THE OTHER SIDE OF PARADISE
ARGENTINA AND CHILE ARE WELL KNOWN FOR COOL CULTURE AND DAZZLING GASTRONOMIC SCENES. BUT WHAT’S LESS WELL KNOWN IS THEIR DRAMATIC WILD LANDSCAPES. Jennifer George EMBARKS ON AN ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME
Rugged landscapes, towering glaciers and remote ranch life – exploring the adventures Argentina and Chile can bring
Weary, windburnt and waist-deep in water, protected only by a hardy pair of waders, I wondered how I’d got myself into this situation – especially since this was my honeymoon. ‘I’m the beauty editor of a luxury fashion magazine, FFS,’ I muttered, although no one was in ear shot, including my new husband, who was half a kilometre down-river.
Marrying after 1O years together means many things: we’ve bought a flat, started a family (of dogs, in our case) and taken multiple holidays together. We’ve been fortunate enough to have gone on safari in Africa, eaten our bodyweight in pasta in Positano and roadtripped through California. So for our honeymoon we wanted something different. Our brief: sunshine, good wine, adventure, amazing food, good wine, culture, cracking views and, hopefully, some good wine. Argentina and Chile seemed to tick all of those boxes.
THE SETTING Buenos Aires
After leaving a soggy London with our ‘Mr & Mrs’ luggage tags and an endless supply of SPF, we landed in the blazing midday heat of Argentia’s capital, and I dragged my jetlagged husband out to explore the city. Our base, the Sofitel, was on the edge of the fashionable Recoleta district. In one morning it was easy for us to explore the Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires (MALBA), Japanese Gardens and the strangely enchanting Recoleta Cemetery, where Eva Perón is buried. At midday, we refuelled on beef empanadas before making our way to the San Telmo Sunday street fair, weaving through some 3OO stalls of local crafts, with vibrant music filling the air.
We had three days to explore and, as well as ticking off our cultural checklist, we were determined to hunt down the best steak in town. Purists might vote for the legendary Don Julio, the only spot in the country found on the The World’s 5O Best Restaurants list. They’d be justified – the enormous aged ribeye was faultless. But, four restaurants later, our winner was Rufino, hidden below the Mio Hotel. Tablecloth and waitinglist-free, there was minimum fuss and maximum flavour, from the creamy blood sausage to the barely-have-to-bite-it sirloin. We waddled back via subterranean speakeasy Florería Atlántico, home to potent cocktails and the city’s hipster crowd.
THE WINELANDS Mendoza
The next stop was Argentinia’s wine capital, Mendoza. Our hotel, Entre Cielos, had its own vineyard, and our room was a spacious loft on stilts nestled among the vines. Waking up to views of the misty Andes was the perfect antidote to the hustle and bustle of Buenos Aires, and we were rarely without a glass in hand for our three days there. We did a tour of three vineyards, including Lagarde, where we had a tasting menu with seven wines, the winner being its moreish rosé. But the culinary highlight was dinner at chef Francis Mallman’s restaurant 1884, where we feasted on fire-flamed vegetables and steak, washed down with jammy Malbec.
Between sips, we snoozed in woven cabanas by the pool and enjoyed massages in the hotel’s spa, which houses Latin America’s only authentic Turkish hammam. Knowing these would be the last days before a heavy itinerary of horses and hiking, we made the most of being horizontal and hungover, leaving the province well-rested, if a little pickled.
THE RANCH La Bamba de Areco
I’d always dreamed of staying on a ranch. So when I found out that one of the oldest estancias in Argentina, La Bamba de Areco, was an hour and a half’s drive from Buenos Aires, we added it to our itinerary. The Relais & Châteaux property dates back to 183O and has been beautifully renovated, all carmine walls and four-poster beds. The focus here is horses, whether it’s watching a polo match or a traditional gaucho show, or horseback excursions tailored to any level of experience. We opted for the latter twice daily, trotting and cantering through the grassy landscape, before returning to eat the barbecued pork belly empanadas we’d helped the chef fill and crimp during a morning’s cooking lesson. The experience was wholesome, sun-drenched and exactly what I’d hoped for.
THE END OF THE WORLD Ushuaia
It took a day’s travel to get to our penultimate destination: the city of Ushuaia – known as the ‘End of the World‘, as it sits at the continent’s southernmost tip. Our hotel, Los Cauquenes, recommended a boat trip down the Beagle Channel to see the penguin and sea lion colonies, then a romp around the Tierra del Fuego National Park, which hugs the coastline. Eyebrows were raised when we requested packed lunches for a self-guided nine-mile hike to Glacier Vinciguerra, one of the region’s largest, but we set off at dawn despite their hesitations. And I’m so glad we did. It was one of the most memorable days of the trip: a trail through abandoned peat fields, a mossy
forest and up a snow-capped mountain brought us to the glacier and the otherworldly ice caves that surround it. The packed lunch was decent, but the six-course tasting menu at Kalma Resto that evening was a real find. A celebration of seafood, the pickled sea snail and gazpacho with sea urchin courses were challenging for me, but left my foodie husband googling ‘how to recommend a chef for a Michelin star’.
THE FINAL DESTINATION Chile
Hiking shoes warmed up, we boarded our last flight to Chile, before driving deep into the rugged Torres del Paine National Park. This is where I realised I may have put too much emphasis on the word ‘adventure’ when sharing ideas with our travel agent – there’s nothing to do there but go outside (our room at Río Serrano hotel didn’t even have a TV). We layered up for horse riding in the rain, boat trips and a killer 14-mile guided trek of the Ascencio Valley to Cleopatra’s Needles – three towers of rock overlooking a glacier. My fingers were frozen, my legs were like jelly, but my mind was blown. It was there in Patagonia, on the final day of our honeymoon, that I found myself wearing those fetching waders. My husband had a long-held ambition to fish there, so I put aside my lack of interest and tried to embrace the cold. Twelve hours of freezing cold. Despite the fact that we failed to catch anything, even though there were salmon the size of spaniels leaping over our heads, it was a wild, wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime experience. Which, I have to admit, is exactly what we were looking for.
GETTING THERE A two-and-a-half week trip with cazenove+loyd starts from £9,000pp including accommodation, domestic transportation and some meals. Sofitel Buenos Aires Recoleta from £187 per night, room only