Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

Between El Calafate and El Chaten, the only place to eat is La Leona.

 
The food was surprisingly good, as it was everywhere in Argentina.
Here is a puma that came too close to the kitchen:

  
And here is a former guest of the estancia, Butch Cassidy, who stayed there a month after he robbed a bank:

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At a roadside café we encountered this recently-posted sign:   
My Spanish is not very good, but here is the substance:
Dear Drivers and Travelers:Please be informed that on the road between Guer Aike and El Calafte the personnel of civil defense has detected a plague of spiders commonly known as black widows. We therefore recommend that you [...]

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 Because of the horrors that Argentina endured under the military dictatorship in the 1970s, it has a special sympathy for other victims of repression.
In the National Cathedral there are two memorials.
One is to the Armenian genocide, when the nationalist Turkish government drove out a million men, women, and children to die in the desert, their [...]

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Hikers develop an emotional relationship with their boots. They are the difference between a great hike and torture, and sometimes between life and death. Here at the Refugio Chileno in the Torres de Paine I make sure no one has tampered with the boots I had to leave outside while I was getting coffee (instant [...]

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I have found Ogden Nash’s poem helpful:
The one-l lama,
He’s a priest.
The two-l llama,
He’s a beast.
And I will bet
A silk pajama
There isn’t any
Three-l lllama.
ll in Argentinian Spanish is not pronounced like y but rather like zh: Zhama
Also, to call someone a guanaco is an insult. It means he cannot be domesticated; he spits.

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Guanacos are a wild member of the llama family. They seem to exist mainly to be eaten by pumas. Our guide had heard that pumas got 90% of  guanacos; he found that hard to believe, but suspected that pumas got half of them.
Sal, a member of our group and a serious photographer (note the camera), [...]

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The gauchos were impressive horseman. They could make their horses walk sideways. One morning they rounded up some mares that were having a great time around the lodge, and the mares did not want to go into the corral. They gauchos walked their mounts sideways and nudged them into the corral.
Gauchos also dress with a [...]

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I am preparing to mount my steed.
His name in Spanish meant, I concluded, “Staller.” Whenever we came to a raging glacial strea, he refused to cross, no matter how hard I kicked and yelled AIII! (Giddy-up), until Augustin, our gaucho, held up his whip and said something in Spanish. My horse then decided he had [...]

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Lee, Charlie, and Maidie  at Los Glaciares National Park in Argentina

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The WQ (weirdness quotient) of Buenos Aires is very high. Note what is holding back the stone curtains

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Buenos Aires prides itself on being the Paris of Latin America. It has wide boulevards and French style-architecture in the older sections. The style is not accidental, but is closely connected with the founding of Argentina.
San Martin the liberator of Argentina from Spanish rule (such as it was) was a Freemason, and spent the last [...]

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Marcial Maciel has died, some reports say here in Naples, Florida, others in Houston.
He has been accused by scores of people of sexual abuse. Pope Benedict to all appearances thought him guilty, but because of his age did not have a formal trial.
The administrative acts of the popes are not infallible. The Legionaries, of whom [...]

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Every Thursday in front of the Casa Rosada, the main government building in Buenos Aries, march mothers wearing white scarves. By now the mothers are in their 70s and 80s. Some of them are discovering they are grandmothers.
Their children disappeared during the military dictatorship in the 1970s. The military arrested those suspected of leftist sympathies, [...]

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Another small pleasure of life (in addition to menu translations) is people who live up to their national stereotype. When we flew to Buenos Aires recently, the gate at the airport was total and cheerful chaos:  but everyone got on, and we left on time. It was a foretaste.
To many, Argentina equals tango.<o:p>Argentina is enjoying [...]

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Serving as a world language has its disadvantages. The English translations of Spanish menu items in Buenos Aires were interesting, but in Patagonia the menus were challenging. At a café in a national park, we were presented with the following choices.

Entradas
Minestrone
Soup of Gourd
Caesar Salad: mix of vegetables, cheese chicken, grudges, cream of anchovies [...]

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