The Reality of Solo Long-term Travel…And Some Other Stuff

Los Antiguos, Argentina

• You will be pushed out of your comfort zone.
• You will be that ‘smelly person’.
• You will get tired of wearing the same clothes.
• You will see amazing sights.
• You will meet interesting people.
• Your boundaries of understanding will grow.
• Your standards of what’s ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ will be altered.

• You will have times of feeling completely alone.
• You will feel like the luckiest person alive.
• You will read a lot.
• You will vomit.
• You will get lost. A lot.
• You will be completely at peace and fully enjoy the moment you’re in.
• You will be bitten by mosquitoes, bed bugs, and other random crawling insects.
• You will sprint and barely make it in time to a bathroom.
• You will lose things.
• You will be bored.
• You will hurt yourself.
• You will need to have a Plan B because you will use it. Often.

Food Rant

Argentina knows steak and wine but beyond that the food in this country has me baffled. The culture seems to be in love with all things bland. Cheese – bland. Pasta sauce – bland. So, of course, pizza – bland, bland, bland. Essentially, any food ordered that isn’t meat related has a taste factor of zero.

Besides steak and wine there are two other food items Argentinians seem to love; Dulce de Leche (similar to a soft caramel, which, I admit, is amazing) and mayonnaise. Oh, your food is a little dry and lacking flavor? Add a nice large lump of mayonnaise because who doesn’t love mayonnaise? Umm…me. They have entire top shelves of in aisles of grocery stores dedicated to the stuff.

Do you want to add flavor to your food without a ½ kilo of mayonnaise layered on top? Maybe some hotsauce? If so, your in the wrong country. Don’t expect to find too many choices for hot sauce in those same grocery store aisles or in restaurants. I once asked for some hot sauce in a restaurant and was given a bowl of olive oil with crushed tomatoes and pepper in it. It didn’t exactly deliver the one-two punch of flavor I was looking for.

I will admit that for a culture that eats dinner at 10:00 pm, chows down on red meat and loads up on pasta. A culture which piles mayonnaise onto all things perishable and whose favorite fast food item is a hot dog (mayonnaise on top, of course) they are remarkably fit. If you told me their eating habit before I arrived I would have pegged their ‘gordo factor’ somewhere close to Guatemala’s or El Salvador’s (both cultures can’t get enough tortillas or rice).

Learning Cockney

Walking around Los Antiguos today with Allen the subject of slang came up and he taught me a few choice words in Cockney slang. The basic premise of Cockney slang is that all words you intend to use rhyme with the word you actually want to use. Here are a few examples…

“Oy! The currant is strong today!”
Currant = Currant bun. Currant bun rhymes with sun.

“I need to cut my barnet.”
Barnet = Barnet Fair (I think this was a popular fair near London back in the day?). Barnet Fair rhymes with hair.

Now for some fun ones…

“Get off your aris!”
Aris is short for Aristotle. Aristotle rhymes with bottle. Another word for bottle is glass. Glass rhymes with ass.

“Look at the ugly boat on that!”
Boat = boat race. Race rhymes with face.

“Those rasberry’s are hitting the floor!”
Rasberry = Rasberry ripple. Ripple rhymes with nipple.

“Show me the thrippany’s!”
Some English currency history needed for this one…
Thrippany is short for three pence. The word thrippany was use before 1971 when the English converted to a decimalization of the pound. The word ‘thrippany’ was commonly used for thrippany bits which was something costing three pence. So, thrippany bits rhymes with…well, you know what bits rhymes with.

Now for my favorite phrase that is sure to get any man a slap in the face by any self-respecting woman from London.
“Fancy giving me a little J. Arthur?”
J. Arthur = J. Arthur Rank (some film production company). Rank rhymes with wank.

There you have it. The Cockney slang that I know you all had a hankering for.