Buenos Aires (BA), Argentina marks the end of our 3-month trek through South America. It's bittersweet because although we saw and did a lot, there's so much more we didn't do. Such is the case with Argentina. Departing from most tourist agendas, our goal in BA was to find an apartment for 3 weeks, unwind from the constant travel and sightseeing, and begin planning for our second phase of our trip through Spain-Morocco-Eastern European states along the Adriatic-Turkey.
We are still getting in the main sights and culture of BA such as the steak, Malbec wine, tango, art, parks, etc.; however, at least for this trip, we are foregoing the expense of traveling to Mendoza wine country, the Pampas, Iguazu Falls, and Patagonia. We definitely plan on traveling through these parts of Argentina in the future. BA was a super bargain destination for many of you who came here about 4-7 years ago, but with the recent inflation, it is no longer very friendly to the pocket book for the budget backpacker! We have been able to manage our expenses by staying in an apartment, buying wine and groceries at the supermarket, and selectively eating out. However, we have not felt deprived of any of the food, sightseeing, or culture. Again, shopping and dining in the outskirts with the locals is always less expensive and more authentic. Also, we've been able to avoid some of the high season prices by traveling to BA in the dead of winter; although the weather has been perfectly wonderful for us and no sign of the city hibernating because it's the winter.
We arrived via plane to BA last Thursday, July 12th through the international airport. This flight was only our second leg of our round-the-world tickets we purchased. After 2.5 months of cheap living, our first sticker shock came in the form of a US$160/pp "reciprocal fee" charged to the citizens of the US, Canada, and Australia before we even went through immigration. Apparently, this is the visa fee for Argentines to visit our country, so in turn, we get charged the same. How nice. Fortunately, Akiko holds a Japanese passport so she didn't have to pay, but we were already over-budget before we even got through immigration.
A few things to note after customs and immigration. There is one currency exchange place after leaving customs that charged us an astonishing 10% fee for exchanging our Peruvian Nuevo Soles to Argentine Pesos. We can't remember if we used Global or Banco de Nacional, but apparently, Banco de Nacional offers better rates. Also, the banks do not (nor the ATMs) give bills less than 100 pesos, and small businesses may not necessarily have change to break a 100 peso bill, so ask for smaller bills if possible. Counterfeits of larger bills is apparently common. The bank gave us a handout on the problem, how to detect counterfeit bills, and to always note the last 2 digits of the serial numbers of larger bills before handing it to the merchant, because they may take the bill, claim they don't have change for it, then return a counterfeit bill in its place. We've learned so many "ways" to scam tourists during our 3-months in South America! There's also 6 taxi booths vying for your business, but we were told to avoid all of these and actually go out the double doors to the blue and white official "Taxi Ezeiza" stand, where they have a set rate to the center of BA. For 200 (US$45) pesos, a worker escorted us out the airport to a waiting taxi, and 45 minutes later, we were dropped off in front of our hotel in Palermo Soho.
Kala Petit Hotel was located in an old colonial building off Thames in Palermo Soho, about a 5-minute walk from Plaza Serrano. The interior had a nicely decorated common living room, kitchen, and a dining room where the guests ate breakfast in the morning. Upstairs, there were 6 comfortable guest rooms where 3 of them shared a bathroom. We got one of the private rooms that shared a bathroom, which was no big deal because the hotel was not full.
After exploring the bohemian Palermo Soho neighborhood for a couple of days, we were looking forward to being in our apartment on the Palermo Hollywood side. We agreed to meet the owner on Saturday and had our keys and moved in by 11am! The apartment is in a secure, older stone building with about 40 units. The interior is modern with all the amenities (except laundry), and just like the photos we saw in
www.airbnb.com. After having been through South America for the past couple of months, we had to ask if we could flush toilet paper down the toilet and drink the tap water. The answer? Yes and yes. Oh, the joys of modern plumbing and infrastructure.
Palermo is a huge neighborhood northeast of downtown Buenos Aires. Our apartment is in an older part called Palermo Viejo, which is subdivided into Soho on the south side and Hollywood on the north side of Juan B. Justo Avenue. Many urban, middle-class dwellers live in condos in this trendy area to enjoy the myriad of restaurants, cafes, bars, boutique shops, and music venues. It's no wonder the grocery stores are lacking! There's way too many great restaurants around the corner for anyone to be cooking. Our apartment is located on El Salvador, and is only 3 blocks away from the Soho side, a laundry place on the next block, a small market on another block, and at least 6 or 7 ranked restaurants within a minute. The Palermo subte (subway) station on the green/D line is a little bit of a walk. It takes about 15 minutes to get to. In Japan, there would be bicycles everywhere, but we haven't seen much of that around here, for some reason. We haven't attempted the buses yet, but know that bus 166 goes down Juan B. Justo with a stop at Honduras. We also saw bus number 111 stop right at the corner of El Salvador and Fitz Roy, so we will probably test it out!
After we got settled in, our first order of business was to find a grocery store! Akiko's anticipation and excitement was quickly diffused when we discovered that there are only small markets peppered around the neighborhood, which carries random things but not items we were hoping for. In fact, we visited 5 grocery stores and none of them carried any fresh meat or seafood, a small sad selection of produce, and bare minimum of dried and packaged goods. Suddenly, the fantasy of making a meal we were craving came to a screeching halt. We scrounged up some instant soup mix (they have a lot of these), tomato purée, potato, onion, green pepper, pasta, dried lentils, and made a pot of hearty soup. It was good, only because it was homemade and not from a restaurant for the first time in 2.5-months! It went well with a nice bottle of Malbec that our host gave us.
Since then, we discovered the big supermarket, Jumbo, off Bullrich and Santa Fe, about a 25-minute walk from our apartment. It is truly jumbo! Although it lacks international foods, it carries a large selection of all the essentials and some gourmet foods. We will probably go there once a week to stock up, and supplement with the little stores around us more regularly.
[Below: Supermercado Jumbo. Biggest selection of fresh pastas ever!]
[Below: Supermercado Jumbo. A whole frozen aisle of empanadas.]
[Below: Supermercado Jumbo. A whole aisle of dulce de leche of various brands.]
[Below: Supermercado Jumbo. ...and, a whole section of Yerba maté.]
We also discovered an organic farmers market nearby on Bonpland and Honduras where they sell organic produce, cured meats and cheeses, grains like quinoa, pasta, artisanal jarred foods, condiments, and sauces. We are enjoying spending about $7 on 2 bottles of good wine at the market, and cooking like the show "Chopped", where we try to come up with a creative meal with the limited ingredients we have. [Below: we had some dried lentils, potatoes, onions, garlic, lemons, squash/pumpkin-like vegetable we've never seen before, corn, and spinach. Ended up making mini lentil burgers and a sauté of corn and spinach. Not bad.]
Overall, we think we hit the jackpot on this place and we are enjoying everything our neighborhood has to offer for the next 3 weeks. We promise to actually go explore the touristed sights of BA. Maybe next week...
