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Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires, Argentina – Funny Grave Site and Head Stone

Posted on 09 August 2010 by anthony

Recoleta Cemetery is an amazing collection of mausoleums in the suburb (or barrio) of the same name in the fantastic city of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Argentina is an awesome country, especially in relation to it’s steak!

Today’s Funny Travel Photo is from Luciano Bullorsky of Cultura Cercana (he’s also on Facebook). Luciano is a local guide from Buenos Aires who takes you to the places the guidebooks don’t talk about!  I’ll catch up with him the next time I’m in Buenos Aires!

Anyway, I’ve been to the Recoleta Cemetery before – it’s where Evita is buried.  But I never noticed this Funny Grave Site and Head Stone which Luciano told me about.

What’s unusual about this photo?

Recoleta Cemetery Buenos Aires Argentina Funny Grave Site and Head Stone 837x1024 Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires, Argentina   Funny Grave Site and Head Stone

Well, the statues are of a man and wife. And they look like they hate each other’s guts!

Luciano says ‘I like showing people this grave site – A man sitting in his sofa looking serious into the horizon and a woman is seated in another one, in his back, but they are looking into opposites sites.  They are placed like that because he died first, so the family made his Mausoleum. Some years after, when his wife died too, in her testament she asked to be placed in that way so as to represent their marriage: they spent their last 30 years without speaking a word…they hated each other. So when I always show this to my passengers they have fun, enjoy the story and usually they joke.’

I thought this was a rather extreme way to display how bad one’s marriage is, but it’s piss funny!

Luciano also added a funny anecdote relating to this Funny Grave Site - ‘one day I was with a couple of 60s. They were like a little bit serious and it was becoming difficult to establish a connection, with positive energies, smiles or whatever. So I was waiting for this part (i.e. the Funny Grave Site) to broke the respect and serious behaviour. After telling them the story their was a silence…10 seconds, 20 seconds…and nothing. Nobody laughed and the man asked me to take them to the hotel. I asked them many times what was wrong and I said say sorry in many languages and got no answer. When we were outside the cemetery looking for the car…they started laughing at me..and after some minutes of intense laughter the man told me…It was just that my wife is in a hurry and wants to go to the bathroom, it was the best way of going out quickly.’

So there you go, next time you go to Recoleta Cemetery, don’t visit Evita – visit the grave of the couple who hate each other in death as much as they did in life!

This is almost as funny as this guide on How To Clean Headstones!

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Argentina Wine Tours – Pickle Your Liver at Mendoza, Argentina

Posted on 11 September 2009 by anthony

Argentina is a magnificent country – and when you are there, you should check out many of the Argentina Wine Tours that are held in their wine growing regions.

You can judge how ingrained a wine culture is in a country by simply buying the cheapest bottle of plonk to test how good it is.  I bought one for about $AUD0.80 and it was really good!  If I bought alcohol for that price in Australia, it would be classed as methylated spirits!

You wouldn’t even bother making your own wine!

The Mendoza region, not far from the Chile border, contains around 800 wineries (yes, that’s right, 800) and is a good place to undertake an Argentina Wine Tour.  I tried to visit them all, but I could only manage two.

Wines from Mendoza usually specialise in the red varieties, including the supberb and velvety Malbec (wash down a big steak with one of these).  The San Juan region to the north specialises in white varieties.

But check out the size of this wine barrel I witnessed on an Argentina Wine Tour!  I felt like placing my mouth underneath the tap Homer Simpson style and taking a few gulps!

wine barrel 773x1024 Argentina Wine Tours   Pickle Your Liver at Mendoza, Argentina

‘Yes, I’ll take this one!’

If you want to find out more about the magnificent Argentina Wine, check out Wine Routes of Argentina and The Wines of Argentina, Chile and Latin America.

Other things to do in Argentina after pickling your liver with some fantastic wine drunk on an Argentina Wine Tour - check out the state of their banks, some Beaver Dams, and scoff down a few tonnes of the Best Steak ever!

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Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas/Malvinas Islands Memorial – The Ultimate in Irony

Posted on 15 July 2009 by anthony

The Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas/Malvinas Islands or whatever you want to call them.

They are located off the coast of Argentina in the South Atlantic Ocean.  Malvinas Islands

Some of us remember way back in the early 1980′s, the scuffle that was the Falklands War.  I was only a kid then, and I vaguely remember watching some war ships fire their rounds on TV during the news updates.

Basically, the story is that Argentina invades the Falkland Islands, which are controlled under the United Kingdom.  The British PM at the time, Margaret ‘The Iron Lady’ Thatcher, did not like that and decided to take them back.  After a short-ish fight (a whole 74 days), the English win the conflict.  Malvinas Islands

You can read more about the history of this conflict at the Falklands War page at Wikipedia, or in this book for more detail.

Even today, maps produced in Argentina show the Falkland Islands (U.K.) as the Islas Malvinas (Arg).

Argentina lost a few hundred men during the conflict – and there is a big memorial in Buenos Aires that commemorates the fallen there.

I’ve included a picture of the memorial below. Malvinas Islands

Islas Malvinas Memorial

What makes this memorial ironic is that the Argentine Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas memorial to those who died is literally situated across the road from an English Clock Tower – a gift from the English to Argentina in the 1800s. Malvinas Islands

I took this photo, standing in front of the memorial and this sight was located directly ahead: Malvinas Islands

English Clock Tower

I wanted to point out this irony to the two armed guards who were stiffly standing next to the memorial, but realised from my Kosovo experience they had big guns I didn’t possess.  Malvinas Islands

Other things to do in Argentina – throw bricks at a bank, check out Beaver Dams in Tierra Del Fuego, and devour the Best Steak everytime.

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See Beaver Dams – In South America

Posted on 03 June 2009 by anthony

Beaver Dams. They’re amazing feats of engineering.  But not in a foreign environment.

Like Australia, Argentina hasn’t learnt the lesson of not deliberately introducing animals from other continents that might cause an environmental problem.

Check out the photo below – it’s of a Beaver Dam.  It looks like any other Beaver Dam within North America.  However, this Beaver Dam is located in the Tierra del Fuego region of Argentina, right at the southernmost tip of South America, in a National Park!

beaver dam 2 1024x651 See Beaver Dams   In South America

However, Beavers are a North American species!

Beavers were brought to Tierra del Fuego as a potential source of income via their pelts, but, with no predators and no competition, had become completely feral.

This was probably because most people preferred buying a leather jacket made from high quality bovine carcass caused by Argentina’s meat addiction (See Don’t Cry For Meat Argentina), than one made from a somewhat-unmarketable feral Beaver.

Hence, the Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego inherited a large network of Beaver Dams.  Whilst Beaver Dams are an impressive natural engineering feat of stick inter-twining from the animal kingdom, the Beavers had successfully drowned large areas of trees resulting in a juxtaposition of lush green, wind-blown sub-Antarctic vegetation, dissected by relatively barren lakes of foliage-free tree stumps.

So, these ecological stuff ups are pretty universal then!

You can learn more about how Beavers build their damns from this Discovery Channel Feature – Beavers: Dam It All Anyway.

Other things to do in Argentina – check out the tarnished reputation of their banks, which is worse than those of US banks in this current Global Finanical Crisis.

One day, I hope to see Beaver Dams in their natural environment in North America.

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Best Steak: Don’t Cry For Meat… Argentina…

Posted on 21 April 2009 by anthony

The Best Steak I’ve ever had has been in Argentina. And not via a BBQ competition either!

WARNING: Vegetarians, please stop reading now!

steak Best Steak: Dont Cry For Meat... Argentina...

If you’re a carnivore, and you’re after the Best Steak in the world, then Argentina is the place for you.

Check out the picture – I’m holding an entire set of cow ribs with my mate, the Parilla chef.

Argentines eat truckloads of meat, resembling an evolutionary throwback to some sort of caveman diet.  They eat on average 60 kilograms of beef a year per capita (compared to about 30 kilograms for Australians), working out at 165 grams of beef every single bloody day.  Remember, this figure DOES NOT include chicken or lamb!

Remarkably, meat ingestion has decreased over the years from some astronomical level.  Meat is always cooked the Argentine way – the Argentine barbecue, or the Asador. Salads are an optional extra, always served first before the main meal and eaten on their own, so they do not spoil the immaculate presentation of char-grilled protein on a plate that can barely contain it.

The sizes of the steaks were enormous and I reckon it took me at least a week to crap out each steak. To satisfy my rabid curiosity, I asked a waiter in a parilla steak house just how much steak his restaurant went through a day.

¿Cuantos kilos carnes un dia?’ I asked in rough-as-guts Spanish.

His answer was ‘tres cientos’ – Three Hundred!

Judging by the serious look on his face, he wasn’t joking.  If he spoke English, I’m sure he would have said ‘And how would you like your entire cow cooked, Señor Gringo?’

So let me work this out.  If one restaurant in Argentina char-grills over two tonnes (2.1, to be precise) of steak per week, this accumulates to 110 tonnes of steak a year.   Just one steak restaurant in Argentina, of which there must be millions.  I was flabbergasted when I contemplated how many dead cows that translated to.

Once the bovine beasts reach cow heaven, their presence is not lost on this earth, as the enormous steak diet translates into a colossal range of leather goods for sale.  I concluded from this large collection of evidence there must be some rough-looking colons in Argentina and stomach surgeons were in short supply.

I understood the steak addiction though, as the beef was outstanding – it was the best steak I’d ever devoured. Every single time.  It was the way meat was cooked that contributed to the flavour.  Steak is cooked over hot burning wood coals, creating an appetizing taste.  When served, plates are devoid of any other food material, creating a contrast of flame-roasted tenderloin against barely-visible edge of white serving plate. This created a challenge – you against the steak.  If there was any resemblance of meat left on the plate, the meat won.  It never won with me, but it was a close call some days.

However, the parilla wasn’t solely devoted to bife de chorizo (sirloin) and bife de lomo (tenderloin) steak.  Whole lamb and chicken was split into flat lamb and flat chicken, roasted on open fires burning with a gentle wood flame.

Parilla chefs left the roasting carcass on the slow cooking fire from mid-afternoon, ready for carnivores that night.  For some astounding reason, chefs cook meat at the shite end of the protein spectrum – that offal crap, including morcilla (black pudding, or blood sausage), chinchulines (tripe) and riñones (kidneys).

Regardless, if you spend lunch or dinner at a parilla, you definitely need a siesta to digest the 900 gram monster you have just devoured.  Sometimes, you might need a siesta worthy of hibernation.

If I’ve made you ravenous, check out Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way.

Salud!  And enjoy the Best Steak ever!

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