Helado happiness

We had to schedule a trip outside of Peru to extend our tourist visas. We had been planning to take a couple of out-of-country trips later in the year, and simply go to the Peruvian immigration office downtown in the meantime to extend our visas for a couple of months, but through a long and complicated process, we found out that Peru no longer offers extensions to tourist visas if you want to stay longer. You either leave the country and return to get another 1-6 months, depending on the mood of the immigration officer, or you overstay your visa and pay a $1 fine per person, per day overstayed. 


We did both – once we realized we needed to leave Peru, we scheduled a trip to Argentina as soon as was practical and we overstayed several weeks until the trip date arrived. 

One of the things I was most excited about with Argentina was the ice cream. I read somewhere a phrase like, “Argentinians take their ice cream seriously and it’s some of the best in the world.” Count me in! 

We rented an apartment in Buenos Aires and we were pleasantly surprised that it had not one but two heladerías on the corner. Granted, one was closed for the month for vacation. But the other one was the best I had during our trip.

The ice cream in Buenos Aires was decadent. Contrary to any heladería I’ve been in, in any country in the world, the flavors are categorized by the chocolate options, the creams, the dulce de leche choices, and the sorbet-like fruit flavors. 

When we were in Cafayate, the heart of wine country, they trumpeted an additional flavor category on their signs: wine. Helado de malbec, torrontés, and cabernet were everywhere.

In many places throughout the country, heladerías even had little signs indicating which flavors were gluten-free. It certainly made it easier to figure out what to try out, and I was surprised by some that were not gluten-free (some of the fruit flavors, for example).

All the heladerías we visited were open until at least midnight, if not later, and many offered delivery, with a free magnet with their phone number (and sometimes their flavor options too). I loved knowing that if I had an ice cream emergency, help was only a phone call away. And, being a magnet freak, I love my new stash of Argentina helado magnets!