Some General Thoughts on Argentina
Argentina is a wonderful place to visit. It also turned out to be a place where hunters and tourists can both have all the fun they want. The people we ran into were courteous and willing to help in whatever way they could. The language barrier was minimal as someone somewhere could speak English or our hosts were patient enough with us and we were able to get by with our broken Spanish. At no time did we feel uncomfortable or out of our element.
Changing US dollars to pesos was confusing at best. To my understanding, it is easy to change dollars to pesos but difficult to change pesos to dollars. Most Argentineans and Argentine business would welcome dollars as long as you were willing to take pesos as change. The exchange rate from restaurants and shops was often considerably better than you got from a bank or ATM. I ended up spending dollars and getting pesos as change. I kept a running tally in my head as to what pesos I knew I would need and a reserve fund just in case we ran into someone who would not take pesos. That only happened twice and I had pesos to cover it. I did use an ATM on a few occasions and my debit card worked flawlessly. Prices were comparable to the US, and actually ended up being cheaper if you used dollars, and we got a good exchange rate.
Be careful if you plan to travel a lot by domestic air. The baggage weight allowance is 30lbs instead of the 50lbs we are allowed in the US. You are allowed only one carry-on bag, not one carry-on bag and a personal item. Keep these two differences in mind and you should have no problems. Argentine air travel is as safe, comfortable and efficient as it is in the US.
If you like wine, you are in the right spot. There is a wide price range available in the restaurants and we tried to stay in the 75-150 peso ($10-$30) depending on the exchange rate and found them all very good. You could spend a lot more if you liked, but if your palate is like ours, you will not need to. We liked the Malbec and the Burgundy’s, but some of the white wines were good as well. While you are there, sample as many as you can. We used our smart phones to take pictures of the labels of the ones we liked and it made it easy to look for them back home. Wine that was easy to look for turned out to be hard to find. Most of the smaller vineyards did not produce enough to export and the larger vineyards are not available throughout the US. If you try a lot, chances are better of finding one when you get home.
