Tuesday Topics: Peruvian Dining, Fuegian Dollars, & Social Media

Today’s entry consists of several miscellaneous items dealing with food in Buenos Aires, money in Tierra del Fuego, and my own social media presence (about which there may be even greater new in the near future). All will be significant in upcoming austral summer.

Dueling Peruvians?

There’s some more information on the burgeoning Peruvian cuisine scene in Buenos Aires where, according to a friend of mine, the new “Astrid & Gastón” that I mentioned in a recent post is not quite it seemed to be. In fact, it appears, it’s the “former kitchen/management team off on their own,” to the apparent displeasure of Gastón Acurio, who’s a brand in his own right, and they’ve had to shut down at least temporarily. Pictured above at last year’s Feria Internacional de Turismo, they may well have to reopen under another name.

While closing the Buenos Aires branch of A&G, Acurio will open a new branch of La Mar in Palermo, in February. However the other situation sorts itself out, that should be worth a visit for Buenos Aires-bound travelers who, until now, have had to go to Lima, Santiago, São Paulo, Mexico City, Panama or San Francisco to taste his Peruvian seafood specialties.

Ushuaia’s Blue Dollars

Since last week, when I wrote about the informal exchange market in Patagonia, I’ve had an email exchange with another friend who operates a B&B in Ushuaia. Confirming my supposition that the cruise ship trade has brought a relative abundance of dollars there, he says the local market is less robust than that of Buenos Aires (where the dollar buys nearly 10 pesos). Local businesses, he says, “use the official rate or at most they’ll pay seven or eight pesos per dollar. If you are lucky you’ll find someone that can pay a bit more.” Patagonia-bound travelers should try to change their dollars in Buenos Aires, if time permits.

Phacebook Photos & Timely Tweets

While I’m at it, I’ll issue a reminder that I now have a Facebook account, which I use primarily for photography, and a Twitter account, in which I pass on the latest news on Argentina, Chile, the Falkland Islands and even wander a little farther afield. Please feel free to like/follow me at those sites.

Where's the Money? "Caving" in Argentine Patagonia

Sometime in the first fortnight of November, I will fly to Santiago to begin updating Moon Handbooks Patagonia. Over the months to come, I will spend extended periods in southernmost Chile, Argentina and the Falkland Islands, revisiting as many places as is logistically possible before submitting the manuscript early next year for publication in the fall (spring in the Southern Hemisphere, of course).

In the process, of course, I will frequently need to tap my back account to meet my expenses. This is not a problem in Chile, where ATMs are abundant and give reasonable exchange rates, nor in the Falklands where British pounds, euros and dollars circulate widely in Stanley shops, which are sometimes overrun with cruise ship passengers. In Argentina, though, things are more problematical.

In Argentine Patagonia’s open spaces, ATMs can be few and far between and, moreover, they pay the official exchange rate which, as of today, is roughly 5.8 pesos to the dollar. Today's informal “blue dollar,” however, was available in Buenos Aires about 9.8 to the dollar, making the city almost 60 percent cheaper with bargain-basement pesos.

In Patagonia, however, the blue dollar less easy to come by. Xoom is not the option it is in Buenos Aires, because it no longer has any cash pickup point south of Mar del Plata, and destinations such as El Calafate and Ushuaia have only a handful of exchange houses and lack the cuevas (“caves”) that are so abundant in the Argentine capital. In Ushuaia, writes a friend who owns a small lodge there, “there is only one exchange house and, obviously, it changes at the official rate and there are no street changers as in Buenos Aires. Local businesses take dollars at the official rate or a little more,” though she herself offers guests who pay cash discounts of 10 to 30 percent, depending on the season.

My cousin and her ex-husband, who are guides in El Calafate, tell me that there is no informal market there, either, in a town where prices are often quoted in US currency. What does happen, he says, is that “various businesses accept the dollar at the blue rate, such as Planet Patagonia and the Safari Náutico” (pictured above). That said, not so long ago a friend of mine waiting in line at Banco Santa Cruz there managed to exchange his cash dollars with an Argentine customer, though the rate was less advantageous than the best blue rate.

All this suggests that, if you’re traveling to Patagonia, you may find it worthwhile to change dollars for pesos in Buenos Aires first (unfortunately in this case, I will be passing through Santiago, but I may be able to purchase cheaper pesos on the Chilean side, in Puerto Natales or Punta Arenas). The problem, of course, is that I would prefer not to have to carry so much cash; even though Argentine Patagonia is not crime-ridden, there’s always a risk of losing things.

That’s another distortion that the unrealistic official exchange rate brings but, even then, your mileage may vary there or elsewhere in Argentina. In a recent phone conversation, a friend who owns a small B&B in the northern town of Puerto Iguazú told me it’s easy to exchange informally there, though the rate’s not quite so good as in Buenos Aires. Iguazú, of course, is part of the anything-goes “Triple Frontera” zone where the borders of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet.

Flying to the Falklands, on a Budget?

Other than taking a Royal Air Force charter flight from the United Kingdom, an occasional cruise ship around the Horn, or your own yacht, the only realistic way to reach the Falkland Islands is by air. Since the 1990s, LAN Airlines has operated a weekly flight from the southern Chilean city of Punta Arenas (pictured above) to the Islands’ Mount Pleasant International Airport (a distance of roughly 530 miles, taking about 1-1/2 hours; ; the photograph below, which I took an earlier LAN flight, is New Island, the archipelago’s westernmost outlier).

Briefly, LAN flew twice weekly, until the Argentine government tightened conditions for overflying its airspace and prohibited charter flights from Chile because cruise ship lines preferred the simplicity of turning over their passengers and crews there rather than in the Argentine port of Ushuaia. Once a month, Argentina obliges LAN to make a stop at the nondescript southern Argentine city of Río Gallegos, which has caused some curious distortions in the logistics and economics of reaching the Islands (which are only about 460 miles from Gallegos).

I have never flown to the Islands via Río Gallegos, but my understanding is that fairly few passengers board the plane there or disembark on the following week’s return flight. The major exception is humanitarian visits for veterans who fought in the 1982 South Atlantic war between Argentina and the United Kingdom, and for families of Argentine soldiers who died and are buried there. Because of its persistent irredentist claim to the Islands, Argentina refuses to permit the repatriation of their remains to the continent; the graffiti in the photograph above, taken in Río Gallegos in 1990, blames the conciliatory then president Carlos Menem for Argentina’s failure to reclaim the Islands after the war.

Despite the inconvenience of Río Gallegos, there may be an economic advantage to flying out of there. According to search I did on LAN’s website, the round-trip fare from Punta Arenas is US$818, while the comparable fare from Río Gallegos is US$891 (subject to a detail which you may read in the penultimate paragraph of this post).

There may be a way around those high fares, though. Because of Argentina’s claim, it considers such flights to be within its own territory, rather than international flights, at least in theory. I recently asked a travel agent friend in Buenos Aires to price the Río Gallegos route for me, and she came up with a figure of 1731 pesos, which would be US$297 at Friday’s official rate. With pesos purchased in the informal “blue dollar” market, it would cost the equivalent of just US$181. Either is a pretty good deal, especially compared with the advertised prices.

A word of caution: If you’re arriving from the Islands to Río Gallegos, whether or not you flew out of there, insist that Argentine immigration officials stamp your passport. Because Argentina considers this a domestic flight, they sometimes refuse to give exit or entry stamps, and this could cause problems down the line. In the former case, leaving Argentina at another border crossing, you could be cited and fined for overstaying your visa, depending how long you were there before visiting the Islands; in the latter case, you would have no proof of having entered the country, and could be considered to have done so illegally.

Ironically, according to LAN’s website, the Argentine government collects a new 20 percent international airfare tax on its own citizens traveling to the Islands to discourage capital flight. My translation of the Spanish language text follows: “After March 18, 2013, we must apply the 20 percent surcharge on international flights established in General Resolution No. 3450/2013 of the Administración Federal de Ingresos Públicos [AFIP, analogous to the IRS in the United States or Inland Revenue in the UK]. This is detailed under additional ‘Charges and Taxes.’”  That brings the total to US$1,051, in theory, for an Argentine traveling to the Islands.

How exactly this may work out in practice, I hesitate to say because of the sheer unpredictability of the Argentine bureaucracy but, for anyone who wants to visit the wildlife-rich Falklands on a budget, it’s worth looking into.

Bargain Bites in Buenos Aires?

Just a few days ago, I wrote about Latin America’s “Top 50” restaurants, as much from curiosity as commitment - I don’t take such surveys too literally, and I found it amusing to think that I had eaten at so many of the region’s “best.” Though I’ve enjoyed all of them, to greater or lesser degrees, they’re not places at which I can afford to eat with any frequency.

This came to the fore when I received an email from a Buenos Aires friend, who is also a chef and a food writer, who offered some useful observations and corrections. I will preserve his anonymity here, but he has also eaten at most if not all the places in the list, at least those in the Argentine capital, and points out several shortcomings in the survey, not the least of which is that it's a corporate-sponsored list by Pellegrino water, which chooses the voters with no clear criteria to evaluate their expertise: "Each of those...submitted a list of their favorites…but there's no vetting to see if they've been there or not, it's just simply a tally of their votes, honor system...Chefs tend to vote for their friends/acquaintances, the public voters have a tendency to vote for the restaurants where either they happen to have been and had a good time, with no comparison against the other places, or, the places they think they're supposed to vote for because they've got the best press."

As far as corrections, my friend informs me that Astrid y Gastón, whose Buenos Aires branch near my apartment had recently closed, reopened a few weeks ago in a different Palermo location, and there’s news that Gastón Acurio will also open a branch of La Mar in the city. He also tells me that Oviedo, the traditional Spanish restaurant where I have not eaten for several years now, has undergone a major transformation to a more sophisticated international cuisine without, apparently, totally abandoning its roots.

The real downside of such lists, though, is that they imply you need to spend tons of money to eat well in Buenos Aires (or elsewhere). Here, by contrast, I provide a selective list of BA bargains that are either cheap, at the very least, provide excellent value for money. Following the name is the barrio to which it belongs.

1. Status, Monserrat: In the Congreso district, just two blocks from Argentina’s notoriously dysfunctional legislature, Status is a fine no-frills Peruvian restaurant that, in a time of raging inflation, has kept prices modest for classics such as ají de gallina (pictured above).

2. Pizzería Güerrin, Microcentro (San Nicolás): In the heart of the city’s theater district, Güerrín is the place to try a slice or so of fugazzeta, the savory onion and cheese pizza that’s a Buenos Aires special.

3. Laurak Bat, Monserrat: Dating from 1927, this unfashionable Basque restaurant (within the community's cultural center, pictured above) serves traditional fish dishes at moderate prices, such as that pictured below.

4. Bar El Federal, San Telmo: Dating from 1864, El Federal’s timeless interior (pictured below) deserves a visit for its ravioli specialty and, on a hot day, its refreshing hard cider on tap.

5. Tancat, Retiro: At midday, businessmen sit elbow-to-elbow at the bar of this Spanish tasca (pictured below), which has only a handful of tables. Moderately priced lunches and, unusual in Buenos Aires, a good selection of wines by the glass.

6. Club Danés, Retiro: Open for lunch only, this Scandinavian outpost offers inexpensive open-faced smørrebrød and other Nordic items, along with tenth-floor panoramas of Puerto Madero.

7. Grappa Cantina, Palermo: By Palermo Hollywood standards, this is an affordable contemporary take on the traditional bodegón that fed comfort food like beef, pasta and pizza to the city’s working class for many decades.

8. Bella Italia Café Bar, Palermo: Pictured above, a block from my Botánico apartment, this is my default choice for a light lunch at a moderate price. The ravioli and the spinach gnocchi (pictured below) are to die for, and the desserts excellent.

9. La Salamandra, Palermo: More than once, I’ve proclaimed my dislike for the sickly sweet caramel dessert that Argentines devour but, when in Palermo Soho, I overlook the specialty at this self-proclaimed dulce de leche bar (pictured below) for its sandwiches (usually on focaccia), salads and fresh juices.

10. Cadore, Microcentro: Leave some room for dessert at what, in my opinion, is the capital's best ice cream, and that's saying a lot. I've been going here for more than three decades, and still devour the chocolate amargo (bittersweet chocolate) and mousse de limón (lemon mousse). Fortunately for my diet, I no longer live within easy walking distance of this great temptation but, when I'm downtown, I often make a detour. The photo below dates from 1985 and, though it's since modernized, it's been in the same location since 1957 (note the outline map of Italy which, sadly, no longer graces the storefront).