An incredible weekend

After some due prodding from Nick, here I am again, finally. I apologize for another epic delay in posting, dear readers! Once again there's so much to write about it's hard to know where to start. Here’s the game plan: I'll catch you all up on the work side of things next time around, but for now I’ll write about my latest greatest Argentine adventure. Here goes.

Last weekend was a four-day weekend, because Tuesday (May 25) was the celebration of the bicentennial of the May Revolution of 1810, when the inhabitants of what would become Argentina rebelled against the Spanish colonial government. In some ways Argentina's May Revolution could be compared to the U.S.'s Battles of Lexington and Concord - both were the beginning of long wars for independence from European colonial rule.

Because of the long weekend, my friend Patricio (who I've posted about before - and who I met through Anna, the British TA I’ve been working with) invited me, Anna, and his Argentine friend Lucila to his family's farm in the countryside, 500 kilometers west of Buenos Aires. The farm is where Patricio grew up, until he and most of his family – his mom, younger sister, and one of his younger brothers – moved to Buenos Aires so that Patricio could go to college and still be with the family. Patricio’s dad and other younger brother still live on (and run) the farm year-round, whereas the rest of the family lives in BA during the school year, and goes back to the countryside during school vacations and long weekends, so that the family is all together.

So on Friday afternoon Patricio, Anna, Lucila, and I piled into one car, with Patri’s mom, dad, sister and brother in another, and we all retreated from the chaos of metropolitan Buenos Aires, passing through the massive plains to the west of the city. The family’s farm is literally in the Middle of Nowhere, Argentina: not only is it a six hours’ drive from Buenos Aires, it’s also about 40 minutes from the nearest town. To get to that town from the farmhouse, first you have to drive three kilometers on the farm, just to get to the road – yes, their driveway is 3 kilometers long. Then you drive about 20 kilometers on a dirt road, and another 15 or so on a small highway. The farm itself is 250 hectares, I think, so about 1 square mile. In other words, it’s absolutely massive. Since Patricio’s dad is getting older (he’s in his early 60s, I believe), the farm is mostly run by his 20-year-old brother and one farmhand, who lives in a cabin on the farm. (I assume they also have seasonal workers for the summer harvest.) The family owns about 15 horses, dozens of cattle, a slew of sheep, and an adorable tamed calf named Berta, who’s basically the family dog. Besides the animals, they also grow crops in the fields and have orchards where they grow all kinds of fruit, which Patricio’s mom uses to make (and sell) homemade jams.

Speaking of Patricio’s mom - her name is Marianne - you can’t imagine how much she spoiled us (and her own family, by the way) over the course of the weekend. We had both lunch and dinner with the entire family every day, and for the most part Marianne made typical Argentine meals – a real treat for Anna and me. At the same time, Patricio’s dad’s side of the family is very English by heritage – the house is basically an early 1900’s English farmhouse, built by the family several generations ago – so one of the family’s most important traditions is having a daily, English-style afternoon tea around 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. (Dinner in Argentina is usually eaten between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m., just like in Spain, so a late-afternoon snack is typical for most Argentines anyway – but it has a distinctly English feel in Patri’s family.) Marianne makes a mean pot of tea for everyone share, but that’s only the beginning: we also had homemade loaves of bread, homemade jams from the farm, and even homemade dulce de leche (milk jam), a really common (and delicious) dessert in Argentina that’s somewhere between frosting and the caramel you find on a caramel apple. Un-be-lie-va-ble. I probably gained about 45 pounds over the course of the weekend...but I’m okay with that.

Besides stuffing ourselves with Argentine food and sweets, we also went horseback riding Saturday, Sunday and Monday; herded the cattle on horseback; climbed to the top of a windmill on the farm; milked the cows; fed Berta, whose closest thing to a mom is Patri’s brother Andrés; walked through the massive fields; climbed trees; drank mate (pronounced mah-tay), an Argentine tea you drink from a communal mug; watched the sun set over a lake out on the farm; sat by the fire at night, reading or watching movies with the family; looked at the stars, without the slightest hint of interference from city lights; and basked in the general amazingness of the weekend.

Needless to say, by the end of the weekend the last thing I wanted to do was leave the countryside and come back to the chaos of the city. But I decided that there would only be one chance to see the celebrations of Argentina’s bicentennial. And because Patri and his family were staying in the countryside until Tuesday night, on Monday night I took an overnight bus back to Buenos Aires on my own. I arrived in BA at 6:00 Tuesday morning, slept until about noon, and headed downtown to see the celebrations. I wandered around on my own for a while, checking out the exhibits that filled Plaza San Martín, the main plaza downtown. To showcase the diversity of natural wonders, human demographics, and typical foods and customs you find throughout the different parts of Argentina, each of the 23 provinces had its own exhibit to show off its own unique culture.

After wandering around for a while, I met up with Andrea, Romina, and Santi, three friends I know through work (Andrea and Romina are professor’s assistants at the institute I’m working at) and who I’ve been spending a lot of time with. (I go out to dinner with them regularly, and a few weeks ago the four of us went to a massive zoo about an hour outside of Buenos Aires.) We were planning to watch the massive parade together on Tuesday night, but downtown was so chaotic and packed with people - some estimates said there were as many as three million people sprawled throughout the city center watching the parade – that we decided to retreat from the center, get dinner in a quieter area, and watch the parade on TV. It was sad to miss seeing the parade in person, but it was so crowded downtown that we actually saw more of it on TV than most people saw in person. It was also worth it not to get trampled by the crowds – or get stuck downtown for hours, since the subways were absolutely mobbed afterwards. Despite missing the parade, it was definitely worth coming back from the countryside early to be around for the celebrations. Happy 200th, Argentina.

It was an incredible weekend.

Here's a taste of the weekend in the countryside:

I'm second from the right, next to Patricio.

Watching the sun set over the lake.

Anna, Patricio, Lucila, and me.