DigiArt Travel Stories 5: Seeun Sung’s Travel Tips For A Vegetarian in Argentina

Travel and food is an unbreakable link. Vegetarianism was Seeun’s new thing. She had stuck to it for over eight month now. There was no going back. She was going to be a vegetarian across her journey through Argentina.
She didn’t want to starve throughout her trip. Thanks to some smart travel tips, she didn’t.
These travel tips helped her to stay nourished and healthy during her journey but lso helped her explore the lesser know dishes of Argentina. Argentina was a country obsessed with meat and meat based dishes. It wasn’t fair that she would expect the country to cater to her specific needs.
She had to adapt herself.
This is how she did it.

1. She picked her destination carefully

She chose her destination carefully. Diet was not a reason to not visit a country. She had to tackle it with a little preparation. India was an easy destination for vegetarian travelers but Argentina wasn’t. Thus her travel preparation for Argentina had to be different from that of her journey across India. She had to carry a protein powder incase she couldn’t find vegetarian protein easily in Argentina.

2. No Point In Asking

The waiter when asked for a vegetarian option mentioned all the option in the menu. This included “Well, we have a chicken empanada, and pork, and sausage, and beans with sausage, and beef with pork, and…” She then was told about the option with beans.
It was easier for her to look at the menu and order the vegetarian dishes directly.

3. Ask for the ingredients

Much of the world is unaware of vegetarian diet outside Asia and the Anglophilic countries. IT is better to ask the restaurants what is added into the dishes that you are being served as they often will not understand what you mean by the world vegetarian. You can say “No Meat” that will help you in most of the cases.

4. Accept mistakes

There will be times you will accidentally be served meat. This may be unintentional or at times a case of carelessness. Take the aforementioned empanada vendor. He was selling cheese empanadas, which may seem like a great choice for a vegetarian. However, Venezuela has a deep love affair with spam, which somehow seems to find its way into everything. Needless to say, the cheese empanada was impregnated with small chunks of spam.

Her vegetable soups would occasionally had a piece of beef in it. She just had to tell herself to move on and not visit the place again. Regardless of how good the soup was.
It is hard but it wasn’t her fault so it alright.

5. Self Prepared Meals

When she was staying in a place for a longer duration and she opted for a room with a kitchen where she could prepare her own meals.
This will gave her access to nutritious meals and also saved money. Not to forget it was completely meat free..

6. There are many like you!

A lot of hotels,hostels and other accommodation organize meet ups. She let them know that she was looking for other travelers who were vegetarians like her. This helped her other people who know the good locations in the city for vegetarian food.

7. Couchsurfing

Couchsurfing was a great way to find hosts who shared her dietary routines. The hosts also prepared amazing meals and home and dishes that she would have to pay a hefty amount for out.

8. Happy Cow!

This app is like the Yelp for Vegans. It helps in locating vegan restuarants .They don’t always have much reliable information for obscure destinations, but for the average traveler, Happy Cow can be a godsend. As a Vegetarian she found this very useful too.

Conclusion.

Traveling as a Vegetarian wasn’t easy for Seeun especially in Argentina. She had her ups and downs. There were times when she was mistakenly served meat, at times she had mistaken consumed it as well. Inspite of all this, she never lost her cool and continued her journey. She knew she tried her best and she was rewarded with an amazing experience of Argentina.

Do you have any such experiences relating to your dietary routines when you travel? Let me know in the comments below.

Source: http://www.thealternativedaily.com/traveling-abroad-as-a-vegetarian-or-vegan/
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Originally published at THE BROWN NOMAD.