Definitely NOT one of the 5 major food groups

Posted on June 9, 2010 by jen

Ever had tripe stew? No? Oh, how I wish I could say the same. Suffering from a cold last week, a hot bowl of stew sounded good for lunch, so after class we headed to Cumana, a legendary Buenos Aires restaurant known for its empanadas and stews.

Cumana (in Recoleta) sometimes has a line down the street of locals and tourists alike waiting to get in

Their menu lists ~10 different homemade stews. We had tried 2 before and asked our server which others she recommended, and her top suggestion was the mondongo. Now, my Spanish is not great, but I’m pretty sure she said it contained tomatoes, onion, and a part of the cow (while gesturing toward her back). We had been to Cumana before and told our waitress that we didn’t like “organs” (seemed like the easiest word to use to get our point across), and she assured us that none of their dishes contained organs, quickly putting us at ease. So this time I didn’t think twice and went for the mondongo suggested by our server. Bad idea.

My stew showed up after our fabulous empanada appetizers, and I quickly noticed a substance floating on top with texture not often found in food. It was smooth on one side, and wrinkled and lumpy on the other – think cauliflower. I dodged this and instead tested the waters with a bite of broth and vegetables. It wasn’t terrible, but it seemed to have a funny taste that I didn’t particularly like, so after a few more cautious bites, I left it relatively untouched.

Looked like a relatively innocent stew . . . with certain unidentifiable ingredients

When we got home, I decided to google “mondongo” to see what it was – turns out it’s a traditional Argentine tripe stew. Mm, mm, cow stomach – just what I was hoping for to help get rid of my cold. Apparently that’s not considered an organ here? Thought we’d been relatively clear when we said we didn’t like organs in our food – guess next time we’ll have to say “mondongo” as well, along with all the other non-meat parts that us Americans shy away from. Lesson learned. Now if only I could find Campbell’s chicken noodle soup here . . .

Sometimes you really need some "mm, mm, good"... But if you're in Argentina, there is NO SOUP FOR YOU! Only tripe!

Kayaking in Tigre on the Parana Delta with El Dorado Kayak

Posted on June 6, 2010 by ryan

This post is WAY overdue. Thank you for the reminders!

Almost 2 months ago we went on a day trip to the Tigre Delta to go Kayaking. Our spanish school (Vamos!) recommended a tour company to us called El Dorado Kayak. A day of kayaking outside of the city sounded great, so we signed up for a Sunday. We’ve been here in Argentina for just about 3 months in total now and I would have to say that the day we spent in Tigre with these guys probably ranks as one of the best days we’ve had, and El Dorado Kayak is by far the best tour company we’ve worked with. I wrote a review about them on Trip Advisor here awhile ago, but figured it was about time I wrote something a little bit more thorough. So, here goes…

What is Tigre (some context)?

Tigre is a town just outside of Buenos Aires that is situated right on the edge of the Parana Delta. The Parana Delta is a massive delta (5400+ sq. miles) with tons of islands, many of which have vacation homes or B&Bs/hotels which are very popular place to spend a nice day outside of the city, and many others as you get further out which are pure wilderness.

Aerial_view_of_the_Lower_Paraná_Delta Image

An Aerial view of part of the delta

You can get to the town by train from Retiro station in just under an hour–and it’s a local train that stops frequently, so it’s really not very far away. The train costs ~$AR2 per person, which is about US 50 cents. Not bad.

Not that far...

Our adventure

We were told to meet one of the guides in the Tigre station at 9:30am as they are based in Tigre, which meant that we had to be on the 8:30am train from Retiro, which meant that we had to get up at like 7:30am. Did I mention it was Sunday?? This was a rough start, but we made it. Then, we met Juan in the Tigre station next to the big map of the delta on the wall, which is pretty hard to miss.

See, pretty hard to miss

It also helped that Juan was the only guy walking around carrying a kayaking paddle. We weren’t really sure what to expect from him as you never really know what you’re getting into with local guides here, but we were immediately very impressed. His english is basically fluent and he’s quite a dynamic guy–aside from running kayaking trips, he is also in the middle of finishing an advanced degree in anthropology with a focus on Andean pan-pipe music (if I remember correctly) and teaches English. Additionally, he is widely traveled outside of Argentina and even lived in Europe for a couple of years which gives him a much broader perspective than most.

As we followed him out of the train station, he told us that he had invited along one of his english students for the day so that he could be more exposed to english. Sounded great to us! Ignacio was ~13 years old and a nice addition to the trip. We followed Juan to the ferry station where he bought us tickets and then we got onto a ferry.

Lots of ferries leave from here all day--no roads, only boats

He explained to us how big the Delta is and showed us on a map how far out we were going. I don’t think we believed him about how far we were going until we had been on the ferry for an hour and still weren’t at our destination–and the ferry goes pretty fast 🙂 Really cool scenery along the way though–lots of beautiful houses and people having big BBQs and enjoying the day. Very cool “this is where the locals go on weekends” sort of vibe.

Lots like this, all with their own docks

It was a little over an hour on the ferry before we were dropped off at a fairly non-descript dock and walked a bit futher to the base camp of El Dorado Kayak:

Home base with plenty of kayaks

Their house was literally the last one on the very edge of civilization. This was great, because it meant that we’d get to kayak away from all of the ferrys and other big boats that leave big wakes and get to see some real nature.

When we arrived at the house, we met Juan’s business partner Chapa. Chapa also spoke great english and was incredibly welcoming. He had kayaked out earlier so that he could have lunch ready for us when we arrived. The 5 of us sat down and had some delicious cheese sandwiches and Mate for a bit, then got ready to hit the river–very easy to leave stuff in their house while you’re on the river, so don’t worry about bringing stuff with you, it will be safe and you won’t have to take it in the kayak with you and get it wet.

This was their dock, and that dog is one of the only dogs that has been willing to play with Jen in all of Argentina

We got our brief onshore paddling lesson and then off we went. Chapa stayed behind to begin preparations for the massive Asado (aka huge BBQ with several courses of meat) that we would have when we returned. We took 2 tandem Kayaks, me and Jen in one and Juan and Ignacio in the other and followed a route that took us way, way out there–there were points where the water was almost too shallow even just for our kayaks, so definitely no other boats; other parts were more populated so we got to see lots of beautiful houses as well. It was beautiful, and it didn’t hurt that the weather was a perfect 75 degrees and sunny all day.

Ah, pure nature

...And some civilization as well

Juan set a great tone for the trip. It didn’t feel like we were tourists on a guided trip. He clearly knew an enormous amount about the area and shared a lot with us, but it felt more like we were just out kayaking with a friend and sort of hanging out, chatting about whatever came up. We kayaked for about 3.5 hours, which to be honest was probably an hour more than we needed… we were very tired when we finally got back to the house (and quite sore for the next several days). Along the way, Juan mentioned that his fiance and a friend of hers were going to join us for the Asado; we were excited to meet them (and have meat with them).

In case you were wondering, this is harder than it looks--especially after 3 hours

We got back probably around 3:30ish and Chapa had outdone himself on the grill. We met Juan’s fiance and her friend, who were also finishing their theses in Anthropology and spoke near perfect english, and sat down to wine, soft drinks, home made chimichurri and criolla sauce, bread, salad and potatoes as we eagerly awaited each meat course that Chapa brought over to us. It started with Choripan which is one of our very favorite things–think of a spanish type Chorizo cut in half and put in bread. It’s awesome. That was the appetizer, then it was followed by 3 courses of different cuts of steak all of which were fantastic. We clapped for the chef more than once.

This was the grill!

We sat, talked and ate for almost 3 hours and had a wonderful time. Again, the coolest part was that it didn’t feel at all like a tourist thing, it felt like we had been lucky enough to be invited out with some locals to hang out at their house in Tigre for a Sunday. We talked about Argentine customs and food rituals, which the anthropologists knew quite a bit about–e.g., the traditions around drinking Mate and the traditions around Asados–discussed local politics, compared to the US and where ever else the conversation took us. As anthropologists (and just genuinely cool people), they had some fascinating things to say.

We caught the last ferry back to Tigre at 6pm which got us back to the town at ~7:15pm or so. Then we fought our way through the massive crowd (it was a beautiful day, so the place was PACKED) to buy return train tickets and finally made it back to Retiro at ~9pm followed by home at ~9:15pm where we promptly collapsed. At 12+ hours, including 3.5 hours of paddling, this was a full day indeed.

Costs/logistics

What did we pay for such a full day? Not much. To be honest, we don’t remember exactly… it was either AR$250 or AR$300 per person including everything (US$65-75 each). Quite a deal for a 12 hour day like that, especially when you factor in all of the food. To set it up, you just need to email them and make a reservation (just check their website for contact info)–also, you should double check pricing, as it likely varies by season. Logistically, all you have to do is get yourself to the Tigre train station which is very easy. Trains leave Retiro station every 30 minutes or so 7 days a week.

Summary

As I said in the beginning, this is one of the best days we’ve had down here. Tigre is a great place to see (especially on a nice day) and I can’t recommend these guys enough. A lot of people go out to Tigre for the day and just ride around on the ferry; I think that’s an ok trip, but you see so much more if you do something like this. And, by the way, they’re quite happy to customize the kayaking portion if you want something that won’t leave you sore for several days 🙂

Highly, highly recommended.

A few more photos (and some repeats) in our image gallery here: Tigre Image gallery

Review: Patios de Cafayate

Posted on May 29, 2010 by jen

Patios de Cafayate is a boutique Starwood property located in Cafayate, a town in the wine country of Salta province. It’s a beautiful property with only 30 rooms in a great location – the landscapes surrounding Cafayate and on the drive down from Salta city are stunning (check out our Salta trip review). We were excited to stay here on our trip to the northwest, particularly since we were able to use those hard-earned Starwood points to pay for it.

We arrived and were greeted very warmly by the front desk staff, then shown to our room. We walked through an interior courtyard connecting to several other patios (go figure, considering the name) and a grand common room with a view out to the pool. Our room was massive and beautifully decorated. The hotel used to be the family home of a winemaker, and the winery still operates next door, on the same property. As such, the hotel sits in the middle of vineyards, making for a beautiful view.

Despite the idyllic property and location, from our perspective it seems that management is missing the mark on a couple of basics that could make Patios truly exceptional. Instead, it feels like a pretty building that’s trying to be a hotel but not quite getting there. Here are a couple of observations that lead us to think that:

Overall feel of desertion

We noticed right away that the hotel feels deserted, as we’d read in several other reviews – there were almost no other guests, and we seldom saw hotel employees while we were there. Most of the rooms are located along a long, grand corridor, and only every 3rd or 4th light down the hallway was turned on – strange. We went to sit in the main salon one afternoon and spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out how to turn on the overhead lighting, to no avail.

The main salon, which looked out onto the pool, was lovely and furnished with antiques. If only we could figure out how to turn on the lights . . .

On our first day, the main salon and other sitting rooms were completely silent – no people, no music playing – which made it feel that much more like we were trespassing somewhere we shouldn’t be. The second day (when we made use of the living room), a TV in one of the adjoining salons was blaring music from the 40s. It seemed like they were trying but just hadn’t figured out quite how to pull off the ambience they were going for. The lack of lights, music and other people gave the hotel a feel that it wasn’t really open for business.

Spider guts (yes, seriously)

When we arrived, we were shown to our upgraded room and were impressed with the size and the quality of the furnishings. The room was quiet and looked out onto the lawn and beyond to the vineyards. The walls had been painted a beautiful sage green color and highlighted the classic crown moldings (which I love!) and the high ceilings.

Pretty nice digs, huh?

However, it appeared that the hotel had a spider problem (which we’d seen mentioned in other reviews on TripAdvisor), and evidence of such problem was left smeared on the walls in both the bedroom and the bathroom. We’re not sure if this was carelessness or an intentional warning to other spiders that may dare to follow.

I'm pretty sure I can make out a leg . . .

If the purpose is to scare off other potential invadors, it’s not working – found another fallen soldier in our shower in the morning. If it’s just a lack of attention to detail, I might suggest that the relatively marginal effort it would take the housekeeping staff to wipe up any such “messes” would more than pay off by improving the experience for guests staying there (especially those who, like me, don’t exactly love spiders).

Hot tub/spa

On our first afternoon, we took a walk around the property to explore and found the spa – a relatively modern-looking building located to the side of the main hotel. We were excited to take advantage of the lovely indoor hot tub, so we ran back to our room to change into our suits and came back. The water in the hot tub wasn’t warm – the woman working in the spa said she had turned it on/up when we first came (we’re not quite sure which), but even 30 minutes later the water was only lukewarm. Which I guess is ok, because it was less like a hot tub (you know, the kind you would SIT in) and more like a pool of warmish water 5 feet deep, with no seats – guess this is a standing-room-only tub?

Hotel hot tub was pretty (though not hot, nor did it have seats) - apparently it's actually a standing-room-only warmish tub. Or, possibly another Devil's Throat...

While we were waiting in vain for the water to warm, we relaxed on the fancy-looking lounge chairs . . . where we noticed all the cobwebs gracing various surfaces in the spa. The floor-to-ceiling windows were streaked with dirt and cobwebs, and the lounge chair next to us had cobwebs hanging off the back.

Windows in spa at Patios de Cafayate image

The late-afternoon sunlight streaming through would have been lovely . . . if not for the shadows cast by all the dirt and grime

And the otherwise-classy-looking candle set on the table next to us (as well as the others placed around the room) was not lit and instead seemed to be a repository for old garbage – yuck.

Table with candle at Patios de Cafayate image

Looks nice, right? Perfect for relaxing and enjoying some of the local wine

Um, ok . . . but you could have just brought in a garbage can

Breakfast

Breakfast here was better than we’ve had at other hotels in Argentina (sometimes no more than coffee and bread). There was a buffet with various meats, cheeses, fruit, cereal, as well as coffee/tea/juices. And as soon as we sat down, the server brought out a lovely 3-tiered tray of baked goods and offered us eggs made-to-order (which were pretty tasty and a nice touch)! The cookies included in our baked goods tray (yep, cookies for breakfast) were the same ones we’d seen at the small coffee/tea set up in the main salon in the afternoons. We were a bit confused by the little cups of ketchup and other unidentified sauces in the middle of the trays of meats and cheeses, but maybe that’s just an effort to cater to international tastes – we’re not quite sure. Despite that, it was pretty good and gave us enough to go on for our wine tastings later in the day.

Value for money (or Starpoints, in our case)

This hotel was priced at $240/night or 12,000 Starpoints. As we are currently unemployed with no near-term income prospects, we opted for the Starpoints. In retrospect, though, we’re not sure it was worth it. We’ve previously paid only 6,000 points/night for a room in the W New York over the busy holiday season, which would have cost ~$600/night if we’d paid in cash. It’s unclear why the ratio of points to cash is so different here than it is elsewhere, or if it was just this hotel in particular, but this didn’t seem to be the best use of our Starpoints.

Our takeaway

Overall, we’re glad to have had the experience of staying in Patios de Cafayate. It was a lovely retreat in a beautiful location with thoughtfully-appointed rooms. The lack of attention to detail we’ve noted here would be relatively easy to fix and would make all the difference between the pretty good stay that we had and the truly phenomenal experience this hotel could provide. Maybe we caught them on an off-week or during the slow season, but it would be great to see this hotel really take advantage of all it has going for it.

Bad experience with a local guide in Salta

Posted on May 25, 2010 by ryan

Well, we’re back in Buenos Aires after a week in the Northwest of Argentina (Salta and Jujuy provinces). Jen is working on a post that will give a full overview of our trip with pictures and so forth, so we should get that up in the next day or so. In the mean time, my priority has been writing a strongly worded post for Trip Advisor regarding the unpleasant experience we had with a guide named Angie that we contracted with in Salta in an effort to help save others from going through what we went through.

To keep you up to date on what we’ve been up to and to provide you with a strong warning in the event that you find yourself planning a trip to Salta you should definitely check out the post along with whatever responses may come from it here at Trip Advisor. Below is my original post if you’d rather read it here:

——————

Title: Different point of view on popular Salta Guide

My wife and I just spent a week in Salta/Jujuy during which we used Angie’s (also known as Giena on Trip Advisor) services as a private guide for the first 3 days. We were extremely disappointed with the quality of her service, her incredible prices and her attitude towards customer service in general. I recognize that she is quite popular here on TA and receives volumes of positive feedback (which is how we found her to begin with), but after our experience with her, I have trouble understanding all of the praise and think it’s very important that TA has a post representing an alternative viewpoint so that other people have a more balanced idea of what Angie offers–had there been a post like this, we would likely have planned differently and had a much better trip. For context, we’re from the US and have been living in BsAs for the last 2.5 months; in that time we’ve developed a good understanding of pricing/cost of living in BsAs (this will be important when I discuss Angie’s pricing).

We hired Angie because of the great things we had read on TA. Unfortunately, due to a series of vague emails, we misunderstood her pricing to be US$250 for 5 days, when in reality it was US$250 PER DAY. We take partial responsibility for not having reconfirmed the total price, but after re-reading the email chain several times, there is definitely room for misinterpretation – Angie never stated it was a per day price nor did she provide a total price for the trip. Further, given our reference points for pricing in BsAs, it would never have ocurred to us that she could possibly charge US$250/day–I’ll get into that more in a bit. Had Angie not handled the misunderstanding so poorly, I would not be taking the time to write this detailed post–as it is, she left us feeling cheated and extremely unhappy.

In the end, we paid her US$500, which we feel was far more than she was worth. What did we get for our US$500? Here is what Angie did for us:

Day 1: 10am-3pm =~5 hours of time together including lunch (~3.5 hours of driving)

Angie picked us up at 10am and drove us to Cafayate with a couple of photo stops at well marked locations right along the side of the main road (e.g., Garganta del Diablo). We arrived in Cafayate at ~1pm and had lunch with Angie at her favorite restaurant in town. Then she dropped us off at our hotel at 3pm or so, and we didn’t see her again until the next morning.

Day 2: 10am-12pm ~2 hours of time together

We weren’t planning to see Angie on Day 2 (assuming that we weren’t paying for her) as we had told her we were planning to explore Cafayate by ourselves, but she told us she’d pick us up at 10am and take us to a couple of wineries so we reluctantly agreed.

She picked us up at 10am, took us to the goat cheese farm and then 2 wineries (each obvious tourist destinations). At each of these 3 venues she handed us off for the standard tour and waited until we were done. My wife had talked to her 2 days previously about setting up a lunch at the last winery and assumed this had been arranged. However, on the way there Angie pulled off the road, called the winery and then told us we couldn’t have lunch there because we didn’t book it the day before (I guess that was our job?). After the 2nd winery she dropped us off in town at ~12:00pm. The only other time we saw her that day was when she picked us up at our hotel and dropped us off at a restaurant for dinner (~10 min).

Day 3: 10am-2:00pm ~4 hours of time together (all driving)

She picked us up at 10am and we drove directly back to Salta on the same road we came down on with 2 stops at different photo spots. At this point, we still didn’t have a hotel booked for Friday night, and rather than helping us book something she just told us to let her know if we had trouble finding something. When we got back to Salta and she asked us for some money in advance is when we first realized that there was a significant misunderstanding over her pricing and that it was actually 4x higher than we had thought. US$250 per day was way beyond what we wanted to pay, so after talking it over that afternoon we told her that we could no longer work with her.

In summary, Angie spent maybe 11-12 hours with us over 3 days, primarily as a very highly paid taxi driver. She booked only one hotel for us (which was mediocre), she recommended a few restaurants in Salta (which were not particularly good and literally had large tour buses waiting out front as their tour groups dined there) and a couple of restaurants in Cafayate–one of which was good (though easily findable on the main square), the other was not. And for that, she demanded that we pay her US$500 despite the mixup what was at least partly her fault (according to her this was a great deal and we were ‘ridiculous’ to have thought she charged less); she had wanted US$1000 for 5 “days” (and yes, 2-4 hours of driving counts as a day according to her). Keep in mind, these prices do not include food, hotels or any activities for you and that Angie told us several times that she never has to pay in restaurants or hotels when on tours, so I’d think her only real cost is her car and fuel.

Also, despite other posters with very positive comments about learning about the history of the region and other local-type info from Angie, we did not have this experience with her at all–her favorite topic of conversation was how much better off we would be if we switched to her preferred hotel in Cafayate (this awkwardly came up at least 6 times, leading us to wonder why it was so important to her). In general, we do not feel that we saw, heard, did, or learned anything in our time with Angie that we couldn’t have easily experienced on our own. We ultimately paid her what she demanded; we probably shouldn’t have.

Aside from the mixup we had, we genuinely feel that US$250/day is an outrageous price for these services, even if they were great. After living in Buenos Aires for 2.5 months, here is some context on what you can get for US$1000 in the capital (which should be significantly more expensive than the provinces):

-1 month rent in a nicely furnished apartment in Recoleta or Palermo with all utilities included plus weekly maid service (we pay $1200/month for a massive and luxurious place)

-15+ fantastic dinners for 2 at the very nicest restaurants in BsAs with great wine/steak/etc.

-6 weeks of 20 hours/week Spanish school at one of the best schools (or ~70 hours of private instruction from a highly qualified teacher)

-1500+ empanadas (seriously)

-80 bottles of very good Argentine wine purchased in Salta (or 150 bottles of the exact same wine if you buy it in BsAs–Salta is much more expensive even for the local wines, not sure why)

-For AR$600 = ~US$155 for the 2 of us, we spent a full day (9am-7pm) in Tigre with 2 wonderful guides that spoke perfect English, gave us lunch, took us kayaking for 3.5 hours way off the beaten path and then served us an incredible asado with 4+ courses of meats. It was an all-day event, we saw and did things we couldn’t have possibly done on our own, we learned tons of things about Argentine culture and the Tigre Delta, it came with great food and it was reasonably priced. Again, BsAs/Tigre should be more expensive than Salta.

For some further context on how much an income of US$250/day is in Argentina, we’ve heard from many friends in BsAs that a high paying job in the capital (e.g., computer engineer) will pay ~AR$8000/month, which is ~US$100/day for 8+ hour days.

To be fair, I don’t know if Angie’s prices are especially high or if they are normal for private guides in Salta. Either way, for US$250 per day, I would expect MUCH, MUCH more for my money, so my first recommendation would be to do it without a guide as visiting the NW is really quite straight-forward (e.g., pretty much everything is on the main road and well marked). If for some reason you feel like you’d like to have a guide, I would shop around and be very explicit about what your expectations are (e.g., I want to see things off the beaten path and experience things beyond what the tour buses do, etc.). If your highly-paid private guide is taking you to the same places the large tour buses go, you’re better off without them.

For the last 2 days of our trip, we rented a nice car from a company with fluent English speakers (Alamo), saw everything that we would have seen otherwise, enjoyed the freedom of exploring on our own, and spent far less than half of what it would have cost to continue with Angie. This took less than 2 hours of planning/setup and could have been done even more cheaply with some advance planning.

Sorry to be so negative, wish things hadn’t gone this way. Obviously many other people have enjoyed their experiences with Angie, so possibly this is a one-off, but I think an important data point for people to consider in planning their trips. Let me know if you have questions either through the forum or through PM and I’ll be happy to provide more detail.

Ryan

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!

Consulting Rehab

The first step is admitting you have a problem… (then take a break and travel!)

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