#166 - Update Buenos Aires - Horrible Month

An update from Buenos Aires.

Wow! What a stressful month.

Another back episode in the Philippines. The worst I have ever experienced. It started with a slight muscle spasm in my lower back doing yoga, and by the afternoon had progressed to the point where I couldn’t even walk without assistance. And I was due to travel within eight days. I bit the bullet and went to the emergency room and the doctor, four times within the week for injections of hydrocortisone, anti-inflammatories, and to a very limited extent, pain killers.

It did get me back on my feet to the point where I was able to get through the 40-hour flight to Argentina. Then the day following my arrival, my blood pressure, which for most of my 61 years has always been normal, started to go haywire (get very high).

Having the high blood pressure spikes just made me feel awful. A very bad feeling. Felt flushed, dizzy, arms tingling, etc. I did have some blood pressure medication which I took, and that barely seemed to help, but I still wanted to go see a doctor, naturally. A couple of days before I saw him, it did occur to me in fact, that the injections may be causing my problem. When he saw the history that I had written up for him, he immediately zeroed in on that as well and told me that those kinds of medication tend to hang around in the fatty tissues of the body and it can take a few weeks to get flushed from my system.

It would have been nice to been given a heads up by the doctors in the Philippines at those kind of side effects were possible but, oh well.

Then, the other thing. Again, it falls under the category of “you cannot make this sh@t up”. I was staying at my favorite place in Buenos Aires, with my friends, and the federal police started showing up asking who was staying there with them. They never came into the building, this was all done via the intercom. But the night that I got back from seeing the doctor was the second time that they had showed up in a week and it made me and my friends a little bit nervous. Not because there was anything illegal going on, no, no, no. But I’m in the process of getting my passport. And if for some reason, not related to anything resembling logic, my name was to show up in a police report of some kind, I’m sure it would’ve had a negative effect on my application, which is in its penultimate stages.

So it became a matter of some urgency that I had to find another place the next day. However, there is some band called Coldplay, of whom I have never heard. And there was literally not a hotel room to be had in the city. And, the number of Air BnB units in the city has dropped by 90%. We suspect, and there is no way to verify this of course, that maybe the hotels have been asking the government to put pressure on the AirBnB type lodgings so that they can get more business back. Who knows? But what is very clear is that many owners have been pulling their listings off the market. And the few that are left are either very bad units or they are charging exorbitant rates (like $400 a night) or both. When I looked on my Marriott Bonvoy app for hotel rooms the closest that they could find for me based on geography was in Uruguay.

Fortunately, my good friend Max, the real estate agent who has helped me for years here with rental units, had exactly one unit available, and not only was it a nice part of town, but it was very reasonably priced. And bless him, he was able to get me in the same day that I asked him about it. And my friends helped me out completely by providing logistical support such as linens, cleaning supplies and even a housekeeper who will help me keep the place clean. So, it was a very stressful week, but at least I am moved into a nice new unit. But seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.

And as for the last item of stress …

The economic situation here in Argentina is absurd. They have more than 10 different exchange rates for the Argentinian peso. See link below.

https://www.ambito.com/contenidos/dolar.html

You have the official bank rate which is 130, give or take depending on the day. And then you have the street rate called dollar blue, which is approximately 262 - 280, depending on the day. And most prices for goods are based on this. Then there are this plethora of different rates depending on what financial instruments you are using and what you are trying to buy. Good example, for people who have an Argentinian credit card, and want to buy a ticket to the Coldplay concert (may the band be cursed forever), they will end up paying a rate of more than 300 pesos to the dollar for a Coldplay ticket. Same thing applies to anything related to the Qatar 2022 World Cup. If you are in the agricultural sector and want to export or import materials, there are different rates for that. I, in all my relatively broad experience, have never seen anything like this. Whatever cabal in the administration has come up with this scheme, they are f@cking morons. And, in my admittedly limited discussions with Argentinians here on the ground, nobody has really been able to tell me what the government’s purported reasons are for having a setup like this.

**STOP PRESS** On the 4th of November the government added a new exchange rate called the Tourist Dollar. This has a rate of approximately 292 the dollar and is supposed to encourage nonresidents to use their credit cards to be able to make payments without it being so expensive for them. However, when reading the local online articles from the newspapers about this, and from the government it is a complete clusterf!ck. Nobody appears to understand or explain exactly how this is supposed to work. And, as an experiment, I bought dinner for myself yesterday with my American Citibank card, and the transaction, which showed up immediately, was being processed at the rate of approximately 160 the dollar instead of 290. So again, the government has its head up its ass and it is total confusion.

OK … I went to Uruguay to see if I can get US$ from the ATMS. This is actually true. However … It was very hit and miss. Out of two ATM Cards, only 1 worked (and I as I sit on the ferry back from Montevideo I, as I am writing this, realized that there was a 3rd ATM card I forgot to try ☹), I hit the limit on the card that worked, it is a 24 hour reset for the limit, and my ferry back left before then. And no idea why the 1 card from the states didn’t work. The bank in the US had no information on that.

I am totally demoralized at this point by my trip to Argentina. I have spent a fortune, and am having problems getting more cash, I’ve canceled my trip to Brazil (which made some people very unhappy). I just don’t which way is up anymore. Full disclosure – much of this is my fault. I’ve made some stupid commitments and decisions, but much of it not my fault. Like the idiocy of the Argentine government, Philippine banks being placed on a gray list, etc. I also made some relationship errors. I won’t go into detail about it but “no fool like a lonely old fool” is rattling around my brain. But beating myself up is no winning strategy either. So, I need to get over it, honor the commitments I made, disengage, and move on.

I did have a brainstorm though. I think next time (if I don’t get my passport this time), I’ll just stay in Montevideo and enjoy a normal life, and only take the ferry to Buenos Aires when I need to do paperwork.

Montevideo, and Uruguay in general, appear to be very civilized by comparison with Buenos Aires. For sure, it is a little bit more expensive, but it was immediately obvious to me that there are more products available in the stores, the financial system seems to be working quite well, and actually, due to the geography of the country Montevideo is much more obviously jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean and it is very obvious that you are living by the ocean. Also, not unlike Sofia, Bulgaria, the population of Montevideo is only 1.4 million, compared to the 17 million in the greater Buenos Aires area. So, I like that.

I was talking with a fellow ex-pat just the last couple of days here in Buenos Aires, and (again I cannot overstate the value of talking with other people sometimes and not living within one’s own echo chamber) and he brought up the fact that flying to Argentina seems to be more expensive than flying almost anywhere else in South America. I am going to examine this further, he mentioned Chile in particular, but that may give additional impetus to flying into and out of Uruguay.

So, anyway, I will post this article as soon as I get Internet installed to the apartment here, which is supposed to happen this morning. I have been writing this article for about four days, and things have to some extent improved.

My blood pressure appears to be very close to getting back to normal now. My back is feeling marginally better. I canceled my trip to Brazil and although I’m getting a refund on my plane tickets, the hotel in Brazil is asking for a letter from a doctor stating why I can’t make it and then they will graciously give me a letter of credit for sometime in the future. This is the hotel Villa Raphael in Buzios and as far as I’m concerned this makes them thieves. I will try to post something about that in any forum I can find just to be able to cost them at least one or two reservations which will make up for the money that they have stolen from me.

My internet did get installed. Showed up at 9AM and had it done within 45 minutes.

So … I hope my next post is more upbeat. I realized that last October was my 6 year anniversary of writing the blog. 😊