Destination: Argentina
What We Loved This Week: Twitter, Portland’s Cheap Eats, ‘Before Sunrise’ and More
by World Hum | 03.13.09 | 2:18 PM ET
Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days:
Valerie Conners
Trip-planning via Twitter and the fabulous tweeps following @worldhum. I’m heading to Buenos Aires in April and have been posting questions out to our twitterverse of followers, looking for tips on sights, food, estancia tours and more—the response has been so warm and incredibly helpful. What an amazing resource. Some great ideas have crossed my path and are making their way into my itinerary.
Eva Holland
I watched one of my favorite travel movies, “Before Sunrise,” again for the first time in a couple of years and was thrilled to find that none of the crazy, spontaneous magic of Jesse and Celine’s one night in Vienna had worn off. Here’s a classic sequence:
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Yahoo! BuzzBest Cities to Drink Coffee
by Terry Ward | 03.12.09 | 10:33 AM ET
REUTERS Terry Ward takes a look at seven of the best cities in the world to sit and sip
Leave Home Without It
by Tom Swick | 02.19.09 | 10:07 AM ET
Contemplating and celebrating the world of travel
Argentina: Home to ‘The World’s Most Annoying Economic Crisis’
by Michael Yessis | 12.03.08 | 4:15 PM ET
There’s a coin shortage in Argentina, and it’s driving people in the country bonkers. It’s particularly acute in Buenos Aires. Joe Keohane explains in a story for Slate:
Everywhere you look, there are signs reading, “NO HAY MONEDAS.” As a result, vendors here are more likely to decline to sell you something than to cough up any of their increasingly precious coins in change. I’ve tried to buy a 2-peso candy bar with a 5-peso note only to be refused, suggesting that the 2-peso sale is worth less to the vendor than the 1-peso coin he would be forced to give me in change.
A benefit for some travelers: “Subway employees are occasionally forced to wave commuters through because they are out of coins,” Keohane writes.
New Travel Book: ‘On a Hoof and a Prayer’
by Frank Bures | 06.04.08 | 10:51 AM ET
Full title: “On a Hoof and a Prayer: Exploring Argentina at a Gallop”
Author: Polly Evans
Released: April 29, 2008
Travel genre: Larkish travel, equine travel
Territory covered: Patagonia, Argentina
Che Guevara: Revolutionary, Icon, ‘the Guy Who Invented Those Mojitos’?
by Jim Benning | 06.02.08 | 12:13 PM ET
Uh, something like that. In Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, Ben Ehrenreich reflects on Che as pop icon, Steven Soderbergh’s Che and “Chevolution,” an intriguing new documentary about the famed Alberto Korda photo.
Doing the Shoddy-Journalism-Charge Tango*
by Jim Benning | 04.02.08 | 11:00 AM ET
The Argentine Post details similarities between a March 16 New York Times story about Buenos Aires’ expat scene and a Jan. 15, 2007 Newsweek piece.
* Updated, 11:52 a.m. ET: We should note that a Times editor has responded, saying there was “no plagiarism at work” while acknowledging problems with the article.
All Hail ‘The Burrito King of Argentina’
by Jim Benning | 12.03.07 | 10:43 AM ET
In our ongoing quest to chronicle the spread of Mexican food —Tex-Mex, Cal-Mex, you name it—around the globe, we note the rise of the humble burrito in Buenos Aires. At The California Burrito Company, which was co-founded by a 24-year-old expat from California, eating instructions are posted on the wall: “Pull back the foil wrap as you consume the burrito.” There’s even talk of expanding to Montevideo.
Photo by rick via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
Where in the World Are You, Amy Scott?
by World Hum | 10.24.07 | 12:08 PM ET
The subject of our latest nearly up-to-the-minute interview with a traveler somewhere in the world: Amy Scott, a freelance editor. Her response landed in our inbox last night.
Where in the world are you?
Peru, Chile Clash Over New Map’s Borders
by Michael Yessis | 08.15.07 | 10:19 AM ET
Anyone else got an issue with Chile’s borders? Last year we noted that Argentina produced a tourist map claiming a disputed area with Chile. Now Peru has published a map in its official newspaper, El Peruano, that encroaches on what Chile believes is its “fishing-rich portion of the Pacific Ocean,” reports the AP. The dispute, according to the story, stems “from a war fought more than 120 years ago.” That would be the War of the Pacific, in which Chile captured, among other things, Bolivia’s former coastline. It’s becoming a big issue. Chile has already summoned its ambassador from Peru, and Peru has plans to bring the issue to The Hague’s International Court of Justice.
War Tourists Descend on Falkland Islands
by Michael Yessis | 08.07.07 | 12:17 PM ET
Twenty-five years after Argentina and the United Kingdom fought for their control, the Falkland Islands, or Las Malvinas as they’re known to Argentinians, are the latest destination to get a boost from war tourism. More than 900 people died in the 73-day war. According to the AP, most visitors are drawn to the sites of the fiercest fighting: Mount Longdon and Mount Tumbledown. Earlier this year, we noted El Salvador’s entry into the war tourism business.
Tourist Map Puts Argentina-Chile Relations On Edge
by Michael Yessis | 09.06.06 | 6:41 AM ET
It’s an icy chunk of land at the bottom of the continent, and Argentina and Chile both want it. Or at least some of it. But which country actually gets it has been in dispute since 1998, when the governments of Argentina and Chile stated that a disputed border area in the Andes Southern Ice Field would be depicted as blank until the two countries reached an agreement about where the boundaries should be drawn. All remained calm—and blank—until Argentina recently produced a tourist map with the disputed area within its borders. Chile didn’t like that, so it registered an official complaint with Argentina. According to a MercoPress piece, the countries are trying to minimize the episode. However, a Reuters story says that the incident has inflamed already tense relations between the countries.
Inside the Life of a Buenos Aires Tango “Taxi Dancer”
by Terry Ward | 08.01.06 | 5:13 PM ET
The New Che Play: “School of the Americas”
by Jim Benning | 07.10.06 | 2:12 PM ET
No. 21: “Road Fever” by Tim Cahill
by Rolf Potts | 05.11.06 | 9:54 AM ET
To mark our five-year anniversary, we’re counting down the top 30 travel books of all time, adding a new title each day this month.
Published: 1991
Territory covered: Tierra del Fuego to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska
A founding editor of Outside magazine, Cahill has been credited with revitalizing adventure writing—a genre that had previously been confined to breathless, semi-fictional tales of danger in the pages of low-culture men’s magazines. The tongue-in-cheek titles of Cahill’s early essay collections—“Jaguars Ripped My Flesh”; “A Wolverine is Eating My Leg”; “Pecked to Death by Ducks”—are a nod to his pulpy precursors, but his writing is the opposite of pulp: informed, nuanced, self-deprecating, and frequently laugh-out-loud funny. Road Fever, Cahill’s only book-length travel narrative, chronicles a 15,000-mile dash to set a world record by driving overland across the Americas in less than 24 days. In many ways, it’s an anti-adventure book, since a large portion of the tale documents the process of making plans and procuring corporate sponsorship—but this says a lot about the competitive, publicity-driven, and weirdly postmodern state of post-Exploration Age adventure. The author’s partner in the journey is professional endurance driver Gary Sowerby, and together the duo deal with fatigue, dangerous roads, stubborn bureaucrats—and an overabundance of sponsor-supplied pudding—as they race north into the pages of the “Guinness Book of World Records.” As the miles speed by, Cahill’s exuberant reporting and eye for the absurd make for an amusing and exhilarating ride.