 3,000 miles). At its southern extremity, it joins the Río Uruguay to form the Río de la Plata (River Plate) estuary.

In Argentina, the biggest attraction in the Paraná drainage is the Cataratas del Iguazú, the world-famous waterfalls - more than 70 meters in height and two km across - that form part of the border with Brazil. The major reason for the establishment of national parks in both countries, they are at the moment an even bigger attraction: according to the Buenos Aires daily Clarín, heavy rains in the upper Río Iguazú basin (the Iguazú is a tributary of the Paraná) have multiplied the river’s normal flow tenfold to about 15,000 cubic meters per second. According to the newspaper’s correspondent, the water’s roar is deafening, and the river itself has turned red with sediments carried downstream.

As a sight, the Cataratas are always impressive - the falls draw more than a million visitors per year - and at present they must be truly awe-inspiring. Despite the river’s flow, the ten-day weather forecast is pretty good - neither too hot nor too wet - for seeing the falls. Only a little rain is predicted, as most of water is coming from beyond Argentina’s borders.

Because of the river’s size - the last time it carried this much water was nearly three years ago - this would be an ideal time to go; it’s also off-season, so accommodations prices should be lower than normal. But there’s one glitch: the flow has been so powerful that, for a few days at least, it’s eliminated access to the catwalk that leads to the Garganta del Diablo (pictured here), the single most impressive of the dozens of individual falls within the park. Park authorities expect to reopen the access within a few days, however.

For those fortunate enough to be able to see the falls soon, it makes sense to stay on the Argentine side, where the views of individual falls are more up close and personal - not to mention the bureaucratic nuisance of getting an expensive Brazilian visa for US, Canadian and Australian visitors (even more expensive if done in the Argentine border town of Puerto Iguazú, which has a Brazilian consulate. Brazil, unfortunately, inundated its own Iguazú, Sete Quedas, to create massive Itaipú hydroelectric project on the border with Paraguay. Also known as Guaira, Sete Quedas had an astonishing flow of 50,000 cubic meters per second, making it the world’s largest waterfall in terms of volume.

Pulp Friction: Argentina, Uruguay and The Hague

Just two days before Earth Day, the International Court of Justice in The Hague settled, presumably, a longstanding dispute between Argentina and Uruguay over a pulp plant on the Río Uruguay, the border between the two countries. The Finnish company Botnia built the US$1.1 billion plant in the Uruguayan city of Fray Bentos, across the San Martín bridge from the Argentine city of Gualeguaychú, in Entre Ríos province. Fray Bentos was once the site of the Liebig Extract of Meat Company, which produced canned corned beef that was widely distributed in Europe, and the bouillon cubes known as Oxo; its site is now a museum.

Best known as the home of Argentina’s Carnaval del País (National Carnival), Gualeguaychú has acquired an undesirable notoriety over the past several years as a handful of protestors have, in effect, controlled the border by blocking the bridge over the river. The Court’s Solomonic ruling allowed both sides to claim victory: it agreed with Argentina that Uruguay violated a 1975 treaty by not consulting with Argentina over the plant, but also agreed with Uruguay that there was no evidence that it was causing any pollution whatsoever. Uruguay will not need to move the plant - the most expensive project in Uruguayan history - or pay any sort of compensation to Argentina. It will, however, need to consult with Argentina on any further developments on the fluvial border between the two countries.

The ruling, though, does not touch on the controversial issue of the border blockade, which for four years has virtually eliminated traffic and commerce through what, historically, has been the busiest border crossing between the two countries. In effect, the administration of former President Néstor Kirchner and the current government of his wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, have abdicated control of the border - normally administered by Argentine customs and immigration. Technically, it’s still controlled by customs and immigration, but picketers have blocked the approaches and threatened anyone who wants to travel to Uruguay. Buses from Buenos Aires now have to use more northerly crossings at Colón (100 km north) or Concordia (a further 100 km), adding time and expense to any trip to Montevideo.

The issue, according to an editorial in yesterday's Buenos Aires Herald, is that “Ultimately no court in the world can tell an administration how to deal with the chronic domestic matter of protesters who block roads to voice demands. It is the President who after The Hague must now address the same question pending since 2006: should authorities allow an international bridge to be blocked forever?” According to an article in the Buenos Aires daily Clarín, meanwhile, the intransigent protestors do not appear ready to abandon their blockade, having refused an offer from the governor of Entre Ríos to even discuss the topic.

Meanwhile, Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana has called on the protestors to respect the Court’s ruling, and Fernández de Kirchner is due to meet with newly elected Uruguayan President José Mujica next Wednesday, a conclave at which the topic will undoubtedly come up. It’s still anybody’s guess, though, whether Uruguayans will be able to attend the 2011 Carnaval in Gualeguaychú.

A Trip to Tigre

When Porteños want to get out of Buenos Aires, the closest option is the suburb of Tigre, the gateway to the Paraná delta. Barely half an hour from downtown’s Retiro station, Tigre is a riverside greenbelt city that’s the terminus of the Mitre railroad, a commuter line for the Argentine capital’s prosperous northern suburbs. It’s quick and cheap to get there - believe it or not, the fare to Tigre is 1.35 pesos, approximately 35 US cents!

My Thursday excursion, though, started from the barrio of Belgrano, whose station is closer to my own Palermo apartment. I made a stopover at Béccar, five stops south of Tigre, to see Villa Ocampo (pictured here), the country home of writer Victoria Ocampo (1890-1979). Ocampo, born to wealth and privilege, created the literary journal Sur and entertained world-class writers, including Graham Greene, Federico García Lorca, and André Malraux here, not to mention her own countrymen such as Jorge Luis Borges and novelist Adolfo Bioy Casares (married to Ocampo’s sister Silvina, a poet).

Open to the public, now a museum and cultural center, Villa Ocampo is a Belle Epoque house built by her parents on an enormous lot that once stretched all the way to the river. Today, the grounds are much reduced - though most of us would still consider the gardens enormous - and it’s only a seven-block walk through wooded streets from the train station. It’s best, though, to time any visit for a guided tour, as self-guided visitors may only see the ground level - the first floor, where Ocampo herself slept and her distinguished guests had their own spacious rooms, is otherwise off-limits.

In Tigre, meanwhile, my primary goal was to visit the new Museo de Arte Tigre (MAT), occupying the spectacularly restored Tigre Club (pictured here, dating from 1913). Though it once housed a hotel and casino, it now displays figurative works by Argentine artists from the late 19th to the 20th century, stressing but specializing in landscapes, portraits, and still lifes linked to Tigre. The first-floor terrace that extends to the riverside offers great rivers of the river and its parkland.

Artists represented include major figures such as Antonio Berni, Benito Quinquela Martín, and Juan Carlos Castagnino, but it also holds special thematic exhibits. Currently, it’s hosting a series of three dimensional pieces by “Artistas Plásticos Solidarios en el Mes de la Memoria” (Plastic Artists in Solidarity in the Month of Memory), memorializing the victims of Argentina’s 1976 coup and subsequent “Dirty War” in conjunction the March 24th anniversary, now a holiday for reflection - and protest - in the country.

I’ve not even mentioned my favorite Tigre-area destination, the bedrock island of Martín García, a full-day excursion reached by Cacciola catamaran from Tigre. Once a penal colony, Martín García is still a halfway house for prisoners from Buenos Aires province, but it’s also home to lush gallery forests and some unexpected architectural masterpieces - such as its rococo theater (pictured here).

Catamaran to Carmelo: Whys and Wines of Uruguay

Over the weekend somebody asserted, in my presence, that there were some 40,000 Americans living in Buenos Aires. How exact that figure might be, neither he nor I really knew, but the fact is that many thousands of foreigners, Americans and many other nationalities, have chosen to live in this city as Argentina has rebounded from its political and economic implosion of 2001-2.

Many of those are, if not technically illegal immigrants, at least somewhat irregular. For most nationalities, Argentina does not require an advance visa, though it does limit stays to 90 consecutive days, renewable for another 90 days at immigration offices or the Policía Federal in the provinces (at a cost of about US$80 and the patience to spend a day standing in line). After that, visitors still need only cross the border to a neighboring country - Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay or Uruguay - and return for another 90 days. Some don’t even bother with that, overstaying and paying a fine on departure.

For those based in Buenos Aires, as I am, the easiest escape is Uruguay, as the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Colonia del Sacramento is only an hour across the River Plate by catamaran, making it easy to depart and return in the same day. A day in Colonia is far pleasanter than a day battling the bureaucracy in Buenos Aires, but it can also be cheaper.

Last week, as my visa was expiring, I spent the day in Uruguay but, instead of Colonia, I chose to visit the town of Carmelo, reached by Cacciola catamaran from the northerly Buenos Aires suburb of Tigre. Tigre’s almost 30 km north of Buenos Aires, but Cacciola provides free bus transfers that get you there in time for the 8:30 a.m. departure that gets you to Carmelo (about 75 km west of Colonia) by noon (Uruguayan time, which is an hour later than Argentina). Some years ago, Cacciola operated small launches that navigated the Paraná delta’s scenic channels, but today’s high-speed catamaran gets you there about an hour faster, over open water.

While in Carmelo, I revisited places that appear in the current edition of Moon Buenos Aires, but also visited some new sites, most notably Bodega Irurtia, the area’s most noteworthy winery, for a tour and tasting. Uruguay’s underrated wines, especially its rich red Tannat, are well worth a try; Irurtia’s handsome brick cellars, where local cheeses and snacks accompany a generous tasting, are well worth a stop. By the time my tour was over, around 7 p.m., it was almost time to return to the docks for the catamaran back to Tigre, where Argentine immigration duly stamped my passport for another 90 days.

This post, by the way, does not intend to imply that Uruguay is only worthwhile as a place to renew your visa. After the first of the month, I'll be crossing the river again to spend a couple weeks or so in Colonia, Montevideo, and Punta del Este.

Blowing Smoke in Buenos Aires

No, this is not another anti-tobacco screed - rather, smoke has risen to the top of Argentine politics in an unexpected way. For the past week or so, fires in the Paraná delta, set to encourage new pasture growth, have gotten out of control.

Ever since the Pleistocene, of course, humans have used fire to clear brush and rank grasses to encourage game and livestock or prepare land for cultivation. These current fires, though, may have contributed to fatal accidents on the freeway between Buenos Aires and the Paraná river port city of Rosario. They have certainly delayed flights out of Aeroparque, Buenos Aires's domestic airport, and bus departures into and through some of the affected areas. In the stagnant autumn air, the city itself is suffering from settling smoke that has carried elsewhere in Buenos Aires province and also into Entre Ríos and Santa Fe provinces, and even Uruguay.

For weeks now, Argentine farmers and the federal government have been arguing over rising export duties on soybeans; over the past several years, as the government has limited (and occasionally prohibited) beef exports to keep domestic prices low, many farmers have increased their soy acreage at the expense of livestock. This has led to beef shortages and, combined with the new soy duties, farmer-led roadblocks that left urban supermarket shelves nearly empty - some stylish restaurants even had to restrict their menus - and brought rising prices. The fires may represent an effort to improve marginal pasturelands for grazing - however untimely and inadvisable that may be.

The government, meanwhile, has strongly implied that farmers have set fires as a form of political and economic sabotage and has issued search warrants for some properties - even though, as the Buenos Aires Herald points out, much of the public may blame the government for tardiness in responding to the fires. A lack of rain in this normally humid climate has certainly intensified the crisis but, as so often happens in Argentine politics, the default option is a conspiracy theory.

In the interim, air travel in and out of Buenos Aires remains subject to delays. On the ground, because of diminished visibility, police are enforcing slow traffic zones - an overdue measure in a country where reckless driving often seems to be a national sport and enforcement is normally risible.

The Mississippi of the Megalopolis

Last Friday morning I took a train north to the town of Tigre and, with my friend Cristián Soler (whom I met ten years ago in Tierra del Fuego), we took his father's boat to explore the channels of the Paraná delta. Tigre, in its early 20th century heyday, was the place where Buenos Aires's elite hung out and was home to numerous rowing clubs; Cristián's father's boat is a rowing scull damaged in an accident and then modified to support an outboard motor. Because of its shallow draft, it's ideal for exploring the delta's smallest channels, but when it goes out onto the Paraná de las Palmas and big freighters pass, the waves make me a little anxious.

The Paraná, which with the Río Uruguay forms the Río de la Plata (River Plate), is one of the world's great river systems. Winding nearly 4,000 km from its source in Brazil, it's longer than the Mississippi, which is probably its best analogue. Imagine the Mississippi delta and its bayous within 30 minutes of New York City, and you get some idea of the economic significance of the Paraná, and the recreational resources it provides, in proximity to Buenos Aires.

In a long day, leaving Tigre around 10 a.m., we spent about eight hours exploring the delta's smaller arroyos in what is called the Primera Sección, a relatively accessible part where many Porteños have summer homes but isleños (as the permanent residents are called) have more rustic residences on palafitos (pilings or stilts). The difference between the two is not always clear--in the place in the photograph to your right, for instance, a once handsome house has gone to seed and the soil it stands on may soon wash away. In all likelihood, some isleños will stay there until it slides into the river. Meanwhile, they'll eke out a living growing fruit, cutting timber, and producing crafts for the Mercado de Frutos in Tigre.

The delta is full of wildlife--plenty of birds, plus capybaras (Rottweiler-sized rodents) and even otters, but the bigger animals are in remote areas and harder to spot. The most abundant wildlife, at times at least, are the mosquitos that attack anyone who steps on land, so carry repellent. It's also full of accommodations, ranging from a modestly priced but excellent hostel Marcopolo Inn Náutico to the luxury La Becasina lodge. On the weekends, the delta's packed with people who come to spend a day at riverside beaches and enjoy a barbecue at its campgrounds or restaurants, but the rest of the time it's as if there's hardly anyone around.