For the past month or so, as I’ve been traveling in Chile (not counting a week in the Falkland Islands), the exchange rate has
remained stable at roughly 530 pesos to the dollar – there have been minor fluctuations
in either direction but, essentially, there have been no surprises. In the same
period, across the Argentine border (which I haven’t yet visited on this trip),
the official dollar has steadily deteriorated by about five percent from 6.06
to 6.42, while the unofficial “blue dollar” has fluctuated – it hasn’t quite
reached the ten-peso plateau again and now stands around 9.65, for a roughly 50
percent “breach” with the official dollar.
Here in Pucón,
just across the border from the Argentine resort of San Martín de
los Andes, I was a little surprised to find that local exchange houses are
handling the volatile Argentine currency at all, though I have come across a handful
of Argentine tourists paying everything with credit cards (despite a punitive 35 percent tax imposed by their own government) because they have
been unable to purchase dollars legally. I was less surprised to
learn, from a friend who operates a travel agency here, that Argentina-bound
Israeli backpackers have been “raiding” local banks and other sources to
purchase dollars with Chilean pesos.
For many years, Argentine ATMs dispensed US dollars
alongside pesos, but that was in and just after the decade of dollar-peso
parity that ended with the economic collapse of 2001-2. To the best of my
memory, Chilean ATMs have never dispensed US dollars, but it’s not difficult to
buy dollars with Chilean pesos even though, in this case, the Israelis normally
have to do it during regular banking hours. Otherwise, they have to seek out
options like the exchange houses and my friend’s agency, where they’ll have to
pay a little more for their dollars.
When I checked in at a Pucón exchange house the other day, I
was told I could purchase Argentine pesos at 8.1 per dollar, which is lower
than the blue rate but still significantly higher than the official rate. For
somebody uncomfortable with the idea of risking an “illegal” exchange on the other
side of the Andes, it’s not really a bad rate, though I have a friend in Bariloche who
provides me better suggestions (which I am not comfortable with passing on here). The parallel market in the Patagonian provinces is not quite so vigorous as it is in Buenos Aires, but I’ll
probably be able to provide a further update some time after New Year’s, when I
expect to cross the border.
AN UNFORTUNATE BUT VERY SPECIFIC WARNING
Usually, in the course of updating my guidebooks, I will not
include a negative review of a hotel or restaurant, but rather just exclude it.
Today, though, I will make an exception after an attempted dinner at Pucón’s
Fiorentini (formerly Fiore), an Italian restaurant on Avenida O’Higgins, the
town’s main commercial thoroughfare.
Fiore appears in my Patagonia and Chile books, but
last night was one of the worst dining experiences of my life. Ordering
crab-filled cannelloni, I waited over an hour in a lightly crowded restaurant
as other parties took their tables, were served and even finished their meals
with no indication when my own order might arrive. Finally, after telling the
waitress I’d been waiting for some time, I received a dish of three cannelloni
that looked (and tasted) as if they’d just been removed from the freezer and
insufficiently microwaved. I sent them back, paid for my pisco sour aperitif, and went
to bed without dinner.
I have already deleted Fiore/Fiorentini from my working text
for the new edition of Patagonia but, for those who might visit Pucón in the
interim, I recommend eating elsewhere.
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