This will be a short blog entry with a bit of general information on Argentina..

The next 5 days I'll be trekking in the National Park Torres del Paine in Chile, so I won't have internet access for quite a long time.

I left Ushuaia on Sunday and spent the whole day to get to the Chilenian city Puerto Natales where you cannot find anything exciting except for travelers preparing for or recovering from there trekking in the national park.

A bit about Ushuaia:

it's the most southern city of the world, about 18.000 km away from the Antarctica. Temperature's all year round betwenn -20 and +15 degrees or so (if I didn't get it wrong) and because it's autumn in South America it was quite wet and cold at the time I was staying there (3 days).

Much snow, rain, many travellers, great couchsurfer (with whom I also cooked 100% home made Sorrentini, some type of Tortellini).
I visited the former jail, 3 museums and went trekking in the beautiful national park Tierra del Fuego (Fireland).

I have no time to get into detail so:
- weather awful
- met some really nice people from Italy and Uruguay
- national park great
- city boring


Okay, now something about Argentina I wrote a few days ago without posting it:


First of all: a ¿Sos vos, Julia, que veo acá? (Argentine Spanish)

I'm sure, that those who enjoyed the Spanish lessons with me at the secondary school in Austria would have problems to understand this question. In pure "castellano español" (=Spanish spoken in Spain) the same question would be (instead of: "¿Sos vos, Julia, que veo acá?") "¿Eres tú, Julia, que veo aquí?" ("Is it you, Julia, I see here?", e.g. when looking at a photography)
To cut a long story short: Argentine Spanish differs from the Spanish Spanish to the same extent like the German spoken in Salzburg and the German spoken in Vorarlberg. For those who have no idea of Austrian dialect I'll explain it another way: Argentine Spanish' grammar and vocabulary differs quite a lot from the Spanish spoken in Spain.
Although I had some difficulties at the beginning I got used to it and started liking the Argentine Spanish :)

Argentine = mate addicts

If you ever come to Argentina, one of the first things you would see Argentines sipping Mate nearly everywhere and nearly everytime. Mate is a kind of tea but it is connected to sime kind of rite; it's not just about drinking tea - it's sharing a drink in a special way and ambiente together with people you like.
So Argentine usually drink it
a) to share Mate and good time with friends
b) to relax whenever there's time and hot water (gas stations eg offer "HOT WATER")
c) (in rare cases) to become more awake (it has a similar stimulant effect like green tea)

When I was in Tigre I also visited the Mate museum where I got really intresting information on the history, production and consumption of Mate. I adopted a text from wikipedia to explain some facts around Mate:


Mate is a traditional South American infused drink, particularly in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, southern states of Brazil, south of Chile, the Bolivian Chaco, and to some extent, Syria and Lebanon. It is prepared from steeping dried leaves of yerba mate (llex paraguariensis) in hot water.

Mate is served with a metal straw from a shared hollow calabash gourd (esp: calabaza; dt: hohle Kürbisschale; russ.: тыыква). The straw is called a bombilla in some Latin American countries. The straw is traditionally made of silver. Modern, commercially available straws are typically made of nickel silver, called Alpaca; stainless steel, or hollow-stemmed cane. The gourd is known as a mate or a guampa; while in Brazil, it has the specific name of cuia. Even if the water is supplied from a modern thermos, the infusion is traditionally drunk from mates or cuias.

As with other brewed herbs, yerba mate leaves are dried, chopped, and ground into a powdery mixture called yerba. The bombilla acts as both a straw and a sieve. The submerged end is flared, with small holes or slots that allow the brewed liquid in, but block the chunky matter that makes up much of the mixture. A modern bombilla design uses a straight tube with holes, or spring sleeve to act as a sieve.


so that's it for now.

sorry for this poor blog entry, time is scarce on that journey


hope you're all doing fine!!!