While eating some delicious frosted flakes at the hostel, a pretty girl in a nice retro looking attire comes over to chat with us, telling us about a local tour she was about to give, and if we would like to join we could watch the short video clip and then head out for a walk. We watched the video, chatted with her for a bit and got a bit more of an understanding about Argentina’s history and briefly understood why things are the way they are here. Like why Eva Peron is so popular, why everyday there seems to be protests. Someone pointed out that, the actual FX rate for dollars is actually 7.5 instead of 5.0 as posted by the official government.
Wait…what? You can get 50% more for your US dollars than at the bank?? W T F? We figured that’s probably because Argentina is going through some serious inflation, with the ‘official’ rate being spec’d at ~11%. Banks say they forecast 2013 inflation to be closer to 30%…… WHAT!?!? Okay, this makes sense now, and it also makes less sense that we keep pulling money out of the ATM if we can get 50% more …. but where?
Since Alan’s goretex jacket decided to pledge guilty and jumped off the boat, he needed another rain jacket for the upcoming hikes we’ll be doing. Heading over to the local Patagonia store, we browsed around and found what he needed, but we needed more pesos to pay for the jacket! (Please read the next post about exchanging money)
The rest of the afternoon was spent admiring Alan’s new jacket, and waiting at the travel agency for information updates on our upcoming trips. It was a bit tricky, and we had to work around several layers of agents and in the end got nothing. They told us, tomorrow they’ll have everything! Okay….we’ll have to trust them, but this was one wasted day.
Near our hostel, we found this Chinese restaurant, and we ate there at lunch and at dinner! The chef was from Guangdong, and made some pretty authentic stuff. Thinking we have a lot more time to eat grilled steak, we settled for more Chinese food now instead. Funny thing is, if you imagined what a Chinese triad-member would look like in South America, that’s the owner. He even walks around without a shirt, showing off his tattoos and all.
Doesn’t matter, he cooks alright and we ended up eating there THREE times!
outside our ho
Join us as we set sail around South America 