I knew Buenos Aires was going to be beautiful, bohemian and vibrant. I didn’t know the lunatics had taken over the asylum. The Argentine capital (echoing, I suspect, the rest of the nation) shamelessly gives the finger to anything vaguely resembling common sense and lures you into a world in which vegetables are viewed with suspicion, ministers stash their cash in government lavatories rather than in banks, and retailers try to give you sweets instead of change. I love it.
My home for the next two-and-a-half weeks is a gorgeous guesthouse owned by Zoe and David Deadman (www.abodebuenosaires.com), two UK escapees who genuinely seem to love what they do. My digs are huge – a bedroom, bathroom and enormous live-work area, with a balcony, a selection of books, fruit and water, closet space that would make Nancy Reagan hiss with envy and 24-hour access to a beautiful roof terrace with a well stocked honesty (honestly!) bar.
My hosts are not only friendly, informative and funny, with an innate understanding of the beneficial effects of good wine, but go to great lengths to ensure I'm having a great time. Breakfast this morning was vast, delicious and entertaining, and I was plied with gallons of excellent coffee. Tomorrow night, they’re hosting an asado, or barbeque, for a very reasonable fee, which appears to include half a cow and a barrel of vino per person.There was no mention of salad. Actually, if you’re a teetotal vegetarian, maybe you should think about rebooking your trip.
Right now, the sun is setting, there’s a flock of parrots on the tree outside my window and a frenzied cockerel down the road who can’t tell if it’s day or night and who has had his doodle-doo stuck on repeat for about 18 hours. I’m about to head up to the deck and catch the last of the sun’s rays prior to shooting the darn bird for tomorrow’s grill-fest. After that, I think I’ll have a typical Argentine evening, involving an empanada, a glass of malbec and an easily influenced dictator.
Lesson of the day
Yesterday, I very quickly learned that Argentina is a cash economy. The locals have heard of credit cards, but they find the idea of using them quite hilarious. And with little to no faith in their own currency, they prefer dollars, especially when it comes to buying substantial things like property, which is traded exclusively in the US currency. If you want to buy a house in Buenos Aires, you fill a large suitcase or three with greenbacks, hire yourself an armed guard and choose a relatively safe location to do the deal.
And you think I’m joking. In 2007, the country's economics minister saw her career come to an abrupt halt after being unable to properly explain how a cleaning lady managed to stumble across $64,000 in cash stuffed down behind the cistern of her parliamentary loo. She claimed she had borrowed it from her brother to buy a house and had wanted to put it in a safe place. Uh-huh.
Furthermore, for reasons that completely escape me, Argentina is chronically short of coins. People hoard them like demented piggy-banks, so much so that the one-peso coin is actually worth more than the two-peso note. People will turn down your business rather than hand over 50 centavos in change. Normal-looking people shriek with delight at a mere glint of metal – particularly ironic, considering the country's vast copper resources.
The public, not illogically, blames the federal government, which holds the monopoly on minting coins. It clearly hasn’t minted enough to go around. The government, however, blames the squirreling masses, as well as the country’s private bus companies, which only accept coins and, apparently, repackage and sell them back to the punters at a premium in a kind of black-market bus-fare sting.
The government has told the banks to hand over 20 pesos in coins to anyone who asks for them, but the banks, well, they don’t pay much attention to the government. Yesterday’s taxi driver offered to drive me around the block a couple of times to bring my fare closer to a round number, and when I declined, gave me a packet of biscuits rather than part with his pesos. I haven’t actually seen an Argentine coin as yet. And no-one will show me one, in case I mug them for it.
It’s also hard to break any kind of note, as the locals need the smaller denominations to give you instead of coins when you're not actually trying to break a note. It feels a bit like trying to buy a cup of coffee with a gold bar. So I can’t take a bus and am forced to buy wine in bulk. You can imagine how upsetting that is.
But maybe this glass will help.
© Poilin Breathnach 2009
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