Bueno Buenos Aires

Flew into Buenos Aires on Air New Zealand, nice, as they’ve only just started flying in. Anyway, after reading the guide book, and partly because we were pretty tired, decided to take a taxi into town. The taxi company was nice enough to let us phone the AirBnB host to make sure she knew we were coming. Anyway, all worked out fine. Sure it’s a little more expensive getting a taxi, however, I think it’s fair enough to be gentle on yourself the first few days after getting into a completely different timezone and in a foreign language to boot.

The host was lovely, met us at the door, suggested places to go for dinner etc. All good. Not having pesos (yet) we just used dollars. It’s an interesting old place Argentina. There are, I think, 5 different (American) dollar exchange rates in use. For our use case as a tourist, only two matter. The official exchange rate (9 Pesos to 1 Dollar) and the “blue dollar”. Not officially available to tourists, but, you get about 14 Pesos to the dollar if you exchange with these people. It’s a very easy place to get ripped off though, so you really want to ask a local and then take their advice. Lots of examples of people getting 1000 Peso notes (don’t exist any more) etc. etc. Our guy I think tricked/haggled us down a little (from 14 to 13.5) saying that they’d rather $100 notes to $50 notes.. however, someone else said this was correct. Anyway, moral of the story is, if you’re going to travel in Argentina, bring a lot of dollars with you. * (as of this writing, before Antarctica, this was true, however, the president has changed and I’m 99% sure the official exchange rate is now 13:1, so much better.

Also, Argentina is a lot more expensive than I was thinking it was going to be… purely through ignorance mind you, it is a fully developed (if somewhat corrupt) country.

Anyway, we spent our one full day wandering around, seeing the “Pink Palace” (presidential house). They were setting up for speeches etc. as Kirchener had just lost the election. Interesting times. We also went to to the cemetery which had been recommended. An odd place to walk around, lots of the cognoscenti of BA are here.. some now in ruins. The grave of Eva Peron (of Evita) is here. It’s quite the maze, I wonder how many films it is in! would make a great set.

We also ate at Cabana Las Lilas which our friend Val had recommended. Maaike’s parents had very kindly given us some $$ to spend on a dinner, as we were unable to make their 40th wedding anniversary. We had a fantastic dinner and a very nice bottle. I had a mini panic attack thinking that I’d ordered a bottle 10x as much as I had meant to, fortunately it was OK! I blame the jetlag. Anyway, lovely dinner, many thanks Meneer en Mevrouw Jongerius :)

Saw this bridge on the way home, very very similar to the one in Dublin. Turns out it is by the same architect. That’s value pricing that is ;)

Then it was time to head down to the bottom of South America, to Ushuaia, gateway to Antarctica.