Our bus to the airport left at eight, which felt way too early even after an “early for Argentina” dinner.
Arriving at the airport and boarding was a little chaotic. Some airline or airport employees were holding a strike and protest that blocked the bus from reaching the departure area, so we parked a little way back and dragged our luggage to the terminal to check in. Our check-in person was cute - he gently corrected the grammar mistakes we made trying to speak Spanish to him. But then the boarding process was more like squeezing onto a full subway train or something, with little ordering. The flight was fine, although I was surprised to see that we flew over the Atlantic for a large portion of the flight – I thought we’d be over land the whole way.
We arrived in El Calafate well after lunch time and we were all fairly hungry as we’d received only a bag of chips on the plane. The timing was a bit odd, so we ended up getting some gelato, then walking to our next event, wine Tasting at La Tienda de Vinos.
The sommelier, Bernard, was enthusiastic and entertaining. He selected a couple of white wines, a Torrontés and a Chardonnay. All five wines we would taste were made in Argentina, but the Torrontés is the only varietal that was not imported from Europe. Both of the white wines had a lot of flavor but had a sour note that I did not enjoy. Then we had a Pinot Noir which was nice, but quite light like many Oregon Pinots. Bernard wanted us to be aware that Argentina makes nice wines that are not Malbec but, of course, we finished up with a couple of Malbecs - those were very nice. This was all accompanied by some nice bread and cheese.
We had dinner on our own. Yelp gave good ratings to Buenos Cruces, saying it was ‘worth getting off the main road through town’ for the food. So I led a group of seven down a path that drew some doubts… we passed a block where trees were taking over the sidewalks.
Then we went down a dead-end road, but Apple Maps knew about the pedestrian staircase that led down to the “artisan alley”.
There were some nice crafts in the alley. Then we went three blocks past the main road only to find the restaurant was now a gym. Fortunately a person standing nearby heard us talking and let us know that it had moved to the main street. Back to the main road we went, then a bit down the road, only to find the restaurant full.
We wandered back up the main road and eventually found the Patagonia Brewery with a large table open. The beer and food were good and we had some nice conversations.
