Our 5 months in Argentina is coming to an end this week. We leave Buenos Aires tomorrow, but don't worry, we won't be home anytime soon.  We'll be starting a 3 week long bus trip through Argentina, Chile and Peru.  Before you get jealous, that's over 80 hours and 3,300 miles on a bus.  Mileage wise, that's the same as a trip from Seattle, WA to Miami, FL, but then add a day for mountain roads and multiple stops

Last night our Spanish tutor (Johanna) invited us out for a going away dinner with her boyfriend Ariel.  We started the night at a restro-bar called Acabar (which Elizabeth fell in love with when we last went back in February).  It's a restaurant with a large selection of board games that you can borrow from their collection (ie Pictionary, chess, checkers, jenga, etc).



We settled on playing Truco, a Spanish card game famous for its gaucho roots and heavy use of lying as strategy.  It's not played with a traditional set of 52 cards like we are accustomed to (you know Kings, Queens and Aces).  It's played with a set of 40 Spanish Style cards which are also divided into 4 categories (swords, clubs, gold and cups) but the cards are all numbered (from 1-7 and 10-12).  Because it would be too simple for the value of the cards to represent its strength, we had to learn the hierarchy of the cards.  1 of swords, 1 of clubs, 7 of swords, 7 of gold are the top four with no equals.  Then the 3-1 cards have the 2nd highest value above the remaining 12-4.  Confusing yet?  Don't worry it is much more complicated than that.





Truco can be played with 2, 4 or 6 players.  Four and Six players games are played as teams, which adds more complexity to the strategy and involves a lots of conversation.  Everyone starts with a hand consisting of 3 cards and tries to accumulate points for the team.  A very simple game of simply winning those 3 hands would only result in a single point.  But using 1 or a combination of the 3 tricks (La Flor, Envido and Truco) would raise the points at stake. Because this game is nothing but complex, you also have many derivatives for the Envido and Truco tricks and challenges.  If you're a good liar, you can win some points just because no one accepted your challenge.  Rules of Truco

It literally took us an hour to talk about the rules and play two dummy games with our cards facing up.  We also learned the common signals for informing your partner that you have one of the top 7 cards; A raised eyebrow, a wink, a smile to the left, a smile to the right, a bite of the lip, a kiss and a fish mouth.

After it became apparent that Johanna and my team were too dominant for Elizabeth and Ariel (the students became the master :), we headed across the street to a fondue restaurant called La Rosadita for dinner.

 
We split a fondue called Fondue au Fromage Especial between the four of us.  It came with cherry tomatoes, croutons, chicken, ham, mushrooms, beef, hot dogs (yep that's sausage down here), potatoes and sweet potatoes.


 For dessert, we shared a double portion of Fondue de Dulce de Leche, which was a large bowl of sweet caramel, macaroons, brownies, cookies, oranges, apple, strawberries and bananas slices.



During our time in Buenos Aires, we've had a great time getting to know Johanna, Ariel, her mom, her sister and her mom's boyfriend.  They have been our family away from home, well at least on Tuesday's and Thursdays :) Thanks for the hospitality and hopefully we meet again.