Review: Flecha Bus to Salta in Cama-Suite

Posted on May 18, 2010 by ryan

Ok, ok, ok. So everyone here in Argentina pretty much says that when you travel domestically you should take a bus even if it’s 20+ hours each way. While they do mention that it is cheaper as one of the reasons, by and large they say things like:

“Argentina has really figured out how to do bus travel”

and

“It’s SO much nicer than flying”

and

“You’ll get amazing views of the countryside and first class service”

and

“With a cama-suite ticket, you’ll get a seat that fully reclines into a comfortable bed, so when you’re not being fawned over by the stewardess bringing you champagne and a wonderful multi-course meal, you can either sleep or watch movies on your personal entertainment system”

Sounds like I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. People have said things like that to us time and again. If I had been exaggerating I would have instead said something like “There’s a back section of the bus with water slides and a stadium seating movie theater; Oh yeah, and lots of pole dancers”

So–while it took us a while to get past our suspicion that no matter how nice a bus is, 20 hours on it would still suck–given all of the enthusiasm people have we decided to give it a shot and purchased our tickets for the 20 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires to Salta. We figured worst case scenario we’d get a lot of studying done en route. We dutifully asked around about which bus companies would be best and eventually settled on using Flecha Bus since they were the only ones that offered Cama-Suite which is the highest class of service. It cost ~US$95 each for a one-way ticket (we were willing to try this, but not ready to commit to a roundtrip). Now, while $95 is cheaper than the $200 plane ticket, it’s certainly not free, so you’d really hope that you were getting some value above the ~$100 dollars you saved by trading out a 2 hour flight for a 20 hour bus ride. Wouldn’t you?

We didn’t know what to expect, but given all of the hype we were fairly excited when we left for the Retiro omnibus station. The station is kind of like an airport with multiple levels and lots of different gates (called puentes).

Retiro Omnibus Station in Buenos Aires Image

Retiro: More impressive than your average bus terminal

We nervously awaited our bus’ puente to be announced and soon caught our first glimpse of what would be our home for the next 20 hours. From the outside, it looked fairly impressive.

20 hours... I could do 40 hours in a bus that fine!

It’s fair to say that seeing the outside of the bus and getting our luggage loaded was the peak of the trip. It was pretty much all downhill once we got inside. Perhaps the best way to continue is to address how the actual experience compared to some of the great things we had heard…

Jen at the peak of her excitement (before the journey began)

How the experience stood up to the hype

Great views of the countryside: False.

The vast majority of the ride it was night time, so nothing exciting to see out the window. While the last 4 hours or so were daylight and it was somewhat interesting to see what was outside, it’s likely the same thing we would have seen on approach to landing if we had flown–because yes, it takes the bus about 4 hours to go the same distance a plane goes while on its 10 minute approach.

Personal entertainment systems: False.

There were a few TVs mounted to the ceiling and strategically positioned such as to be difficult to see. And they played 4 movies with the volume on for the whole bus to hear whether you wanted to or not; the first one was “Over Her Dead Body”; the second was something with an alligator; the third was something about a deaf swing dance champion and the final movie was about the life of Mother Theresa<—seriously, if only we could have somehow made it louder.

After you find the TV (hint: top right) see if you can find Waldo

Champagne: True!

We were given champagne, and in very classy, brand new champagne flutes

You might think this looks old and broken... Instead, try to think of it like premium stone washed jeans--classy right?

Meals are impressive: False.

sigh… We received 3 “meals” throughout the trip; one was a pre-dinner snack, followed by dinner, followed by breakfast. Breakfast and the pre-dinner snack consisted of the exact same shrinkwrapped styrofoam package with some cookies, a cereal bar and some unsalted crackers.

This looks so good I with I could have it twice...

Nice!!! I do get to have it twice!

Dinner was an entirely different shrinkwrapped styrofoam pack with an unidentifiable sandwich, a dessert thing and some breadsticks. Also, we got a heated up tin foil thing full of potatoes and what we think was chicken gizzard.

Mmm mmm good. Just like Mom used to make (sorry mom)

In case you were wondering what Jen thought of dinner (hint: that face means she didn't like it--it's subtle, but if you look closely you can tell)

Dinner also came with wine. Which reminds me–drinks in general were tons of fun given that the cup holder on the very bumpy bus ride was about double the size of the cups that they gave us. That worked well.

Now imagine filling that with coffee and then guess how many bumps on the road it would take before it was in your lap.... Correct answer: 2

Service is truly first class: False.

Service was comical. The stewardess (or whatever the appropriate name for a bus server is) literally tossed our meals to/at us from a few feet away each time. I guess that in retrospect we are glad that all of our meals were tightly shrinkwrapped, otherwise it would have gotten messy. When not throwing “food” at us, she was nowhere to be found.

The seats are great and really comfy to sleep in: False.

It was clear that this was an old bus when we got on. When we first sat down though, we actually thought the seats were old school, but reasonably comfortable to sit in. Attempting to sleep in them was a hole (misspelling intended) different matter though. They do in fact lay back into beds, BUT, there is a massive bump right where your pelvis is (imagine sleeping on a speed bump), which regardless of what position you try is extremely uncomfortable and you sort of get the feeling that if you were to somehow fall asleep despite all of the bumping and the noise from the weird alligator movie playing on the TVs you can’t see, you would wake up having lost the ability to stand up straight ever again–lucky you, odds of falling asleep are not high (besides, if you did fall asleep, you might be awakened by a styrofoam food container smacking you in the face compliments of the friendly serving staff from the other end of the bus).

Amazingly, even less comfortable than it looks

At least we can get a lot of studying done: False.

This one was really a suprise… we had a fancy overhead panel with lights and stuff, but we were surprised to discover that, when turned on, the lights were only just bright enough to be able to see what time it was on your glow in the dark watch if you squinted. Seriously, the overhead lights were not even close to being bright enough to be able to read–given that 12-14 hours of this trip took place in the dark, that kind of sucked (at least there were movies…)

Yeah, these were useless

Well, at least we won’t freeze to death: False.

To be fair, no one had actually told us that we wouldn’t freeze to death; I guess we just kind of assumed it and we all know what happens when we ASSUME… but really, even with 2 blankets each and our heavy coats on, we were still freezing for most of the ride. Yay hypothermia!

In case you were wondering--the bathroom sucked too (by the way, never follow a bus... pretty sure this opens directly to the road... classy)

In Summary

I really hope that this is an aberation and we somehow ended up with a bad bus, because if this experience is in fact representative of high-end bus travel in Argentina, then I have no choice but to never again trust any of the people that recommended it–or alternatively assume that this is a standard hazing/prank that they play on new people (if so, well played)

And for anyone out there that may think this sounds picky or elitist or whatever, here is my thought–If I walked into this expecting a really crappy bus ride (similar to Greyhound in the US), then I would indeed be blown away by how nice it is, BUT… people here consistently say that despite the 10x longer travel time, this is a much more comfortable way to travel and that seems crazy to me. I can accept the idea that if you’re looking to save some money and willing to put up with 20 hours of discomfort this is a lower budget way to travel (though the margin isn’t that wide–I’d say this should cost more like $30), but to really make a quality/comfort comparison vs. flying is a little bit ridiculous (unless of course there are much better buses out there… if so, let us know!)

Very good odds we’ll be flying home.

Update: We have since heard from our guide here that everyone agrees that Flecha Bus sucks and that everyone seems to really like a different company called Andesmaar which apparently does have good food, comfortable seats, wifi, personal entertainment systems and maybe even pole dancers. Oh well, we’re still flying home (and not on Aerolineas Argentina)

Update: We have now heard that Andesmaar can be very bad as well. Apparently it varies by route.

A little over 2 months in BsAs; some observations…

Posted on May 15, 2010 by ryan

So, we left our jobs on Feb 26th, got married on 3/4 and arrived here in Buenos Aires on 3/12. All in all we’ve been on this adventure for a little over 2 months now, so I thought it would be a good time to take a step back and make some observations…

…On Consulting

While at first it was weird to not be on-call all the time and we often woke up instinctively reaching for our Blackberries, we have now gone 2 full months without even carrying cell phones with us. It’s pretty awesome. You should try it.
Trying to explain what it was we used to do for work to locals down here gives a whole new sense of perspective on just how atypical our daily lives used to be–No one here can even imagine why anyone, anywhere would work the kind of hours we worked. From the outside of an MBA-type/consulting peer group, it seems at least 100x crazier than it did while we were doing it.
We witnessed some of our Spanish teachers get into a debate about which was the proper verb to use in a particular situation and comically remembered how we use to hang out with our friends and talk about work type stuff all the time–the exciting thing is that it took awhile to remember what kind of stuff we talked about (something about market sizes or profit modelling I think)
Down arrow: It is fair to say that we do not miss consulting at the moment.

…On Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is an unbelievably beautiful city and very easy to live in; we like it very much…
…though it’s not perfect: e.g., it would be nice if it was safer to walk around at night; it would be nice if the police were trustworthy; it would be nice if there were more diversified food options…
…but, all that said, for a large foreign city it is amazingly easy to feel integrated–it helps that we largely look similar to the locals–and has a fantastic energy and general friendly vibe to it. Also, it’s remarkably inexpensive all-in-all (especially for food, wine and rent)
In general, the people here seem very friendly and welcoming–though we were a bit naive in our hope to immediately have local friends; given our limited Spanish speaking abilities and the uncertainty in how long we’ll be here, I certainly wouldn’t want to be my friend.
As I said, we like it here. Some days we love it here, some days we’re less enthusiastic and eager to try out other Latin American cities for awhile, but we’ve consistently heard from folks that are more widely traveled down here that BsAs is THE place to be, so we’ll see.

…On Learning Spanish

Learning Spanish is hard.
Sometimes it is hard but fun and sometimes it is hard and very frustrating. Always, it is hard.
Every time you think you are getting a handle on it, there is some new concept/tense/structure/etc. that throws you for a loop and makes you lose confidence in everything you thought you knew
It’s much easier to understand than to speak
We’ve both made tremendous progress, but there is still a long road and lots of time/effort to achieve anything close to fluency
Or, maybe one day we’ll wake up and be able to speak perfectly. We’re hoping this happens.
One way or another, our goal is still to be able to make local friends and not be annoying to hang out with. Seems reasonable right?

…On the Spanish Language itself

I don’t understand why words need genders
I especially don’t understand why the words for Dresses and Bras are both masculine
I find it entertaining that the spanish word for wife is “esposa” and the word for handcuffs is “esposas”

…On what we’ll do next

A very difficult thing to figure out; we are going to explore Argentina a bit more (headed to Salta tomorrow on a 20 hour bus ride!) and in the very near future we need to decide whether or not to extend our lease here.
Also, need to figure out roughly how long this rehab is going to last. Should we go back in August? December? Should we get jobs down here and stay for awhile? Don’t know. Suggestions?

…Overall

It’s awesome to be here; if any of you reading this are even mildly contemplating doing something like this, stop contemplating and just do it–it’s hard to imagine a more rewarding experience.

Dear Aerolineas Argentina…

Posted on April 28, 2010 by ryan

Dear Aerolineas Argentina,

You let us down.

I’m writing to express my extreme disappointment that our ticket purchasing experience was so anticlimactic. You may think that we had unreasonably high expectations, but I think you’d have to admit that it was you that raised our expectations by leading us on so tantalizingly in the early stages of the process.

We began shopping for a ticket on your website with a few mild concerns based on having read poor reviews from other travellers, but we were willing to look past those reviews and give you a chance–especially since you were ~$200 cheaper than LAN for our flights to Iguazu. We found a schedule that worked for us and proceeded to make the reservation through your website. Up until then, we thought of you as just another airline and assumed that buying tickets from you would be just like so many other online tickets we’ve purchased before. That was when you first began to tease us…

It seemed strange that we received a confirmation page including seat assignments without ever having been asked to pay for the tickets. We did notice the small print near the bottom that said that we were required to pay within 24 hours and would receive instructions for how to do so in an email. This seemed odd, but we were willing to go with it. However, the email you sent us said this:

Aerolineas_Argentina_Payment_Email_Confirmation Image

Don't you want us to pay??

We weren’t so excited about calling you to ask how to pay, so instead we did some searching around your website and encountered several sets of instructions clearly indicating that we could and should pay online; however, there was nowhere on your website that actually allowed us to do so.

Aerolineas_Argentina_Payment_Instructions Image

These instructions are really thorough and helpful... though, if one were being picky, one could argue that if you are going to write detailed instructions, it may be better if the feature actually existed. Sorry if this is culturally insensitive.

Google, TripAdvisor and the local expat blog also seemed to be at a loss for how to proceed. This is when our expectations started to go up–it seemed clear that this was going to be far more exciting than just another ticket purchasing experience. We decided to wait until the next day and ask around at our school to see if any of the locals had encountered this before and were told that despite what your website says, foreigners are in fact required to pay by telephone. We were told that that this has something to do with security to minimize potential for chargebacks (see handy diagram below); but since that clearly doesn’t make any sense at all, my guess is that you just want to have the opportunity to speak live to those of us that are lucky enough to pay at least double your normal prices to thank us (for those of you keeping score at home, it is true that there is massively different price for locals vs. Foriegners)…

I bolded the differences for anyone with the mistaken impression that these processes are similar

Before we called, we only expected to be on hold for awhile and then go through the annoying hassle of giving you all of our credit card info over the phone with a language barrier and nothing more (which obviously we were pretty excited about), but we had no idea what you had in store for us… I can’t convey to you in words how flattered and excited we were when you told us that because the flights were within 48 hours, we would not be able to pay for them over the phone either, but would instead need to go to one of your local offices and pay in person. It was a nice touch that you offered us the alternative of paying at the airport the day of the flights as long as we got there by 3pm (for a 7:45pm flight)–clearly an attractive option.

In fact, we were so excited that we called one of our local friends and asked if he would be willing to call you back with us on a conference call just to make sure that you weren’t giving us any unnecessary “special” treatment; after reconfirming with our friends help, we spent a few minutes basking in the joy of having the opportunity to meet you in person and then got ready to go. At this point, we had given up predicting what new twists and turns the story would take, but we had no doubts that you would have several more surprises in store for us, so we brought multiple forms of identification, a few different credit cards and a decent amount of cash just in case.

After having read about how frequently people get pick-pocketed in the subway, we were particularly excited to have our passports and other valuables with us for the lengthy ride to the end of the D line smack in the middle of rush hour. Being pressed up against the glass for the majority of the ride while trying to keep our belongings with us served to build the suspense higher and higher.

If Argentines were Asian, it might have looked like this

We were at a fever pitch when we arrived at your office and completely ready to experience Crazy Town, AR. BUT, this is where you let us down on several dimensions:

1) There was not even a line, we walked in and were waved directly over to an agent.

2) The agent immediately understood why we were there and was able to process the transaction in under 2 minutes. She then gave us a receipt that we were supposed to bring over to the cashier for payment, so our hopes went up again…

3) Only to be dashed by a <30 second conversation to make the payment with the cashier.

So, in less than 3 minutes we had paid for our tickets and were all set. There was no chaos, there was no demanding of 4+ forms of ID (or any ID at all ironically), there were no language barriers, no 2 hour waits, nothing. You built up these huge expectations for us and then just ruined it all by suddenly being efficient.

You can imagine our disappointment. If for some reason you can not imagine our disappointment, please refer to the diagram below:

Please contact me with any questions

Hopefully you can provide us with a more consistent experience next time.

Regretfully yours,

Ryan and Jen

P.S. After thinking through all of our experiences with you thus far, I think I may have figured out how you operate. While many businesses strive to meet or exceed customer expectations, from the 5 examples below, it seems that your customer strategy is simply to do the opposite of what customers expect in every situation. As a former strategy consultant, I for one applaud this boldly differentiated approach to making sure your customers never get bored with you.

Example 1: Trying to purchase ticket online

Our expectation: Just put in credit card info and make purchase

Aerolineas Argentina: State frequently on your site that it is possible to pay online, but instead make it impossible to pay online.

Example 2: Calling to purchase ticket

Our expectation: A mild hassle, but at least we can finalize the purchase

Aerolineas Argentina: Tell us that we have to go to the office to make the purchase

Example 3: Going to office to finalize purchase

Our expectation: A major hassle with low probability of success

Aerolineas Argentina: Super smooth and efficient process

Example 4: Rationale for making us go to the office in person within 48 hours of flight

Our expectation: Something to do with a higher degree of security?

Aerolineas Argentina: Did not check our ID or even look to see if our signature matched the credit card we used

Example: Onboard flight to Iguazu

Our expectation: We may be late, but we’ll get to Iguazu

Aerolineas Argentina: Instead, land in a different city (Posadas) and don’t tell us until we land

P.P.S After reviewing the schedule change email you sent us the day after our flight left, I am further convinced of the above

Aerolineas_Argentina_Schedule_Change_Notification Image

You can't make this up

How can you add your signature to a PDF for free (without printing and scanning)?

Posted on April 27, 2010 by ryan

Another question that needed answering…

I was planning to finish up a post on our wonderful experience with Aerolineas Argentina this evening, but instead got to spend some quality time figuring out the answer to the above question (thanks IRS for taking 4 months to get back to me on my 2006 taxes!). Anyway, those of you that hang out in offices all the time won’t have much need for this tip, but in the event that you ever do need to sign a PDF and email it back to someone while on the road, here is an excellent tutorial I came across via google (which references some great and easy to get free software):

How To Add Your Signature to PDFs For Free

My thanks to the original author!

Cost of living in Buenos Aires

Posted on April 19, 2010 by ryan

So, we’ve been looking into planning a 3-day trip to Bariloche for next weekend, but after determining that it would cost ~$400 USD each for round trip plane tickets we decided it was time to sit down and figure out exactly how much we’ve been spending since we got here. Before I continue, it should be noted that the locals here all swear by the long distance bus system–apparently you can get executive class which has seats that lay flat and in addition to personal entertainment systems/movies, they feed you and give you free champagne. Now, that all sounds great, and it’s definitely a lot cheaper (more like $50/each), but I don’t care how “comfortable” it is, it’s still a 22 hour bus ride. Each way.

Now that I see it, I totally want to spend 22 consecutive hours in a seat like that...

So, after much discussion, we’ve decided that we are not going to spend 44 hours on a bus for a 3 day trip.

We used to spent 15+ hours a day in these kind of seats and no one brought us free champagne 🙁

So, we dug into our spending over the last month or so and our budget can basically be broken down into 4 broad categories (this may be a breach of the terms of our rehab–we made pivot tables):

Rent: $1200/month

Spanish School: ~$1220/month for the 2 of us

Food/random cash expenses: ~$1200/month or $40/day for the 2 of us

Tours/other excursions outside of day to day living expenses: Variable

1) Rent: $1200/month (USD)

We are now paying $1200/month on our 3-month contract. This is large 1 bedroom apartment with 1.5 bathrooms in a nice part of Recoleta and is at a well discounted daily rate vs. shorter term rentals (e.g., this apt. is listed at $100/day or $600/week) and includes all utilities + internet + weekly maid service. Depending on what neighborhoods you are willing to consider and how nice of a place you want you can get cheaper than this (or much more expensive). There seem to be “budget” apartments that range from ~$900-$1200/month for a 1 bedroom and are pretty hit or miss in terms of quality and “Luxury” apartments which are more like $1800+/month at a monthly rate and are significantly nicer. We are somewhere in between.

If you’re trying to figure out how to rent an apartment down here, be sure to check out our post on How to Rent an Apartment in Buenos Aires

Currency issues: Apartments are pretty much always priced in USD and most want cash, so don’t expect to benefit from exchange rate changes as the prices are pegged to the USD.

Bottom line: We’re paying $1200/month, if we wanted to go cheap, we could have probably found an acceptable place for $1000/month, but it would likely be significantly worse than what we have. So I’d say that we are on the low end of what we could be paying. If you are here for a shorter time period, I’d budget $300-600/week–much better than hotels, but definitely not free.

Relative to San Francisco prices: ~33% of what we were paying in San Francisco, though hard to be apples to apples as that was a 12+ month lease and unfurnished.

2) Spanish School: ~$1220/month for the 2 of us or $610 each (USD)

We are attending Vamos Spanish for 20 hour/week intensive classes (and loving it–review to come). They charge US$150/week per person and it’s usually 1-4 people in your class which is pretty awesome. We looked at several other schools as well and the range seems to be $150-$200/week for 20 hours at the smaller schools, or you can go to the university where it is significantly cheaper, but much larger classes.

Currency issues: Spanish schools generally price in USD, but most allow credit cards or PayPal payments. Just don’t expect to benefit from exchange rate changes as the prices are pegged to the USD.

Bottom line: If you’re going to do intensive spanish classes, you should plan on spending at least $150/week. Can definitely get more expensive if you throw in private lessons which are more like $20/hour on average. That said, it’s definitely our favorite part of being here and well worth the expense to learn such a valuable life skill.

3) Food/random cash expenses: ~$1200/month or ~$40/day for the 2 of us. (USD)

This is by far the most volatile expense category for every day expenses and for us is easily 95+% food. We generally eat in a restaurant for 1 meal a day, sometimes 2 and the rest of the time either cook at home or eat left-overs. After our first couple of weeks of eating out all the time, more lately we’ve been averaging about $40/day (~AR$ 150). Here’s how it breaks down by meal:

Breakfast: Argentines aren’t that into breakfast. A typical Argentine breakfast, if they bother eating in the morning, is a coffee and a couple of Medialunas (basically a combination of a croissant and a donut). This will cost you ~AR$10-20 (~US$2.50-5.00) depending on where you get it. If you really want to splurge, you might get a Tarta (individual quiche) for ~AR$22 pesos, but that’s about the sum of your breakfast options. We generally eat cereal at home.

Lunch: Restaurant lunch prices can vary significantly and will typically run you anywhere from AR$30-50 (US$8-15) per person. There are 3 primary options:

Basic: If you want to go cheap, you can often find a basic sandwich for ~AR$20-25 + a drink for ~AR$5-10 bringing you to a total of AR$25-35 (US$6-10).
Menu del Dia: If you aren’t in the mood for a sandwich, most restaurants offer a ‘menu del dia” in which they’ll offer 2-3 options which usually include an appetizer + an entree + a dessert + a drink + a coffee for AR$30-40 (US$8-12). Very good deal assuming you like what they are offering. Quick tip: The “Menu del Dia” is always written on a sign outside the front door of the restaurant and rarely reprinted on the menu itself. So be sure to memorize the options before you go in!
A’la Carte: Basically the standard dinner prices which vary by restaurant, but are often in the range of AR$30-60 per entree and AR$20-30/starter or salad. Basic drinks (soda, water, etc.) are usually ~AR$8, a beer will typically run ~AR$15 and a glass of wine is more like AR$18 for a solid pour. Quick tip: Always order wine by the bottle–very often, 2 glasses of wine cost more than the same bottle and they are always very happy to package up a bottle that you didn’t finish for you to take with you.

Dinner: Basically dinner is the same as the A’la Carte option from lunch. Assuming we don’t go somewhere super fancy, we’ll usually order a bottle of wine + one starter + 2 entrees and that will run us ~AR$120-140 for 2 or AR$60-70 each (US$16-18 per person) If we go to a nice place we’ll spend considerably more, that said, even at the nicest places we’ve probably maxed out at ~AR$300 (US$80) for the 2 of us–this is very expensive here, but keep in mind the same dinner would likely cost closer to double or triple that in San Francisco.

Alternative lunch/dinner: We have become huge fans of empanadas and usually have empanada night at least twice a week. You can usually get great empanadas for ~AR$4 each and it would be difficult to eat more than 3-4 of them each, so this is a very cheap dinner. We usually buy a dozen and then have them for 2 meals and there are empanada joints everywhere. Also, you can do the same with pizza, though it’s slightly more expensive and doesn’t offer quite the same quantity of food per peso as empanadas do.

Grocery stores: We aren’t in love with the grocery stores here. You can definitely eat cheaper if you cook at home assuming you have a decent enough kitchen and cooking utensils. That said, as a short-term renter, it’s unlikely that you’ll want to stock up on all of the spices and other cooking supplies that you’d want in order to make something you’d actually enjoy eating (spices are very expensive and hard to find here). Most packaged/processed food at the grocery store is relatively expensive and fresher food seems cheaper (e.g., ~US$5/lb for rib-eye steak, grass fed of course).

Wine: We drink a lot of wine. Wine is WAY cheaper here than it is in the US. Most stores have wine ranging from ~AR$8 up to ~AR$100 per bottle with the bulk of the offerings in the $AR20-30 range. We are now hooked on a AR$13.50 bottle (~US$4) which is quite good (and we are picky). Also, it’s great to try good wine in restaurants as there is only about a 10-20% mark-up vs. the 3x US mark-up. We save A LOT of money on wine here (though ironically drink less now that we are not consultants…)

Bottom Line: US$20/person is probably a decent estimate for what you’ll spend on average for food/drink. That said, for our first week or 2 we were probably double that, so if you’re here for a short trip you’ll likely spend more. You could definitely spend less if you put some effort into it, but we are certainly not splurging at US$20. Way cheaper than San Francisco, but it does add up.

4) Tours/other excursions outside of day to day living expenses: Entirely up to you

Most things that cater to tourists are expensive and priced in dollars, so proceed at your own risk.

In summary

It more expensive here than we had heard. Many friends who had visited even just a few years back enjoyed much lower prices–apparently prices have been increasing from 20-30%/year for the last several years. That said, it’s still a very cheap place to visit/live on a relative basis.

Here’s our average daily expense summary (keep in mind this is for the 2 of us):
Daily USD (peso)
Rent 40 (154)
School 41 (157)
Food/wine 39 (149)
Misc ? (?)
Total 120 (460)

Hope this is helpful. Happy to answer any questions!

Questions that need answering: Why do the buses whistle?

Posted on April 1, 2010 by ryan

Seriously, they whistle.

Not only are there literally thousands of them (we have seen 10+ on the same block at the same time); not only do they aim directly for you whenever possible; not only do they emit disgusting exhaust fumes, not only are their engines extremely loud; but on top of all that, some ass clown thought it would be a good idea to make them whistle at you. All the time. Day and Night. Loudly. Why??? I want to know WHY.

Every one is a different color, but they all whistle the same. By which I mean annoyingly.

Google turned up the following result which provides a very good overview of the bus situation:

“Concerning Argentine Buses (or: Why I love it here)”

I’m going to digress for a moment to explain how the buses work here. First, you have your “Guia T.” This is a two part booklet, the first part being a map of Buenos Aires that is divided into grids. Opposite of the grids are corresponding boxes that contain a list of every bus that passes through that

grid of the city. These maps, however, do not tell you where these buses stop in the grid, just that they do. You then use your Guia T to look for a bus that passes through the part of the city you’re currently in and through where you’re going. Then you search the physical 4 block by 4 block square that is that grid in order to find the elusive bus stop. The signs are small and the buses will really stop anywhere. For most “portenos” (Buenos Aires residents, or “people of the port”) this is do-able. (?!?!?) If you, poor soul, need more help the second part of the Guia T includes a list of each bus’s main neighborhood stops with a drawing of the bus, which is necessary because all the buses are painted different bright colors to distinguish them.
So, to recap: hidden bus stops, unclear routes, confusing maps and buses that look like they belong on carousels. And if the driver tells you “Arriba” while you’re getting on you better get the hell on because that roughly translates to “I’m shutting the door now and driving wildly into traffic whether you are standing there or not” in Castellano. (Castellano being the Buenos Aires specific brand of Spanish).

Note: These buses whistle. No, not like a train whistle. A human whistle. These buses, should you look lost at a street corner anywhere in Buenos Aires, will good ol’ fashion greasy-construction-worker-at-a pretty-lady whistle at you to let you know, “Hey, baby, I know where you could be going. With me.”

I think that sums things up fairly well. You may think I’m kidding about this, but I would never kid about whistling buses.

I can hear one outside my window now. Why.

Can anyone explain this phenomenon? If so, please do so in the comments!

Tip for learning spanish #1: Take your wine home!

Posted on March 26, 2010 by ryan

Perhaps the best tip ever:

Podríamos tomar el vino para llevar?

Can we take the wine to go?

And the answer… YES!!!

Que Fantastico!!!

These probably cost only $2. Total. Viva!!

Yes… in Argentina, you can order a super cheap yet awesome bottle of wine at a restaurant, drink half and then take the rest home for later. We are building a large collection of half full bottles

!Viva Argentina!

How to rent an apartment in Buenos Aires

Posted on March 25, 2010 by ryan

We finally found a great new short-term apartment here in Buenos Aires. Finding the right short-term rental is far more complex than you might think, so read on for our reviews of all the agencies we worked with and a very important list of tips/tricks to make sure you get a good place and don’t get taken.

Yesterday we finally agreed on a new apartment. Even though we didn’t decide until 3:30pm yesterday, the gang at ApartmentsBA were able to let us move in at 5:20pm which was pretty awesome. The apartment isn’t perfect–it could use some more light and we wish we had a patio and a dining table–but it is huge, has a great kitchen is in a perfect location in the heart of Recoleta and perhaps most importantly, it has a king sized bed! Most of the beds down here are tiny double beds and while Jen and I like each other, it hasn’t been so much fun waking up every time the other person moves for the last 2 weeks 🙂 Pictures of our new place down below.

Before the pictures of our new place, we thought we’d give a little bit of an overview of the process we went through to find this place and some brief reviews of the agencies we worked with and some general tips/tricks.

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How to get hot water in Buenos Aires

Posted on March 24, 2010 by ryan

Lesson learned #2: Which faucet do you use to get hot water in Buenos Aires?

Which one would you pick?

Anyone? Read on for the correct answer…