South America Explorations: Week 9 - San Juan and Mendoza

Sunday, December 8^th, 2013

The bus had about 10 stops between Salta and Mendoza, and it seemed that it was absolutely jam-packed for the first 4 stops and then was empty all of a sudden at around 2am for some reason. A Belgian couple in their early 40s was sitting right behind me in the bus and we struck up a conversation. They had rented a car in Salta for 3 days and drove around to see the landscape and their plan was to do the same from San Juan, a town a few hours before Mendoza. They invited me to join them, potentially half-jokingly, and I initially declined. And then I remembered one of my goals for this trip - I’m purposefully trying to take advantage of whatever opportunities present themselves on this trip and to say the word “yes” far more often than the word “no”. I think we have a tendency to miss out on all sorts of worthwhile experiences and opportunities because they didn’t fit into the plan we originally had in our heads. And since this vacation is largely unplanned anyway, if I can’t take advantage of serendipitous opportunities on this trip, I have no shot at doing so back in the real world when I get home. So, I checked the calendar real quick and decided to take them up on the offer instead.

Luc and Birgit had already done some homework, of course, and had a car rental company in mind in San Juan. But because it was Sunday, we had a difficult time getting competing quotes. In the end, instead of losing more time this day, we went with the expensive offer we had at hand. This simple 4-cylinder Chevrolet was costing about $80/day but the alternative was to lose a day to wait for other car companies who might have a better deal.

So, we had a late lunch and got on the road and got to know one another a bit more. Luc works in the banking industry in personal finance and has very high net worth clients. Birgit is a tour guide representative – she basically gets hired by tour companies to travel with tour groups and serve as their single point of contact to resolve issues and keep the tour moving, but essentially all she needs to do is be the go-between from the tourists to the local agencies that are handling the detailed logistics. And, of course, she needs to be an extroverted people person, which she definitely is. She had just finished a tour with a large group of Russians in Buenos Aires and Luc joined her afterwards so that they could have a 2 week vacation of their own. They’ve done this a lot, it seems. I think she has quite the dream job, one that I theoretically would love to be able to call my own. But, in truth, while I definitely have my extroverted moments, I am more of an introvert. And I know I wouldn’t be able to keep my mouth shut or maintain graciousness with the jerk tourists that would be sure to come my way.

Within a few hours, we got to our first stop – a small town that was known for an unofficially recognized local patron saint called Difruta Correa. The town had a small compound with a cluster of rooms where people could make offerings to Difruta Correa, who by the looks of the statues & drawings out and about appeared to be a dead lady who was still able to breastfeed a baby or something like that. There’s probably a fascinating story behind this, but I haven’t looked it up. I figured it's better to use your imagination on this one.

The shrine had separate rooms where people had left trophies and other medals, wedding gowns, models of vehicles, models of houses/buildings, license plates and all sorts of other things to “thank” Difruta Correa for helping them with. And for some strange reason, they also left a lot of 2L plastic bottles filled with water. I think my traveling companions found it borderline disturbing that people would seemingly attribute any good fortune received to a saint since that can have unintended consequences from a work ethic standpoint. While I definitely see that point of view, I guess I also saw a lot of hope through the offerings and prayers as well and that warmed my heart a bit.

We continued to drive a bit to the small town of San Augustin del Valle Fertil, which was on the outskirts of a few national parks we wanted to go to the next day. We found a small picturesque bed & breakfast to stay at – this was easily the most expensive lodging I had booked all trip, but it was nice to have a queen bed with a private room and private bath all to myself for a change. And there was a pool and an uber-friendly boxer dog who stole my sandal to chew on while I swam. But I liked him anyway, of course – he was too much fun to play with. I also had a frog in my bathroom and a cockroach on my luggage in the morning. Double the joy.

We walked around the town that night before grabbing some dinner. Birgit is s bit of a photographer, and it seemed she stopped every 15 seconds to take another snap of something that caught her eye. Even in the car, Birgit had Luc stop the car quite frequently so that she could grab a few shots. I saw some of her work later on, and she has an incredibly good eye too. She shoots exclusively in black & white, which reminded me that I need to start trying to do the same.

At the restaurant, I was craving meat since I hadn’t really partaken in the famed grilling that Argentina is known for. So, Luc and I shared a mixed grill platter for two – and this massive plate of random meats appeared at our table 45 minutes later: from steak to ribs to sausage to chicken thigh to blood pudding sausage (ewww!). Birgit ordered a pizza, and I actually liked it a bit better.

Monday, December 9^th, 2013

Breakfast this morning was non-existent – I walked to the main house and they gave me two pieces of bread and told me that we I everything we need in the room to make coffee. That was it. Wow.

So we finished our scrumptious and filling breakfast and headed to a local national park called Ischigualasto. The only option to see the national park is by a guided ranger tour which takes 2-3 hours. We were the only ones there at the time we arrived, so after waiting for 30 minutes for any other potential tourists, a park ranger hopped into our car and off we went.

Our park ranger doesn’t speak English. He’s full of information, but my preference is to have a guide in a larger group so that I can wander and half-listen to the guide. I still got to ignore the guide since his Spanish was way too fast to follow, but since there were only three of us, I certainly couldn’t wander. I found out later that Birgit has the same opinion of tour guides, but since she’s fluent in Spanish, she had to pay attention the whole time and it was killing her.

 

 

Even so, the guide was full of really good information. This area was exceptionally special because you could see three distinct layers formed during the Triassic period and wind erosion was exposing more each year. As such, scientists have been finding new bones and fossils without having to dig. The guide told us that this was unlike any area in the world and there was a constant flow of archeologists to the area.

We headed north to Villa Union to try and get a bite to eat. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find anything open at all in the entire town since lunchtime is apparently a bad time for a restaurant to be serving. So we left a bit frustrated and headed towards our destination town of Rodeo. On the way, we stopped in a small town called San Jose de Jachal and found a small bodega to get a pre-packaged sandwich, the first real food we’d had all day (and it was nearing 4pm). We also found a car mechanic to look at the undercarriage – a heat shield above part of the exhaust system had gotten loose and was rattling around as we drove. The mechanic tied it up using some old wire and didn’t want to charge us for it – this reminded me of small towns in the US where the same will often happen at the mom & pop shops.

We arrived in Rodeo a few hours later but were having difficulty finding any lodging and were getting a bit disconcerted. But finally, we stumbled on a two-room cabin with some beds in the living room – we took it. Since it has a kitchen, we figured we’d run out and get some groceries for some home-cooked meals. Luc made a really nice spaghetti Bolognese that night and we enjoyed a wine nightcap on the front porch. There were a few greyhounds living here too and one quickly became my best friend. She even hopped up into the hammock with me for a little bit.

Tuesday, December 10^th, 2013

Breakfast was wonderful; Luc whipped up some incredible bacon and eggs. After packing up and loading the car, we headed out for another day of driving. But before we left town, we stopped by the Rodeo boat dock – apparently, there’s a growing windsurfing community in this town by a lake, including the laidback owner of our cabanas. The windsurfing community apparently loves this strange large Rasta dude too.

 

We drove for a few hours through some stunning scenery until one of the main roads we intended to drive on turns out to be gravel for 120km or more. After taking a quick double-blind straw poll, we decided to just head back to San Juan. We were all having a little bit of road fatigue, my new Belgian friends even more so since they were doing all the driving and had also done the same for 3 days up in Salta. So they dropped me off at the bus station at about 2pm and I grabbed a bus an hour later to get to Mendoza.

I’m definitely glad I took advantage of this opportunity. It was nice for a change to spend some time with professionals who had been at their career as long as or longer than I have. And perhaps unsurprisingly, we also had a lot of great conversation about religion and society, politics in the US vs Europe, capitalism vs socialism, and so forth.

After a quick 2 hour bus journey to Mendoza, I took a cab to a hostel I had picked out called Punto Urbano which was about 5 blocks from the main square. When I arrived, the place seemed to be buzzing and there were lots of people, which sometimes means that it’s a party hostel, but this buzz felt different. There wasn’t a lot of space left at the dorm, so I got a tad lucky to get a spot – a shared dorm room with a guy who checked in right before me, Philippe from Germany.

This hostel has events each evening and organizes different tours for each day. From reading reviews of other hostels, this seems to be the norm for hostels in Mendoza in general, which is nice since you have a much bigger opportunity to meet people. There’s a free class tonight on “mate” (remember to use your Spanish pronunciation, mate), which is a very common drink in the southern countries of South America – it’s similar to tea, but uses a specific type of herb that gives you energy. There’s also a specific way to prepare it – some of these preparations are necessary to keep from ruining the herb. Some of these mistakes have minor ramifications, like burning the herb or turning it into a laxative. Then there are other rules that have more to do with personal preference and social norm. Everyone in the hostel was more or less in the class (not typical) and so we had a large circle of 20+ people.

I struck up a conversation with an Israeli fellow who lived in Illinois until the age of 8, after which his family moved to Israel. I asked him about the prevalent stereotype of Israeli tourists being cheap and difficult – he readily admitted this, especially the cheap part. But the “difficult” part is something different; his explanation was that everyone in Israel travels a lot, which is very different than many other countries. As a result, you get a very wide spectrum of tourists from Israel including the rowdy and the difficult – this makes a bit more sense. As I think I postulated in a previous post, I think the rowdy Americans go to places like Cancun and the difficult Americans tend to go on cruise lines or pre-packaged tours versus the type of traveling I’m doing in hostels.

It was getting a bit late and I was hungry, so Philippe joined me in search of food. The hostel made a recommendation for “normal” non-budget food, so we walked into the square and headed towards the restaurant. The city is gorgeous and there were plenty of people out and about. It was about 8pm, and for Argentina, that’s actually early for dinner as we would find out later. But for now, we got to the restaurant and each had a really nice steak.

Philippe is an aerospace engineer and works for Airbus, but comically enough works in their toilet division – his group designs and produces the toilets for the planes. More interestingly, he’s here in Mendoza because he is going on an 18-day trek in a few days to summit Mt. Aconcagua, which is the tallest peak in South America at 22,838ft; a good 3500ft higher than Kilimanjaro. In fact, it is the tallest peak in the world outside of the Himalayas. He hiked Kilimanjaro a few years ago, but this peak is both higher and more technical, hence the longer trip. The trip sounds great, but 18 days is a long ass time to be in a tent in freezing temperatures – I honestly don’t know if I could do it.

Wednesday, December 11^th, 2013

Breakfast at this hostel is really exceptional – they will cook you eggs, pancakes, or crepes to order, which is definitely different from the other hostels I’ve been at. They also have a nice variety of pastries to choose from. And the chef is very cute too.

I spent today just walking around town to get a feel for the city and the area. It’s an extremely livable city with nice park squares seemingly every few blocks, several pedestrian streets with sidewalk cafés and a variety of restaurants, and a very large park on one end of the city. When I got to the large park, I noticed locals jogging (pronounced “yogging”) for the first time since I got to South America. I also walked down a few streets that I could completely envision living on. I liked it a lot.

The hostel had an “asado” barbeque planned for this evening – it’s supposed to start at 9pm. I think I mentioned in a previous post that people in Argentina and Chile seem to eat much later than we are used to doing in the States. At about 7pm, it started downpouring unfortunately, so our outdoor barbeque turned into an indoor affair instead. Massive plates of wonderful looking meat passed through the tables – it was good, but honestly, none of it was as tender and juicy as I had imagined Argentinian beef to be.


So far, I’m still unimpressed with Argentinian steak itself. Then again, the amount of food for a reasonable price is definitely impressive.

After dinner, I met some of the others staying at the hostel. Kiran is a British Indian guy who decided he was tired of the corporate world and sold all his belongings and came to South America to find something to do – he’s a bit worried that he’s been traveling for almost 6 months at this point and has mostly just been enjoying himself instead of actually thinking about his future, but I figure he’s entitled to enjoy a bit before figuring out how to be productive again.

And there’s Ft. Lauderdale – my name for the crazy older American lady whose name I don’t care to remember. Her American accent was unmistakable, so I asked her where she was from and she refused to say the United States though it was obvious. She has basically decided to leave the US and find somewhere new to live because she’s convinced that the country is moving into a fascist state. She told me that FEMA was designing concentration camps and would be deploying them to intern our civilization after the next natural disasters. She told me that Obamacare mandates that everyone gets a chip implanted in the skin between the thumb and index finger and that the government could track your every move with this implant. She told me that Obama isn’t even our president’s real name because he used to go by Barry – I tried explaining that this was short for his first name Barack and he went by Barry all the way through high school and college before reverting to his full name, but she didn’t want to have anything of it. Then she told me that the government is trying to control the food supply and is outlawing backyard gardens of all sizes. And she also somehow had irrefutable proof that Obama didn’t actually win the last election. She was clearly nucking futs. A young girl from England who is a policewoman was trying to reason with her to absolutely no avail, so I started just trying to get her to stop talking so that I could try and have a normal conversation with someone who wasn’t insane.

Thursday, December 12^th, 2013

I spent the morning just wandering around a bit more because I liked it so darn much here. But it’s really quite warm here and I ran out of t-shirts, so I walked around with a long-sleeve undershirt and a light short-sleeved button-down. And I was crazy hot. Then I realized something – I’m in frickin’ Latin America and these guys rival only the Italians at wearing button-downs with no undershirts. People around here won’t care one bit about my natural sweater vest (my chest hair, for you slow folks out there). I like South America.

Late this afternoon, I went with a pair of Swedes from my hostel and some others from this hostel’s sister locations for a horseback riding trip. We were 8 tourists in total: me, Tom and Amanda from Sweden, Marissa from DC, Darius and Joe from England, Stephanie and Rachel from Australia; plus our guide Alejandro and our driver/cook Marcelo. Marcelo might not be his real name, but I’ve decided that any time I can’t remember a South American dude’s name, they’re automatically named Marcelo. But I don’t generally like horseback riding because I always feel as though I’m generally keeled over in pain by the end and I’m fairly certain that I’ve damaged the goods substantially. But the description of this trip sounded interesting so I figured I’d have a go.

We drive south of Mendoza for about an hour in the vanbus, and end up on a cattle ranch and a handful of horses waiting for us. The ride was more of a walk than anything else, so the nads are safe for now, but my horse was a wee bit ornery. I think she was a bit older, and I think she was a she – I couldn’t tell from my vantage point at least. But she seemed to be a bit on the reddish side for coloring, so I named her Ol Red, of course. She loved to randomly stop on the trail, turn her head back and try her best to gnaw off my right leg. It was fun – we enjoyed a lot of these touching moments. Alejandro told me to kick her in the head, but I think something with the straps were really bothering her… or maybe she just really disliked my right leg.

Alejandro led us up into the mountains for about an hour and we got to see some nice views of the surrounding landscape. We were following Alejandro single file – I was towards the back. Our group was generally lagging because Stephanie’s horse enjoyed stopping to examine a lot of the local plant life for texture & flavor and she was a bit too scared to give the giddy-up kick.

While we were out gallivanting, our driver/cook Marcelo was busy grilling up some meat for us. Alejandro was only told that there were 6 tourists, but fortunately he bought extra food from the store. Whatever cuts of meat he grabbed were absolutely wonderfully grilled up by Marcelo in this rustic little awkward shack of a dining room we were huddled in. The meat was easily the most tender and mouth-melting that I have had in my time in Argentina thus far… and I’ve actively been searching out to get a killer piece of steak since I got here. So I’ve got a happy belly.

As we quickly worked on the jug of wine that Alejandro brought along, he pulled out his guitar and strummed a lot of well-known songs that we could all sing along to. I’m generally uncannily good at being able to recognize songs early on and tonight was no different… but apparently there are lots of songs that start out with similar chords as “La Bamba” because I started belting out that tune 3or 4 times before Alejandro actually played it. Come to think of it, I think he was toying with me. Either way, we had quite the grand time. As it neared 10:30pm, we loaded back up in the vanbus for the ride back.

On the drive back, we decided to go out on the town together. Unfortunately, the good places to go were quite far, so we didn’t end up getting there until almost 1am after getting coordinated from our different hostels and a good 30 minute walk. The place we wanted to go, called Por Aca, had just started charging a cover, so we walked down to another place a few blocks down called People that was not too busy and had a cover band playing. It was in Spanish and people were singing along, so I figured it couldn’t be original music. After another hour or so, they started clearing out the tables and the bar turned into a club. Just like Spain, the bars & clubs don’t get busy here until after 2am. Well, it was busy but it wasn’t so packed that you couldn’t move… it was perfect. And the ratio was wonderfully perfect here too – for guys, that is. The beer lent me a pair of cojones and I used my rudimentary espanol to strike up a few conversations in this crowd where women outnumbered men substantially. Unfortunately, I had a trip that was leaving early in the morning, so I left a little after 3am to grab a cab to the hostel and get in bed by 3:30am.

I learned later that much of the group stayed out until 6:30am and walked back with the sun already having risen. Joe apparently got extremely drunk and was picking fights with locals, but the locals were very gracious and understanding that he was wasted. Darius, Marissa and Amanda were able to get him outside and back towards his hostel. Ultimately, he got belligerent enough that they had to leave him at the main square because he wanted to go to another bar and wouldn’t budge. I’m glad I missed that part.

Friday, December 13^th, 2013

After hitting snooze on my 7:25am alarm, I swung my feet out five minutes later and tried to figure out how to stop time to get more sleep before my 8am pick-up time. Unfortunately, there was a knock on my room door at that very moment informing me that my ride was here. So I scrambled to get my things together and a bag packed and crossed my fingers that I didn’t miss anything for my day trip to the Aconcagua base camp, called Confluencia. I suppose my brief roommate Phillippe from a few days ago had inspired me and a single day trip was the only thing I could find to join while in town.

I was joining a mother/daughter couple from Colorado, Lisa and Shannon. They are traveling together for several months through South America. I might even bump into them a few times down the road as our itinerary overlaps in a few spots, specifically in southern Chile. We’ll see, I suppose.

 The hike from the park entrance to the base camp wasn’t really too challenging, especially with only carrying a light daypack, but I was muscling through on extremely little sleep and a slight hangover from last night so that wasn’t as fun as it should have been. But even so, the views were absolutely spectacular. Aconcagua itself was frequently covered by clouds unfortunately, but the colors and rock formations along the valley to the base camp didn’t disappoint in the least and held to the fairly high standards that the previous weeks had already set for me.

The views in the car ride back were equally spectacular. I hadn’t seen many of them on the ride in because I was mostly asleep, but my eyes were wide open for the way back. The rain started coming in on the ride back and we were treated to an exceptionally strong rainbow… and at one spot there was even a double rainbow. A DOUBLE RAINBOW!l!! I couldn’t believe it. I should post it to YouTube since that’s never been seen before by anyone anywhere.

After I was dropped off at the hostel, I grabbed some pizza at a highly-recommended nearby joint popular with locals that apparently likes to make dough extremely thick like there’s no tomorrow. I know that phrase makes zero sense given this context, but that’s how thick this was. Actually, it wasn’t thicker than Chicago-style casserole pizza, but you get my point.

Back at the hostel, I met a Bolivian couple who were sharing the room with me this evening and had a good conversation with them. I don’t remember their names, but I’m guessing his was probably Marcelo. The girl was really really cute – maybe Bolivia should notch up a few pegs on my list of countries from which to have a pseudo-awkward women fetish. I remember that she was very interested on my thoughts about Edward Snowden, and was a bit perturbed by my response. I basically told her that it didn’t surprise me in the least because after 9/11, we signed away all sorts of rights in the Patriot Act and other such legislation that we as a society never really thought about. And it only stood to reason that the NSA was doing the same with other countries. And I’m sure that other countries were doing the same. That’s not to say that I don’t completely disagree with the NSA and that I’m not happy that Snowden came along, it’s just that I wasn’t surprised and it didn’t really change my view of anything in the least. If anything, it supported my contention that Obama is not really as liberal as people like to make him out to be – similar to a libertarian, a true liberal would have killed the program quickly because of rampant civil liberties violations.

But yeah, she was really cute.

Saturday, December 14^th, 2013

Today, I delved into the criminal world a bit. Argentina’s government apparently thinks it’s a good idea to control their exchange rate with the USD so the official bank rate is about 6.2 Argentinian pesos to 1 USD. They also restrict how much Argentinians can exchange their own pesos for USD, essentially creating a black market exchange… which for some reason is called a blue market. And the blue market isn’t all that underground either – there’s even a website showing the current blue market rate. It’s pretty substantial and you can often get up to 9:1, especially if you have higher denominations.

For those who don’t have USD cash in hand, like me right now, you can use xoom.com to essentially wire yourself money from home (like Western Union), converting the USD to Argentinian pesos in the process at a rate of about 8.4:1, not as good as the blue market but a heck of a lot better than the ATM rate. Xoom’s Argentinian affiliate is a company called [more], which is closed on Sundays and they don’t have any locations in the south of the country. So I figured I ought to try and get $600+ USD’s worth of Argentinian pesos here while I could and carry them with me for the rest of my trip… and save 30% in the process. I only wish I had figured this out earlier, because I would have brought $1000 in cash on Day 1 and exchanged it all in Salta and saved all along. Oh well.

My hope this afternoon was to head down 20km or so south to wine country, rent a bike and visit some wineries. Unfortunately, by the time I got the blue market stuff sorted out, there wasn’t enough time to do this since many of the wineries close a little earlier on Saturdays. But I was able to book a guided ½ day tour in a van at the hostel so all worked out. Darius (from the horseback riding trip) was on the same trip so we hung out a bit. The tour took us to two wineries at opposite ends of the spectrum – one very old winery and one brand spanking new winery. We learned that the area is naturally a desert, but the ice-melt water from Aconcagua and other nearby mountains has been channeled to the area since pre-Spanish times creating a wonderful farming community. Today, the government maintains strict control of the irrigation channels to ensure everyone gets a fair share, for a price of course.

But anyway, way back when in colonial times, the church needed to source their wine from somewhere because shipping it from the homeland was way too expensive. They tried in many many places, but somehow this land proved exceptional for this purposes and voila – a now-world renowned wine region was born. Because of the church. I would never have guessed that.

In my continuing search for a great piece of Argentinian steak, I stopped by a restaurant called Downtown and ordered a steak and salad. Out came a massive hunk of steak and a massive salad. The waitress tricked me with the salad, because I incorrectly thought it was included as a side. But the meat was soooo very wonderful that it made up for that annoyance. The food was so plentiful that I ended up needing a doggie bag to take some back to the hostel. I’m leaving tomorrow afternoon for Santiago, so I figured I’ll finish it as an early lunch. I definitely couldn’t let them throw that beautiful piece of meat away.

Darius and I met up around midnight for a few beers and had a nice conversation into the wee morning hours. The topic turned to the growing anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe; in England, there’s a pretty prominent almost-KKK-like group that has formed and is creating all sorts of a ruckus. What I remember discussing from the conversation is that while there’s no easy answer, it’s definitely not okay for the Muslim community to turn to the religious leadership to solve disputes and crimes versus the local police. There has to be more acclimatization to the local community by immigrants – as well, there should be some of the same in reverse by the existing community. England is unbelievably diverse, so this shouldn’t generally be an issue – as I think Darius put it, “London IS Diversity”. It’s not an easy issue to tackle, and usually a few generations solves the problem, but it sounds as though this isn’t happening as many Muslim immigrants have created their own insular communities within towns/suburbs across many parts of Western Europe. I don’t think that’s good for anybody.

Tidbits

1.      

The toilets in Mendoza are interesting. For some reason, the upper half (tank + flushing mechanism) is embedded into the wall behind the tiles, leaving the seat & bowl alone to protrude into the room space. In addition to that, the flushing mechanism is a long button at eye level that you push in to flush. I can’t quite figure out why the need for something different. Did the city actually pass an ordinance to make this happen or something? Of course, the real question in my mind is why the people of Mendoza don’t trust their children and the midget population to be able to flush their own dookie down the toilet. You know, the streets have these incredibly deep uncovered sewer ditches along every sidewalk – I guess the thinking is that if children fall and die in those, then it’s just Darwinism. But flushing your own poo? We’ve got to protect them against that.

2.       I’ve often said that learning English is terribly difficult and learning Spanish is terribly easy. Often people will agree with me, but equally often people will disagree and claim the exact opposite. I think I figured out why – I’m a visual learner and I need to see words spelled out to remember them. Spanish is highly logical and is generally pronounced the way it is spelled. But it presents other challenges with verb conjugations and gendered nouns (el vs la) that can be cumbersome. To audio learners, English is far easier, despite the fact that our spelling rules are absolutely atrocious – there are no real rules because English has been sourced by so many different languages and new words never had to adhere to a spelling standard.

3.       Tom (from Sweden) confirmed that the Swedish Bikini Team doesn’t actually exist. He had no idea what I was talking about. I learned from a quick Google search that Old Milwaukee beer invented it back in the 80s for a few commercial spots and it just caught on, before they stopped due to concerns from some women’s rights groups. So another budding entrepreneur stepped in and started making low-budget movies featuring the Swedish Bikini Team, this time with actual Swedish people. So, my Swedish friend Tom, I beg to differ – the SBT does exist. And thank goodness for that.