Getting Excited to Travel Again!

We are leaving in about a week and the pleasures of traveling is starting to kick in. Zhaoyang is finishing up her last week of work at the accounting firm and will be starting a new job after we get back. So along with looking forward to a new continent to discover, she will have a new job as well!

We have been watching Youtube videos to get acquainted with the places we will be visiting, the food we may encounter

and recommendations and cautions people have. One thing we didn’t learn from the videos is about the exchange rate in Argentina. There has been extremely high inflation in Argentina the past few years and we normally would simply get cash at ATMs during our trip because you generally get the best exchange rate that way. Not so in Argentina! There is a thing called the “Blue Market Rate” which is almost double the normal bank exchange rate. I can’t explain why that is, it just it. So, instead of getting about 150 pesos per US Dollar, we will be getting 290 pesos! There are two basic ways to exchange your money using the Blue rate. The first is going to “Florida” street where there are apparently many small exchange places, where you will meet someone on the street and then be taken back to a small office off the street. This sounded like an extremely bad idea until we read more about it. According to many sources, it is very safe. The other method is to use a Western Union money wire. You send yourself money using their online app, then go to one of the many offices to pick up your pesos. It is actually a slightly better Blue rate so we are likely to use that method; the downside is that you have to plan ahead a bit as it can take a day for the transfer.

So this trip will be relatively short, compared to our normal trips which is why I’m calling it the South America Teaser trip. We are only there for 19 days and seeing only three out of the twelve countries. So a trip back will definitely be warranted!

We fly to Santiago on Wed 11/16 and will stay there for four nights, then on the Buenos Aires where will we spend nine nights in two areas with a short overnight trip to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay, a 1.5 hour ferry from BA. Then we return to Santiago and take a bus down to Vina del Mar where we will spend our last three nights before our return to the US.

To access our blog directly while we are on the trip, you might want to bookmark this link: https://ourtrips.jreeves.com/category/south-america-teaser/

You may notice that we have combined all of our trips into one website. So if you want you can peruse some of our older trips by clicking on “Our Trips Around The World” at the top of the page.