The word Tandil can refer to a spider genus, and a German detergent. But in this instance I am refering to a little town near the rolling hills of Argentina. This little jewel was the perfect getaway from the busy city of Buenos Aires. It was a long weekend in commemoration of the liberator Jose de San Martin. The weekend started off great with my bus running about an hour and a half late. But as always I met a really cool person who helped me out. Her name was Agilda and was actually from that town. She was able to give me some good advice on places to go and even gave me her number and said that if I didn't find a place to stay that I could stay at her place. Saweet! So I arrive five hours later and it is butt cold. Mind you I still don't have a place to stay and am going on like 2 hours of sleep,=adventure!
Tandil is one of those cool towns where you can walk everywhere and see the whole town. And the beautiful thing was that it was actually quiet! I could actually hear myself think and it was great to just be back in nature.
On the outside there really is nothing spectacular about this city but its one of those places with a few hidden secrets. One of these is the great cheese and salami they have.
"Piedra Movediza," which translates into unstable rock. Apparently back in the day this huge rock just sort of balanced on the side of a hill and the locals would break beer bottles under it to prove to visitors that it actually moved. Well unfortunately in 1912 this rock ended up rolling down the hill and breaking into pieces. (Now its just known as "rock") But in 2007 a couple of engineering students mounted a similar rock in the same spot as the original. Unfortunately its cemented into the ground so it really isn't that impressive.
See not very impressive...But what Tandil lacked in unstable rocks it made up for it with awesome people! Since Tandil isn't very toursity all the people in the hostel were from Argentina except us. I ended up meeting this really cool guy named Javier who was pretty much our personal tour guide the whole weekend. He was raised in Buenos Aires and is taking a break from traveling around the world. He plans to keep traveling and will probably die on the road because that is where he feels most at home. Cool story. We also met other very cool Argentines and we were invited to an Asado at a hostel.
It was here we experienced true Argentine culture. Delicious savory meat, smooth red wine, and hours of conversation. (FYI, Argentine time is different than say, time in the States, if they say they are starting at 10pm what they really mean is that they won't be eating until 12:30am, so eat a snack)
Around 2am, around the time most North Americans would go to bed, my new Argentine friends said that the party was just gettin started. Tired, but determined to try to keep up with these Argentines, I accompanied them to a dance club. There we danced it up until about 5:00am when I had to bail out to catch my bus at 7am. I am pretty sure they are still dancing. Overall great trip with great people and it turned out to be a quite a cultural experience.
P.S. my beard is coming in pretty nicely...check it out!
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