By Clive and Pip.

   

Things we’ve learnt:

Always establish your bill in pesos.

This will always work in your favour if you pay in cash and have obtained your cash via the many different ways you can get the favourable rate, about which more later; or if you pay via credit card, which also gives you almost the same favourable rate. You’ll currently pay a two thirds (yes, 66%) less than the dollar rate it says on your booking.com.  e.g. booking.com says it costs $150 but you pay $50.

Here’s a story that makes it a bit clearer. We had to pay for our hotel this morning, which says it cost $145 for two nights on our booking.com invoice. Overpriced for an underwhelming twin room but we’re in El Calafate and everything here is expensive. I tried paying with my virtual credit card (Halifax clarity, a good travel card, as no fees) but they needed an actual physical card to put through the slasher. So we fell back on Clive’s stash of US dollars – he brought $1,000 in cash. Now, some maths for you. The current official exchange rate for a US dollar is around 350 pesos per dollar (the red rate) – it changes weekly, at the moment upwards, but there’s an election looming, so this may not be the case for much longer. So on the official rate our receptionist calculated we needed to pay 145x 350 = 50,750 pesos. But the hotel were offering 950 pesos per dollar on the blue rate- they want dollars, are desperate for dollars, as the peso has gone pear shaped. 50,750 pesos divided by 950 is a shade off $54. Hey presto, we paid that for our $145 room with $54. With breakfast. 

Credit and debit cards also give you the blue rate.

Another story: 

     I needed a small bag, historically called a bum bag in the UK, a fanny pack in the US, a title causing schoolyard sniggers from Brits as fanny is a (not very ) rude word for female genitals in English. I’d already trashed two, the strap irrevocably broken on my first, the second one leading to “the false alarm stolen phone panic attack” in Salta as it wasn’t big enough for money and phone, and the third one from Salta with a cute alpaca on the front which in the end made me feel like a comedy tourist, so I was relieved when the zip broke. I spotted a cool rugged looking black one in Mendoza and we decided to test the credit card rumour. Up until that point we’d not been sure about the traveller gossip flying around that to reduce the need for their tourists hanging around street corners furtively muttering “Cambio?” at passing strangers , the government now gives almost the same rate on a credit card. This seemed too good to be true. The bag cost 31,000 pesos, which had we bought it in cash, which we’d obtained at triple the official blue rate from Western Union, would have cost roughly $35. My credit card took $90.  Gulp. But 8 days later, I saw a credit of $55 on the Halifax card ap- $90-$55 = $35. Yeehaaa! Mastercard refunds the difference – eventually. Incidentally visa does it instantly.

PS. Shopping in Jumbo supermarket in Puerto Madryn we paid 38,672.49 pesos and my Starling debit card too £38.67. When you consider that Western Union charged us £17 to convert £500 into pesos, although the rate is 1080 per peso there, it probably doesn’t make that much difference.

There are various ways of paying that give you three times the rate.

     Western Union. 

     The way that pops up most on the internet is setting up a Western Union account, easy enough using an ap. Because there are two of us we’ve sent it to each other. The first time we did this without any queues in Buenos Aires and got $500’s worth of pesos. We had a similar experience in Salta. But it transpired these are the only two places in Argentina, according to traveller gossip, where they have plenty of cash, and no queues. In Mendoza we queued for an hour, and had to ensure we’d sent small amounts to each other ($100 not the $500 we’d got before) because they wouldn’t give us any more. Had we pretended to be seperate we might have got another $100, but that was it, and when we left the office the queue ran round the block, and people frequently reached the front of the queue to be turned away as they had sent too much i.e. over $100 to western union – you can’t take part of it, you have to take the entire amount you sent. 

   Convert US dollars. 

   Another way is to take physical US dollars with you. These can be exchanged at a really favourable rate by your hotel, supermarkets etc, or even used to pay for things but remember GET THE RATE IN PESOS first, then convert it. You don’t need to use a street cambio – the hotel does it for you.  In fact don’t use a street cambio as is often suggested elsewhere. It is a dodgy enterprise and you may well get ripped off with fake currency.

  Use your credit card. 

Barclaycard pays you back 2/3 so you get the unofficial rate and it does it instantly. Mastercard does the same but it took 8 days to return the money. Digital cards on your phone don’t always work, so take an actual card if you can. We left it too late to get a physical card and so got a virtual one when we were in Argentina as we had friends at home opening our mail for us. Clearly this way you don’t have to carry wheelbarrows of cash around, an unsafe situation, and ever more impractical especially if they give you $500 in 500 peso notes.

Book tours in pesos.

Yet another story, one causing me bitter regret. In my defence we’d arrived in BA the day before, after 35 hours of travelling from the UK, so I wasn’t thinking straight. We always try and get an overview of cities via bike or walking tours, so I booked an ebike tour with a company recommended by a friend. I paid $110 dollars each for a 6 hour tour. When we turned up at the bike hire place I think they were astonished we’d paid online, full price. Had we just rocked up at the shop and paid in pesos, we’d have paid around $40 each – nearly 2/3 less. This is crucial – you have to pay for things in pesos to get the favourable rate. People who have booked all of their tours from the UK or through a UK travel company won’t get this rate. I assume their travel agents are making a pretty penny though. Of course sometimes this is a pain – while we were in Mendoza we wanted to get up into the Andes to take photos, but we were there over a 4 day bank holiday, and everyone was partying, including all the local tour operators. We did find one eventually, and paid half the rate Viator asked for online for the same tour. (Viator = $47 per person, same tour in shop = 23,000 pesos = $23 pp).

Don’t pay for your hotel until you get to it, and get the bill in pesos.

I thought it’s worth spelling this out. They have to do this – it’s the law. Of course it’s not always possible – we’ve booked a place in Buenos Aires on airbnb and have had to pay full rate, half now and half soon. It’s just once I’d found this place, and having done a tour of the area when we first arrived I knew it was a fabulous location, I couldn’t find anywhere I liked more. Some places do let you book now and pay later. Our airbnb in Salta for example let us pay cash when we arrived, where we were staying for a week. So the invoice cost of $500 reduced to around a third, as we paid 160,000 pesos, and we are getting 900 pesos per dollar, sometimes 100.

All of this is open, and legal.

I expected it to be more furtive, but everywhere wants dollars and offers varying rates – shops, restaurants, hotels, street corners.