Puertos Cerrados

Oh, Naledi Lodge, how do I love you? Let me count the ways!

You may recall that we had a bit of a rough time getting to our safari camp near Kruger National Park in South Africa. There was that little matter of the extortionist cops and the bad maps and getting lost and almost stuck in the mud and all that. There were brief moments of minor recrimination. There was sweating. Well, my brothers and sisters, all the cares of the world melted away when we finally arrived at the luxe lodge in the bush called Naledi. Upon arrival, Alicia, our Managress (that’s what it says on her card) handed us a welcome drink and led us to one of the most splendid hotel rooms I’ve ever stayed in.

People took our bags, they took our car (and washed it, we later discovered, which was good, because after our little jaunt through the mud it looked like a work by Jackson Pollock), and for all I cared, they could have taken both of my big toes. I was vulnerable little Tobias in Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett was singing “No one’s gonna harm you, not while I’m around…” (Of course Tobias goes mad and then dies, but that’s not important.) We were welcomed lovingly into the gentle arms of the African bushvelt. (Okay, that’s also a rotten metaphor. In the African bushvelt things get killed and eaten before your eyes, unless it’s you that’s getting killed and eaten before your wife’s eyes.)

No matter, we had arrived at a safari camp that offered welcome drinks. Our room had indoor and outdoor showers, polished concrete floors, and a glorious view of the Olifants River.

The view from our room. There are hippos out there!

Even though we missed lunch by an hour and a half, within minutes there it was, hot and delicious. Thirty minutes later we were on the safari van off to explore the bush, and forty one minutes later we saw our first pride of lions.

Ten minutes into our first game drive we saw this guy.

After another hour and a half or so of driving around looking for wild animals, our tracker Sipu and our ranger Sydwell pulled to the side of the road at a picturesque little spot, set up a table, arranged some snacks, and poured sundowners. Things were looking up.

Sundowners in the bush. I think I’m gonna like it here.

Life at Naledi went like this – we received a gentle tap at our door each morning at 5. (Yes, 5. If you are not a morning person, you will just have to suck it up. Game drives start early.) Coffee was waiting in the bar and we headed off for our morning safari drive at 5:30. By 7:30 or so the trackers would pull over for coffee and cookies and by 8:30 we were back to the lodge to clean up before breakfast at 9ish. Then we would take a little nap or contemplate a dip in the pool. Before lunch, guests can go for a nature walk with a guide or be dropped off at the water hole hide for a few hours. Lunch was at 2:30, followed by another little nap and then everyone heads out for the evening game drive at 4:30, highlighted by sundowners out in the bush at about 7, and then back to the lodge for dinner at 8 or so.

The place has a capacity of eighteen guests, but there were never more than ten when we were there. It helps if you like each other. We had our meals together and we went on our two-a-day game drives together. Thus, it turned into just another version of the puertos cerrados of Buenos Aires – a great big dinner party with strangers, although this one also featured wild animals. Fortunately, the strangers were loads of fun. One American couple and their two daughters are now living in Buenos Aires, of all places. Another young couple from the UK did an eight month around-the-world trip of their own a few years ago. The people we’ve come across have been similarly situated – they have a sense of wonder and a willingness to scratch that itch. They are usually lots of fun to spend time with, although the occasional exceptions can be almost as entertaining.

The folks who work at this place have a schedule like a merchant seaman – they work forty two days straight and then take twelve days off. They’re up every morning to prepare for the 5 a.m. game drive and they sit with us at dinner – including the trackers and the rangers – telling us stories of life in the bush and other tales of derring do. I can’t imagine this kind of schedule, but the staff seem to really enjoy their work, bless them. Nevertheless, it can’t be easy to be as cheerful and helpful as they are for forty two straight days. They were also shockingly good at their jobs. One morning, for example, Janine noticed a tear in our mosquito net, but she forgot to mention it to Alicia. By the time we had returned from the morning drive, it has been mended anyway. Now that’s good service.

The Naledi game drives felt a bit like the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. We’d all pile into this tricked out Toyota 4Runner and go barrel-assing through the reserve looking for charismatic megafauna. Some news about the whereabouts of lions or leopards would crackle over the radio and our driver would floor the gas pedal and we’d go speeding and bouncing through the bush until we’d find our animal – and we almost always did. As I mentioned, we hadn’t been on our first drive of the trip for ten minutes when we were gaping at a small pride of lions, who were well aware of our presence, although they could not have been less interested.

On the first morning after we arrived we set out for our second drive in a very light drizzle. We were unfazed, but we should have been. After about a half hour of fiddling about, the drizzle had turn to rain, and then it was just Noah’s Ark time. Not every game drive yields a leopard, I guess.

Cold, wet, and happy.

Naledi sits on the Balule Nature Reserve, a piece of private property that borders Kruger National Park. Since there are no fences between the areas, animals are free to roam anywhere, and they do. During our three days at Naledi, we saw the so-called “big five” – lion, leopard, cape buffalo, elephant, and rhinoceros – and tons more. There were giraffes and kudus, hippos and impalas (called the McDonald’s of the bush, either because there’s one on every corner, or because everyone eats there, I’m not sure which). We saw lion cubs, a baby hippo and a very rare rhino baby.

These guys frolicked around just like little kittens.

One of the first rhinos born in the wild in this reserve in almost two hundred years.

Vervet monkeys played outside our window, and one little voyeur watched Janine take a bath. A trio of hippos spent an afternoon splashing around just outside our room. But we got nearly as much enjoyment out of watching a humble dung beetle roll his little ball of doo around as we did watching an elephant push a tree over like it was a skinny twig. The dung beetle, by the way, is a fascinating creature. It rolls a ball of elephant or rhino or some other dung around, deposits its larvae inside, and then buries the thing in soft sand, where, if it’s lucky, a honey badger won’t unearth the whole works and eat the bugs inside. The beetle will push and pull and roll that ball of doody to and fro, seemingly exerting its last bit of effort. Then, like a harrier jump jet, the thing turns into a helicopter and flies away. Ain’t nature something?

We only planned three nights at Naledi because it’s expensive, but also because we wanted a variety of perspectives on the safari experience. On the other hand, the price of our lodgings came with three very good meals a day and two game drives, so there’s that. But we couldn’t keep this fancy schmancy lifestyle up for long.

Next time – a guest house without fences (where elephants and everything else roam) hosted by a Dutch cop and his detective wife on a game reserve up river a bit.

Let’s play word association. What three things do you think of when you think of Argentina? (Let’s leave out Eva Peron and economic woes.) For me, it’s steak, tango, and polo.

We begin our journey with not just a steak, but a steak in a speakeasy.

What is it about me and speakeasies? I guess I like being in on a secret. At a speakeasy, everybody’s cool, even me. You may recall my speakeasy fetish in New York. Well, in Buenos Aires, they have these things called puertos cerrados, or “closed door” restaurants. The concept isn’t particularly new – people open up their home to guests, who are thrown together in a dinner party-like atmosphere. It’s a little different in Buenos Aires. These puertos cerrados act more like restaurants but they occur in the home. Like the blue market for currency, there seems to be a blue market for dinner.

We’ve been to two so far, and the first, Paladar, was a big winner. The restaurant is in an apartment building in the residential part of the Villa Crespo neighborhood. We arrived at the address, rang the bell, and were led up the stairs to an apartment that is converted on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays into a lovely mid-century modern dining spot. (I wonder what the neighbors think about all this. Would you want the people downstairs to host a dinner party three days a week? Me neither.)

The meal was five really good courses, each paired with a cocktail or a dandy Argentinean wine. A husband and wife team run the show – he’s the chef and she’s the sommelier. We had a lovely corn croquette amuse paired with a welcome cocktail. There was a nice appetizer of baked ham, mozzarella balls, and cherry preserves served with a great Malbec rose. The main was one of the famous cuts of beef in Argentina, the bife de chorizo, (we call it the New York strip), dry rubbed with the North African spice mixed called ras al hanout. Be careful how your order your steaks in Argentina. They grade on the curve here. Rare means medium, medium means well done, and well done means you want them to turn your steak into flooring, which they will. As far as I can tell, you cannot get a steak that is actually rare unless you cook it yourself. We ordered rare and got medium rare, which we considered a victory. This was served with a really terrific cabernet from Mendoza that tasted like black cherries and velour, if such a thing is possible. One of the joys of this particular place is what appears to be the bottomless glass of wine – our hostess Ivana roamed the dining room seeking out empty glasses to refill. This is the kind of dinner party you want to go to, unless uncle Hershel can’t hold his hootch. The whole shebang came to 400 pesos per person, which is thirty one bucks if you’ve gotten a good rate on the blue market. It may be the dining deal of the century, if you don’t count koshery.

Our other closed door effort was somewhat less successful. It was called Almacen Secreto, or Secret Warehouse, although it was simply an apartment that had been converted into a restaurant (unlike Paladar, which actually seems like it could be somebody’s home). We went to Almacen for New Year’s Eve. The food was fair at best, but the fun happened at midnight when they passed out party favors and turned the backyard into an impromptu disco.

Sometimes clichés are clichés for a reason. You can’t think of Argentina without thinking of tango. Tango seems to be everywhere here. There was a free tango show at the flea market, all over town you will find tango lessons followed by an evening of dancing at events called Milongas, and you can even give it a try yourself walking down the street.

See, it’s easy! (Photo credit to my lovely wife)

We even went for an evening of tango-y jazz without the dancing. At Café Vinilo in Palermo, we caught Noelia Moncada and the Orquesta Victoria. The band was like nothing I’ve ever seen or heard before. There was a piano, a bass clarinet, two concertinas, four violins, one viola, one double bass, one cello, and a sultry, deeply wrought singer who sang a lot about the heart. Either that or she sang many a lot of songs about cardiology, because I heard the word “corazon” a lot. The music was earthy, sexy, soulful, and playful at the same time. And it was a ridiculous bargain. Tickets were eight bucks and drinks were cheap. How do they do it? Anyway, Noelia and her pals made you want to undulate across the dance floor, although if you didn’t know the steps, you could seriously hurt your partner or yourself, or both.

Here’s a clip:

Finally, my missive about cliché Argentina tourism would not be complete without a trip to the polo field. For some reason, Argentinians are the world’s best polo players, so how do you pass up the chance to watch a polo match? My mother still owns and rides horses, so this sounded like a particularly fun outing for her.

Believe it or not, this is my mother, who was a trick rider in her youth.

Somehow Janine managed to find what appeared to be a freelance polo player who would pick us up in town, serve us lunch, and take us out to the polo fields to watch a match. He signed his emails “Vito, Professional Polo Player.” This was going to either be really fun or we were in for trouble.

The economics of polo are scary. To play a single match you need at least four really well-trained horses, all of which need to be fed, boarded, groomed, saddled, and ready for action. If you are rich enough to do this, why do you need to drive tourists around? Vito, Professional Polo Player’s fee would scarcely pay for a single polo mallet. Something wasn’t quite right here.

Well, Vito, Professional Polo Player arrived and the guy was right out of Argentine Central Casting. He’s young, handsome, and fit. His English is excellent, and of course there’s that charming South American accent. My daughter, my wife, and my mother all seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely and we hadn’t left the apartment yet.

Vito, Professional Polo Player

VPPP drove us out to the polo fields, set up a table in a meadow next to the field, and served us finger sandwiches.

Just another day on the polo fields.

He was particularly gentlemanly with my mother – jumping up to get her chair and otherwise turning on the Latin charm to which she seemed particularly susceptible – and we watched him and seven other guys with thirty some-odd horses scrimmage on a private polo field for about an hour and a half. Polo is gorgeous to watch. The horses are extraordinary athletes, as are their riders. The game itself is uncomplicated and fun – hit the ball with a mallet through the uprights while riding full tilt on a thousand pound animal. What’s not to like?

VPPP (L), at work.

During our couple of hours in the car, we chatted with our new friend about the life of a professional polo player (although he is also an architect – some guys…), life in Argentina in general, and our day of polo turned out to also be a game of a hundred and twenty questions with a local. We ended the day with Vito dropping us off one of his favorite Argentine steak houses, which lived up to its billing. As it turns out, our day was a big winner, and it may be a while before my mother wipes the grin off her face.

Eat, Bicker, Love

A loving couple travels the world

Living the Lush Life in Some Small Dive in the African Bushvelt

Steak, Tango, and Polo – the Argentine trinity. And speakeasies!