Buenos Aires, Part 3: Economics and Politics

This is my third and final post about Buenos Aires.  My sister also wrote about our trip.

If you have traveled internationally, you know that every country requires visitors to fill out a customs form concerning basic information and goods that are being brought into the country.  On Argentina's form, we were required to provide information about the mobile phone we were bringing into the country.  Garv, LG, and I discussed why they did that but then we soon forgot about it.

On Sunday evening in Buenos Aires, we were riding in a cab on the way to a restaurant.  During the ride, we passed a Walgreens-like pharmacy and I noticed that there was the largest signage for tampons I'd ever seen.  Then I forgot about it.

On Monday evening, we did a walking tour and at one of the stops, which was a street in a high-end neighborhood that previously had designer stores, the guide discussed Argentina's economy.  These companies left because Argentina had implemented a policy that limited companies from profiting from imported goods without exporting goods of equal value (or something like that).  So  many companies did not do business in Argentina because it was too difficult to make money there.  Two of the consequences of that policy is that one can not buy an iPhone in Argentina and that a few months prior, Argentina had a tampon shortage.  Now the customs form and billboard made more sense....Our tour guide had a iPhone which she had bought in Chile and "smuggled" into Argentina.  It doesn't seem too hard to "smuggle" everyday consumer goods into Argentina because the customs agents did absolutely no inspection or asked any questions when we went through.  (An aside: There was MUCH less security flying between Santiago and Buenos Aires than Des Moines to Minneapolis.)

This is a picture from our walking tour that really has nothing to do with the content in this blog post.  But it needed a picture  The people on the left were a couple from Dubai via the Ukraine and India.

Check out some of these headlines:

Argentina: What the tampon shortage says about the troubled country

iPhone Drought Continues in Argentina

Venezuela is running out of toilet paper

Russia declares war on cheese, western food


The common element is that in each of situations, the policies of an authoritarian or semi-authoritarian government lead to a shortage or a sharp increase of prices.

Critics of free market economies claim that the obvious conclusion of such a system is that it will devolve into a crass consumer culture in which everything is commodified and people are overly materialistic.  But then they ignore alternative that over-regulation can lead to a lack of iPhones, tampons, toilet paper, cheese, and viable options with which to save money.  The latter had a tremendous impact on our trip.  And made it really cheap!



In Chile, if we purchased something, we'd usually use our credit card, the credit card company would do the exchange calculation from Chilean Pesos to USD, and that would be it.  In Argentina, the way the monetary system works, that would be a rip-off.  There are two exchange rates in Argentina.  The official rate, which is the rate our credit card would use, was around 9.9 pesos: $1.  This rate does not float like other currencies because the government wants to maintain the illusion that there isn't rampant inflation.  There is, however, rampant inflation so there is a second rate, called the blue rate (basically the black market).  The blue rate was a much better deal for us since we could buy about 14.6 pesos: $1.  Here's the best example of how much we could save by exchanging US dollars for Argentine Pesos at the blue rate.

(Math teachers: Feel free to turn this into a story problem!) For four nights, our total hotel bill was 4200 pesos.  If we paid with a credit card, it would use the 9.9:$1 rate and in USD our total would have been $424.  However, by paying with cash we bought on the street, at the 14.6:$1 rate, our total was $287.  We saved $137!


Acquiring that cash was an interesting process--one that LG was not a fan of!  In certain areas of the city, there are "cambio guys."  Cambio means "change" in English.  There were several cambio outfits near our hotel.  The first time Garv bought pesos (using only $50 or $100 bills), we just went off to the side of the street and he pulled the money out of his jacket.  And LG HATED it!!!!!! She was reassured, however, when our tour guide on Saturday said that is was ok to do.  Also, the next few times Garv exchange money, we went to offices which wasn't as shady.  That's because the Argentine government knows their real rate isn't realistic so the authorities look the other way. 

What do the cambio guys do with the US cash?  They sell it other Argentines who use it as a form of savings because the inflation rate is so high that pesos don't hold their value.  American dollars hold their value so that's why Argentines want them.  And they're willing to buy them from tourists.

This picture also has nothing to do with the content of the post.  We went for a jog through a park and along the water on Saturday morning.

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Argentina has had many problems with money and inflation and debt and defaults throughout its history.  One of the explanations for this is that Argentines do not vote based on ideology or management ability but on force of personality.  And they like bold, strong individuals who may implement crazy fiscal and monetary policies that lead to inflation, no iPhones, and a tampon shortage. The most dominant figure in Argentine politics was Juan Peron, who's probably better known in the rest of the world for being Evita's husband.  Evita is still revered as seen in the picture below.  Is there a connection between Evita and the financial problems?  No.  But I somehow had to find a way to actually have pictures in this post that were connected to the content of the post.

There's a lot going on in this picture.  Evita is on the building eating a sandwich.  Actually she's singing into a microphone.  I took this picture in the middle of an 18! lane avenue.  And all the bikes are Kawasaki riders collecting toys.

LG and I from the balcony at Casa Rosada (Pink House), the president's office.  We're one balcony over from where Evita sang or whatever.  I haven't seen the movie.

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Buenos Aires is big, grand, exquisite, complex, European-like, and passionate.  During our trip we experienced all of those things...Long taxi rides, magnificent views of the boulevard, European-style architecture, money-changing, beef, pizza, wine, tango....

Buenos Aires, Part 2: Dancing

This is the second installment about LG's, Garv's, and my trip to Buenos Aires from August 14-18.  Part 1 was about food and drink.  My sister also wrote about Buenos Aires.

Now to discuss dancing...

I organized this in the order of our dancing experiences.


1. Flamenco Show (Friday night)
After eating at La Brigada, we wanted to see a tango show.  We were directed to a bar but on this evening, it had a flamenco dancer instead of tango.  It was pretty entertaining because the dancer was really good.  Three things stood out from the evening: a) the dancer looked like Jon Snow from Game of Thrones; b) Garv and I thought the dancer's hair was great and LG didn't; and c) a discussion (primarily between LG and me) about one of the people in the bar (no more details forthcoming).

Jon Snow--The resemblance is uncanny!

2. Tango Show (Saturday night)
On Saturday night we were supposed to have Tango lessons, dinner, and see a Tango show.  Unfortunately, the Tango lessons were canceled (we're not sure why).   This was disappointing because we were all really looking forward to it.  The Tango show, however, was incredible.  I don't know anything about tango except that it is extremely sexy.  The tango dancers in the show were clearly professional and were able to demonstrate a lot of skill and sexiness.

Before the show

3. Tango Pictures (Sunday afternoon)
In tourist areas, there are "tango dancers" with whom tourists can have their pictures taken.  Garv suggested that I do it, so I figured what the hell.  So Ana had me get into four different poses and LG snapped our pictures.  It was actually a lot of fun and provided us with a lot of laughs.

Setting up

Our first "dance"

This was actually pretty easy

A less serious one

A very serious one

4. Street Tangos (Sunday afternoon)
In tourist areas, street performers and small bars also have tango shows for tourists.  These do NOT exist throughout the city, but they were fun to see.

5. Ballet (Sunday evening)
On Sunday evening, we got tickets to watch ballet at the Teatro Colon, a world-wide famous performance venue.  Since we have no knowledge or interest in ballet, we got the $5 seats because we wanted to see the building.  Our $5 seats ended up being standing room only tickets in the 7th or 8th or 12th deck or whatever and we could barely see.  The building itself is magnificent, but extremely inefficient.  (I estimate that it only sat about 1500-2000 people (which is about what a high school gym can seat.)  The first half of the ballet, before intermission, was pretty interesting because of the skill involved.  After intermission, we moved down a level to some actual seats.  It was almost impossible to see from the seats, I was tired, and there's only so much ballet I can appreciate despite being "well-cultured" so I napped for almost the entire second half of the performance.  Napping was a great decision.

Exterior of Teatro Colon

Don't lean over the rail too far

Lots of decks

6. Milonga (Sunday night)
The milonga was definitely the highlight of the dancing.  A milonga is simply a place where the tango is danced (or in this case the two-step (or something similar) set to 1950s American music).  This milonga was held in a place that resembled a VFW or American Legion hall and it was locals enjoying a Sunday night before a national holiday on Monday.  The dance floor had three groups: beginner, intermediate, and advanced.  Each group had a couple leading the dance steps.  The men were on one side and the guy showed the "students" the steps while the woman did the same with the women.  Then after five minutes or so, the leaders had the men and women select a partner and dance for a few minutes together before switching to new partners.

"Learning" the dance steps

After ten minutes or so of observing (especially noting that women outnumbered men), I decided to give it a try.  (I am a poor dancer.  I inherited my dancing from my dad who is undoubtedly the worst dancer ever.  For whatever reason, the footwork for dancing is not natural to me.  It's strange that I have good footwork when it comes to sports, but such horrible footwork when it comes to dance.)  So I get out there and the leader guy had us guys go through the steps for five minutes and I thought I had it down...Then it was time to find a partner and luckily for me, the first partner I selected was British!  It went pretty well because she was able to tell me what to do.  Then it was time to switch partners and the girl I picked was from a northern Argentinian province and her English was much worse than my Spanish.  But she wasn't a good dancer either so we just kind of moved around and had fun.  Then for my last partner, I selected a Porteno who should have been with the intermediate or advanced group.  She didn't speak any English and was trying to get me to do the steps absolutely correctly and it was going disastrously.  The leader dude saw my difficulties and tried to help, but it wasn't going well...So he left and she tried to teach me some more.  But since she couldn't speak English and I couldn't speak the language of dance, it wasn't as much fun...Then it was time to switch partners so I slunk off the dance floor to have a beer...

Shortly after, the lessons ended and the floor was opened up for people to dance.  So the good dancers come out and we watched them and it was very interesting.  It's one of those things, like playing guitar, that I wish I could do but I'm so bad at that I choose to allocate my time in other ways...like writing blogs.

A Birthday in Santiago!

First of all, thanks to everyone for all the birthday wishes!  When I reflected upon all the birthday greetings, I was humbled that I received well-wishes from all stops of my life--family, Remsen, RU, University of Iowa, IKM, Ole Miss, ELC, Boji, SMSU, and many places in between and far away.  Many people wished me a great day and it was!  So I decided to write about it because I had such an enjoyable day with LG and Garv.   And don't worry, I'll still be writing more about Buenos Aires tomorrow.

So here's my day.

9:30 am: Wake up.  I wake up at 9:30 most days here.  The sun doesn't come up until 8:30 anyways.

10:00 am:  Walking tour of Nunoa, a comuna (mini-municipality) of Santiago

One of the many reasons I was excited to visit Santiago for a second time was that I would be able to see parts of the city that are not necessarily remarkable to tourists.  Nunoa is certainly not remarkable to tourists, but it is my new favorite part of the city.

LG and I visited Nunoa because there was a self-guided walking tour with six stops, and it is the part of town where LG volunteers in the schools, so she wanted me to see her schools.  The first stop was the National Stadium.  The National Stadium has some interesting history since it was a detention center during the dictatorship.  Because of that, 300 seats remain unoccupied in memory of the victims during each soccer match, including Chile's victory there in the Copa America in July.  We were only able to see the exterior the stadium so I snapped a few pictures.  I found the playground interesting because someone is missing out on a lot of parking revenue.  There's no way a stadium in the United States would have largely unused playground where expensive parking spots could otherwise be.  When I mentioned this to Garv, he laughed and said that "Financial transactions are the farthest thing from [Chileans'] mind.  It's just different."

Lots of lost revenue!

Showing off my pipes with an imitation of some random Greek statue.

The major reason I liked Nunoa so much is because of the area around Plaza Nunoa, the last stop on the walking tour.  It was an upper middle class neighborhood; had lots of restaurants, bars, and shops; it was very clean and orderly; and it wasn't at all touristy.  I especially love the picture below--the mountains, the apartment building, the church with unique architecture, and the palm tree--because I'm clearly in a foreign country.

4:30 pm: Nap

5:30 pm: Work out

Santiago has lots of parks and many of them are located in the middle of boulevards.  They have crushed gravel paths for jogging and walking and playgrounds and workout equipment in the grassy areas.  So I jogged a mile and a half or so (the perfect distance!) and then did some pushups, pullups, and abs.  But I didn't work out too much because I knew I'd be doing a little (or a lot of) drinking later.

8:30 pm: CHPE Libre

For an aperitif and appetizer, we went to CHPE Libre, a pisco bar and restaurant in a trendy part of Santiago called Lastarria.  This is one of the most brilliantly conceived restaurant/bars ever.  Pisco is a liquor made from grapes and these grapes grow particularly well in northern Chile and southern Peru.  So the CHPE part of the name is derived from the first two letters of each countries' name and they called it the Independent Republic of Pisco.  That's not what was brilliant!  What was really brilliant was that they appropriated communist symbols as a marketing aspect of a capitalist enterprise.  That's the perfect place for me on my birthday.  Pure brilliance.

I love places with maps!

A new country!

Power to cocktails for the bourgeoisie!

The food and drink was excellent, too.  We each ordered a different a different pisco drink and some ceviche (raw fish marinated in lemon juice), flanked by two different kinds of corn.  It was an excellent start to my birthday evening.

Ceviche

Another picture of me with a drink...

9:30 pm: Bocanariz

Last year, I ranked Bocanariz as my second favorite experience.  Here was a conversation LG and I had about my birthday plans:

LG: What do you want to do for your birthday?
TK: Go to Bocanariz.
LG: But I wanted to go to Bocanariz one day for lunch.
TK: It's my birthday!

Needless to say, the birthday boy won.

We had reservations at 9:30 and since CHPE Libre was right next door to Bocanariz, we were right on time.  Which, in Chile, means we were way early.  Since we were early, the host let us go down to their cellar which had thousands of wines, all of which were from Chile (which also makes Bocanariz a brilliantly conceived restaurant).  We (or mainly Garv) peppered the host with questions about wine and he even dug out an expensive one for us to look at (and take a picture with).

I was really nervous about dropping this bottle even though the floor was crushed gravel...

Once we were seated, I thoroughly analyzed the place mat that had a map of central Chile on it.  Since Chile is such a long country, only part of it fit on a place mat.  When you put three place mats together, it would have been most of Chile.  But I didn't go that far.

In between map gazing, we also looked through the wine menu which is extensive.  One of my favorite things about Bocanariz is that it is all Chilean wine.  I really don't know that much about Chilean wine (I just drink it), but Garv knows a fair amount and he splurged on a bottle since it was my birthday.  It was very good and, of course, we got a picture of me drinking it.  We also ordered three small plates and a dessert and all of them were excellent.

And another picture of me drinking wine--with a plate of hams from various animals... 

 I also love Bocanariz because this is the greatest thing ever for a wine bar/restaurant...

We only had one bottle...

 Once again, thanks to everyone for the birthday notes.  And thanks to LG and Garv for sharing it with me in Santiago!

Buenos Aires, Part 1: Food and Drink

Last year when I was in Santiago, one of my disappointments was that I didn't try any Argentinian food.  During last year's trip, however, Garv, LG, and I made tentative plans to go to Buenos Aires in 2015.  We held to those plans and spent a long weekend in Buenos Aires, which was amazing!  We arrived on a Friday night at about 7 pm local time and left the next Tuesday at noon.

I'm going to break my trip into three parts:

1. Food and Drink

2. Dancing

3. History, Politics, and Economics

Lindsay also posted a blog about our trip to Buenos Aires.

Food and Drink in Buenos Aires

A. Beef

One of the prominent features of Argentina's geography is the Pampas, which is a huge plain ideal for herding cattle.  Argentina is well-known for beef so we had to try some parillas, which are basically steak houses.  Garv had received a few recommendations so after checking into our hotel we immediately headed to La Brigada, one of Buenos Aires's best known parillas.

The food was excellent, particularly the fried cheese appetizer, the steak, and the bottle of Malbec.  Even better was the service.  The server, a gentleman of about sixty years, was deft with everything--bringing food, serving food, serving wine, removing dishes and silverware, cleaning up my mess of breadcrumbs.  It was remarkable and added to the atmosphere and food to create a great experience on our first night in Buenos Aires.

Fried cheese and red pepper--a great appetizer!

My sirloin--shaped like Australia

Enjoying my sirloin!

On Sunday night, we went to another highly recommended steakhouse called La Cabrera.  Unfortunately, this experience was not as enjoyable.  The food was great (check out the size of the spread below!), the wine was great, the service was good (though no where near as good as La Brigada), but the problem was that it was miserably hot in the restaurant!  Garv couldn't tolerate it and had to go outside a few times.  Even LG thought it was hot! South Americans have a much different internal temperature.  While we were immensely uncomfortable, no one else seemed bothered.  There was even a Brazilian guy wearing two fleeces...

Garv: I have to outside!
LG: Even I'm hot!
TK: Even I can't eat all this food!

B. Pizza

The real food winner of the trip according to LG and Garv was pizza... Argentina is usually known for its beef, and it certainly was good, but it wasn't brilliant.  LG thinks it's because we are used to eating really good beef raised by family friends.  So though the meat didn't blow us away, LG and Garv loved the pizza (I thought it was good, but it did't blow me away).  The reason the pizza is so good is that around the turn of the twentieth Argentina experienced a huge influx of immigrants from Italy (and Spain).  Because of that Italian influence, there are some great pizza places and we went to a pair of them, Guerrin's on Saturday and Banchero's on Sunday.

Guerrin's

Banchero's: LG and I preferred this one.

C. Wine

If you go to the Hy-Vee liquor store and search for wine from Argentina, it's almost certainly going to be Malbec. There is a region of Argentina called Mendoza that is ideal for growing Malbec.  Chile and California also grow some Malbec, but Argentine Malbec is the best.  We had a bottle or two each day.  And like the beef, our best wine was at La Brigada.  Of course, we also spent twice as much on the bottle at La Brigada than our bottles at other places.

D. Coffee and Dessert

LG really likes coffee and dessert.  So we visited Cafe Tortoni, the most famous cafe in Argentina.  I'm not really sure why it was so famous, but because it was famous, we went.  We shared some desserts. I had some hot chocolate since I don't drink coffee.  Garv had a milkshake because he doesn't drink coffee.  LG had coffee because she would rather have coffee than alcohol.  Crazy.

LG enjoying her coffee at Cafe Tortoni

E. Speakeasies

One of the trendy things in Buenos Aires (and other cities) are "speakeasies."  There is nothing illegal about these speakeasies, but it adds another layer to the drinking experience.  On Saturday night, we went to a place called Frank's.  Entry required a password which could be found on the bar's Facebook page.  So we said "Grace Kelly" to the bouncer, went through a telephone booth, and were in the bar.  The bar specialized in intricate cocktails.  This was great in theory, but horrible in practice.  Because the drinks were so complicated to make, it was very hard to get service.  After about half an hour and not even getting close to the bar, we left.  In my final analysis is was trying to hard to be hip and failed at the basic function of a bar--serve customers drinks.  However, many Portenos (residents of Buenos Aires) disagreed because the bar was packed.

Entering Frank's Through the Secret Passage

The second speakeasy we visited was Florida Atlantica.  The front was a flowershop, but inside was a secret door that led down some stairs to a restaurant/bar.  

But here's a picture of the flower shop!

The Secret Door!

This was a much better experience.  It had a cool vibe and we had a bottle of wine, a couple of appetizers, and dessert.  The dessert was chocolate mousse and was the culinary highlight of the trip.  It was sublime.  So good.  It was so good we didn't get a picture because when something is so good you sometimes forget to get a picture of it.  It was a very fitting way to end our last night in Buenos Aires...

Wineries!

I learned an interesting fact on this trip--Chileans are not big wine drinkers.  That's okay--more for me.  They are, however, big wine producers.

Last year, we visited El Cuadro vineyard and it was my favorite experience of the entire trip.  This year, LG and I did a day trip to two wineries as part of a tour: Santa Rita and Concha y Toro.  Though these two wineries were not as amazing as El Cuadro, we had a great day and drank some great wine.

We went to Vina Santa Rita first.  The tour was interesting because it focused on the industrial process of making wine.  The small vineyards I've been to emphasize how non-industrial they are.  So I liked this tour because Santa Rita proudly proclaimed how much wine they made (a lot, in qualitative terms).

Of course, since I found the industrial aspect of the winery most interesting, I didn't take any pictures of it.  A picture of me next to some aging barrels will have to suffice.

I also enjoyed this winery because there was an interesting story related to house and grounds (before it was a winery).  I excerpted this story from the noted historical website, Joe's Produce.com.

"In 1814, General Bernardo O’Higgins, one of our country’s forefathers, together with 120 patriots fighting to achieve Chile’s Independence, found refuge in the Santa Rita Hacienda, after a fierce battle against Spanish Crown soldiers in the city of Rancagua where they had been defeated. History tells us that the distinguished dame Paula Jaraquemada, with great courage, defended the 120 patriots by hiding them in the basement of the Santa Rita house, confronting the Spanish soldiers and not allowing them to enter her home by throwing a brazier full of hot coals at them. Thanks to her bravery, the 120 soldiers where able to regain their strength and continue on their quest for Chile’s independence. This historical fact was printed on the label of our vineyard’s most traditional wine, the 120 line as homage to those brave 120 soldiers."

That story was moving enough that I bought a bottle of 120 Carmenere.

Of course, since I found the historical aspect interesting I didn't take any pictures.  A picture of LG and me with some aging barrels will have to suffice. 

Another awesome thing was that there was a museum on the grounds called Museo Andino, which had thousands of artifacts from the Indians of Chile (more on that in another post).

This is actually a picture of me that is related to the what I wrote about.  The Museo Andino is behind me.

Our second winery was Concha y Toro, which is the largest winery in the world in terms of land area and the fourth largest in terms of production (or at least that's what our guide told us).  The size of Concha y Toro is best exemplified by the fact that the only Chilean Carmenere I can find at the Estherville Hy-Vee liquor store is Concha y Toro.  And wouldn't you know, one of the three wines we tried was the Casillero del Diableo 2013 Carmenere--which is what you can find at Hy-Vee and is the wine I've consumed the most in the past year.  But I happily drank it.

There were two features of the Concha y Toro tour that I really enjoyed.  The guide spent a lot of time talking about the importance of pruning in determining the quality of the grape.  He gave this explanation in "The Garden" which consisted of the twenty-six most common wine grapes grown in Chile.  If I had visited in March or April, I could have tried the grapes.  But alas, there were only "twenty six kinds of sticks" (a great line by the tour guide).

The other part of the tour that was enjoyable was visiting the Casillero del Diablo--the Devil's Cellar.  Before modern technology, wine was stored in cellars in order to age.  The Devil's Cellar acquired its name because the cellar was robbed.  So after being robbed, the owner started a story that the devil hung out in the cellar in order to keep away thieves.  Apparently, it worked.  Though I'm guessing it was stronger locks and more guards...For you superstitious and supernaturalist types, the devil doesn't really hang out there.

Regardless, the wine was good and we had a great time!

Salud!