Walking Tour and Polo Day

This morning we signed up for a walking tour of our neighbourhood and the Recoleta Cemetery which is a few blocks away.

This is a photo of La Mansion at the Four Seasons hotel, where we had the reception the first night.  When Madonna was here filming Evita she rented out La Mansion for a month.

Below is the French Embassy.  Veronica told us that the first secret and universal vote (like we have at home, as opposed to the High Society just deciding who would be president) was in the 1940's and women first voted in 1951.

Dog walking has turned into a job, Veronica was our tour guide today and she said that a dog walker can make $700USD a month walking dogs just for the morning and that the average worker makes $1,000USD a month for a full time job so a lot of people have quit their jobs and become dog walkers, which also is a cash business.

This tree they call The Grandfather, it is over 216 years old.  Its a Fig/Rubber/Banyan tree, depending on where you are from will depend on what you'll call it.

The cemetery is made up of 5000 mausoleums, the richest in Buenos Aires wanted this Cemetery to be exclusive so you had to pay for a lot and then build your mausoleum and depending on where your lot was located the more or less expensive it was. 

The one below is a new family she said - "What happened to the old family?" I asked, she said that you can buy the mausoleum and they expect to receive it vacant, so you have to move your ancestors out and to a different cemetery.  The mausoleums can sell for up to $200,000USD, which is more than an apartment.  What you see on top is just for show and extends another 10 to 15 meters below the earth.

Below is the mausoleum for Eva Peron, Evita (The Lady) she wasn't buried with her husband because he had remarried after her death but when her body was brought back from Italy, where it had been taken in order to try to make the people forget her, it was placed with her family under her family name, Duarte.  Evita was loved by the people because they taxed the richest people and created programs for children and families who could not afford food and shelter.  It was also during her husbands time as President that women were given the right to vote.  After her death from cervical cancer at age 33 President Peron commissioned many books and artwork to commemorate Evita's life and for the people to remember her and all the good she did.  Shortly after her death there was an attempt on the President's life because he and Evita were still so popular for the people, so he went into hiding in Europe and the new President had all of the books burned in a big bonfire that was broadcast on TV and if any reporter or journalist wrote Evita's name they were imprisoned.

After our walk we came back to the hotel and I went down to the pool and did some work while Jay stayed in the room and watched his iPad.  He's getting a cold, and has a sinus headache and a chesty cough.

We are getting ready for our polo event and Manulife had these shirts made for everyone.

Leaving the hotel, within 5 minutes you hit the slums.  There are 50-60,000 people living in the slums, mostly immigrants who cross the border illegally and then have a child.  Once you have a child in Argentina the parents both become Argentinian and then are entitled to free education and health care as well as the child.

It was about an hour and a half on the bus to get to the Polo ranch.  They had a little reception for us with some appetizers and drinks and then we went out to a polo pitch in order to learn how to hit the ball with the mallet.

Once we had practiced with a short mallet on the ground they had us stand on haybales to see how high off the ground you would be if you were on a horse and hit it with the actual length mallet the players use.

Then we went over to another pitch for more drinks and more food and watched a Polo match that was a training exercise for the players.  Apparently these are national level professional players, so it would be kind of like watching the leafs train and play a game against each other.  Every 6 minutes a bell is wrung and the play is stopped and the riders change horses.  Each player has 6 horses ready and they have 3 minutes to go off the field, change horses and come back to be ready to play again.

I really enjoyed watching the Polo - when the game was over we went in for dinner (yes more food and drinking, its a problem) and after dinner we all hopped on the buses and went back to the hotel - it was a really fun event!  Louise said to me, I can see why its such a rich sport - I said well first you need 6 horses...and then a small Argentinian man!  Everyone really had a good time today even though it was a long event, from 2pm to almost 10pm arriving back at the hotel.

Wine Tasting

Today is our optional activities day, I didn't write any notes on the day - just on the wine tasting itself.

We got up this morning and went down for breakfast around 9:30.  Jay is starting to get a cold so didn't want to workout this morning but I made him promise we would do it this afternoon because we have the wine tasting and I heard its lots of food and wine.  So after breakfast we went back to the room and he watched The Crown on Netflix while I did some work and caught up on the blog from the previous 2 days.

We met in the lobby at 11:45am to go to the wine tasting, about a 10 minute drive from the hotel.  We didn't go to the vinyard (which is what everyone thought we were doing) because its an hour and a half flight out of the city, but they have a house in the city set up for tastings and events.  Here we were split into two groups into two separate rooms to sit, sip and snack.  In our group was MaryAnne and Dave, Jay and I, Gabriel and his sister Andrea from Quebec City (Andrea is the one in the heels, Gabriel is the advisor and he is blind) and Mike and Janet (Mike works with the same company Jay does in Toronto only in Winnipeg and his wife is a lawyer). 


Argentinian wines, for the most part come from the Mendoza Region.  The Mendoze region has 330 sunny days a year, it is a desert.  The wine is very dark, which is typical of sunny wines because the sun concentrates the pigmentation, you can't see through it at all.  Because they don't get rain they use artificial irrigation and can give the grapes exactly the amount of water needed.  The whites are generally dry and in Argentina it is prohibited from adding sugar to their wines.  He also said that whites should be served between 8-10 degrees and the best way to cool a wine is in a bucket of cold water with a dozen or so ice cubes floating in it so it doesn't get so cold that you can no longer taste the complexity of the wine.

The poured us 5 glasses of wine starting with a Torrontes.

In Argentina the Torrontes was not fashionable for the people to drink and was primarily exported to the UK and Finland.  It is considered a 100% Argentine grape and became more famous abroad than it has in Argentina.  It pairs with regional foods of the North of Argentina, which are more spicy or Thai, Indian or Vietnamese.  I found it very acidic and grapefruity.

Next we had a Malbec Rose.

Malbec is the National Grape of Argentina, but its not Argentinian and they will now admit that it originally came from Chile in the mid 19th Century.  Argentina and Chile are not friends and compete about everything, so it took a long time for them to admit that the Malbec originated there.  The Malbec grape had been mismanaged for 100 years he said.  They used to use Malbec grapes just to colour wine because the skin is highly tinted, not to produce a wine of its own.

Up to 30 years ago the Malbec Rose was considered a cheap wine, but is now becoming more fashionable. 
The Malbec Rose is aged 4 months in Acacia barrels, which are milder than Oak barrels.  And, like most whites, is not a storing wine so can only be kept up to a year.  It would pair with some cheeses, pasta with a light sauce or appetizers and would be considered a summer wine.  It was my favourite.

Next we had a 2014 Blend (Coupage).

It was a blend of 33% each Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.  They harvest the 3 grapes, Merlot is a short cycle and so is harvested in Feb, Malbec at the end of March and the Cab Sauv in April.  They make all 3 separately in ceramic pools and after fermentation age them in separate Oak barrels for 12 months.  Then the wine maker will blend the 3 according to the tastes and depending on the natural aromaterial.  The percentage will change from year to year.


Next we had the Villa Blanca Malbec 2010.

This one can be a storing wine, it can be stored up to 14 years (2024) and is the grape level 1, which is the best quality of grape that will have the strongest concentration at 26% sugar and up to 15% alcohol.  Its made in small batches and is stored in heavy, thick magnum bottles.  Over time as it is stored it will lose the fruity flavours and will become more smoky, leathery, spicy or peppery.  He says it is 'excellence of complexity'.  He said the best way to do a wine tasting is to do a vertical tasting - taste several vintages of the same wine so that you can taste the difference through the storing process.  He said though that Argentinians are an anxious people and like young wines, because they don't like to store wine in case they won't get a chance to drink it in the future.  This wine had legs, which here they call tears, and it was also very dry.  I actually didn't like any of the wines that we tasted very much, they were all dry and oak aged.  But I really enjoyed a few other Malbecs while we were here.

He said that tannins are like the skeletons of the wine and must be matched properly to your foods.  This wine should be paired with lamb, pork or red meat because the fats in the meat will lubricate your mouth against the tannins.  And aftertaste he said is a wine with a long memory. And a wine with more complexity requires a bigger glass to preserve the bouquet.

The final wine that we had was a Bonarda grape.

The Bonarda grape has an Italian origin.  In 1998 the winery bought a parcel of land in Mendoza that had the Bonarda vines and the owner told the wine maker to till the land and plant Malbec vines.  The wine maker asked permission to keep the 20 hectares with the Bonarda and worked two years in the vineyard and in 2000 produced an excellent quality Bonarda, aged it in French Oak (never American) and submitted it to a blind test at the Verona wine fair (VinItaly) where it won a Gold metal.  The Bonarda is also a storing wine and now other wineries are also offering the Bonarda as part of their vintages - and soon maybe it will become known as the second National grape (also not from Argentina! lol).  It has a velvety sensation due to the gycerol and pH.  It can be paired with pork with a sweet dressing, pasta with mushrooms, Armenian or Arabian food - something relatively strong.

After we were done tasting all the wine they brought out a series of appetizers, sweet corn empanadas, chicken skewers, cheese, ham, proscuitto, guacamole and egg, sushi rolls and a little cheese biscuit with a smoky tomato paste on it that was delicious.  Everyone was buzzing and the little bit of food didn't help - and then they offered you more wine, whichever you wanted as a glass.

As we left they gave us a bottle of wine, not one of the ones that we tried, but we each got one to take home.

Now it was 3pm.  lol.  And we're back at the hotel.  Jay and I did a workout and then went down to the pool area to chill out before we had to get ready to go to dinner and meet in the lobby at 6:45pm.  Jay only stayed outside for a few minutes because it was too bright to watch Netflix on his iPad.  I read for a bit and finished the blog by the pool until about 6pm and then went up to get ready.

We had dinner by the Port, an area we hadn't been to before and had dinner in a really cool old restaurant.  A lot of the buildings in this area, which they call the British area, are brick and the bricks were brought to Argentina as the ballasts in the British ships and used to build the buildings.  Up until 20 years ago the whole area was abandoned, but now it is the trendiest area in the city to live (much like the distillery district in Toronto).

Dinner was good, we sat with Mike and Janet and chatted all through dinner which was another 3 course meal - they sure know how to feed you here.  After dinner we took the bus back to the hotel and went to bed.  As they announced that the first bus was leaving we rushed outside, lol, and saw MaryAnne and Dave and said "Fancy seeing you on the first bus MaryAnne"...then later when we got to the hotel we were the first ones inside and ducked to the left as everyone else was being herded to the right up to the bar for the after party and MaryAnne saw and and walked over saying "Dana and Jason, come on lets to upstairs" as she pushed us towards the elevators to avoid going herself.  I really like her!

Iguazu Falls

Manulife does this Pinnacle conference very well and today was a testament to that - they were so organized and efficient that we hardly waited anywhere and just moved from one zone to another.

We met in the lobby at 6:30am and they had a bagged breakfast for us to eat on the bus.  It included an omelette sandwich, a yogurt and a pouch of granola, an apple and a banana (I had half the yogurt and granola and took the apple and banana in my backpack for later).  There were two groups, one flying out of the Domestic airport (Group 1, which was us) and one flying out of the International airport (Group 2) - the only real difference in our day was that we had only about a 15 minute drive to the airport, so we arrive about 45 minutes ahead of that group to Iguazu falls and we arrive home about an hour ahead of them later tonight (we arrive at 8pm).

They handed out our boarding passes on the bus and confirmed, several times, that everyone had their passport with them, when we arrived at the airport we simply scanned through security and went to the gate and had about 30 minutes to wait before they boarded the plane.  Neither Jay or I had really thought about the plane ride, so we didn't bring anything to do for the 2 hours we would be in the air.  I had my phone, so quickly downloaded a book into my Kindle app and Jay slept because he'd left his phone at home.  I ate my banana on the plane and declined the cookies they handed out.  When we landed at the far North end of Argentina (literally across the river is Brazil), we were about a 15 minute bus ride to the Falls, we had another snack given to us on the bus; an apple (which I ate on the bus) and some nuts, and a care package that included bug spray, sunblock, two ziploc bags and two ponchos - we'd been given packable MEC totes a few days before and been told to bring a full change of clothes, right down to shoes because we will get drenched on a boat that goes down into the mouth of the falls.  Our guide recommended when we get on the boat they give you a drysack and to take our shoes off on the boat and pack them into the drysack as well so that they stay dry, and said it will be like buckets of water being poured on you.

When we arrived at the Iguazu National Park we boarded a private train (like a zoomobile) and bypassed a lot of people waiting for the big train that holds 250 people and has 10 cars (ours only had 3 for our group of approximately 20 plus 4 guides and 2 security) and took the 20 minute train ride to the area where the falls are.  We then had a 1km walk on a raised platform bridge made of metal grating to walk out to the top of the falls. It was very misty, like it was raining, so we got a little bit wet - but we dried a bit on the walk back.  We were so lucky with the weather because it was windy today so there is very little humidity even though we are in the rain forest, also it was cloudy so not super hot.

(At this point, a complete aside, one of the conference guests from Quebec wore platform stilettos and a lace dress...all day we were thinking she would change into flats, but no, she wore those shoes right out to the falls on the catwalk - I guess sensible shoes means something different to everyone!)  

Then we got back on the train, and I ate my nuts while I waited (they really like to feed you on this conference - if you've noticed I had yogurt on the bus, a banana on the plane, an apple on the bus and nuts on the train - and its only 11:45am...and we're on our way to lunch at the Sheraton once we take the 20 minute train back to the station and walk a short distance to the hotel located right in the park. 
On the train we were sitting with MaryAnne and her husband, Dave, and I mentioned that my Mom was coming to Buenos Aires in March on a cruise and asked me how spectacular the Falls are and if the day trip to Iguazu was worth the $1,000 per person the cruise line was asking for the excursion - MaryAnne said "I don't think so, I wouldn't pay that"...I looked at her and said - "Well, you kinda did, for 50 of us"  She looked at me and laughed and said "Yeah, I guess I kinda did" (She's the CEO of Manulife Canada).  After the lower half of the falls though and the boat ride she said it was totally worth it, I'm a little more attached to my money than her though and I don't think its worth that much.

They had a buffet lunch ready for us when we arrived and we had 35 minutes to eat and grab anything we wanted from our totes, which were in a room available for us to access.  After eating we were walking down to the lower falls, which was quite a ways down, first down a concrete path and then down another catwalk and then down some sketchy stairs to where the boat launch was, but there were some photo ops along the way too. 

We showed up the 30 of us and got on the next boat, which really didn't impress the people who were there waiting for a boat but was part of the Manulife Experience.  We got on and had a chance to take a few photos before they said to pack the cameras away in the dry sacks and went into the falls...and I mean IN TO the falls.  We got drenched to the bones, but it was so much fun.  MaryAnne looked at Dave and took her glasses off and said "Is my makeup all running?"  I said "there's no make up left!" at the same time he said "What makeup?!?".

  

After taking the boat into the falls about 6 times we sped 6 km down the river with Brazil on one side and Argentina on the other side to a different launch and walked up a series of stairs to where more drinks and snacks awaited us, along with towels to get us somewhat dry.  Then they had a local group of children come out and sing a song and dance welcoming us to Argentina and they each gave us a beaded necklace which is a hope for fertility but also good providence.  Jay said "I don't want fertility beads, I want the opposite of fertility beads" and someone shouted "Sterility beads!"  

We went from that area to jungle trucks for a drive through the rainforest and we saw a bunch of lizards and a family of capuchin monkeys in the trees.

At the end of the jungle truck ride we were back near the Sheraton and we were given the keys to day rooms where we had 35 minutes to shower change into our dry clothes in our totes before we had to head back to the airport for our flight that left Iguazu at 5:45pm to arrive back around 7:30pm and a short drive back to the hotel.  Before we hopped on the bus we were given yet another snack box, this one with a half a turkey sandwich and some chips, another apple, a pastry (which Jay said was good) and some pasta salad.  I had the sandwich and a few chips and added another apple to my backpack!

When we got to the airport again we were handed our boarding passes and just had to scan our bags through security and head to the lounge.  The guide said that there are only three gates at the airport but in any given day only one was operating and today we would go to gate 1.  We waited about 20 minutes and then our flight boarded - Jay and I were lucky and ended up with a seat between us for this flight (or rather I moved from the middle seat to the aisle seat when no one sat there), so he relaxed stretched out and fell asleep and I finished my book and started a new one.

We went out for dinner across the street from the hotel when we arrived back and had a nice dinner.  The food here has been amazing.

Now we're off to bed, tomorrow we have nothing going on in the morning so will try to sleep in and then go for breakfast and maybe go to the pool for a few hours before our wine tasting tour at noon.