Walled Out? Walled In? Or Both?

Having received an advance from my publisher, I am theoretically updating the current edition of Moon Patagonia, but it’s not quite that simple. When I flew to Chile in late February, after a few days in Santiago I drove south to the volcanic highlands of the Araucanía region and across the Argentine border to San Martín de los Andes and San Carlos de Bariloche. I abruptly returned to Chile, though, when Santiago announced the impending closure of the borders between the two countries.

In mid-March, Chile was about to close the border with Argentina because of the Coronavirus crisis.

I had double-checked and acquired quite a bit of material in the process but, when I left to return to California in late March, I told my Chilean friends—one of whom is storing my car in Santiago—that I hoped to return in November, but couldn’t guarantee that would be the case. February or March of next year sounded a bit more realistic. Even now, that’s far from certain because of the Coronavirus crisis, which is worsening in Chile—though it’s not yet reached the levels of misgoverned countries like Brazil, the United Kingdom and, of course, the United States.

COVID-19 trends are worsening in Argentina and Chile, but still not close to those in the United States, Brazil, or the UK. 

Many people are without work these days, but my own is simply in limbo even if, in theory, I could be working on the book in question. In past years, spending the summer at home in Oakland before heading south after the World Series, I would revise background material such as government and politics. Still, even before I arrived in Chile earlier this year, that was full of uncertainty with the pending plebiscite on a new Constitution—now rescheduled for October 25th—and whether the accompanying political unrest might affect the travel and tourism sector.

The public health crisis, of course, put that issue on the back burner—almost literally, as the Chilean government decided (rightly, in my opinion) that holding an election in the midst of a pandemic was risky. For what it’s worth, the country does not allow absentee voting, so vote-by-mail is not an option; voting was once obligatory, but that is no longer the case. Interestingly, Chile does allow resident non-citizens to vote in its elections.

Open-air dining space at Pucón's Loretano

Besides background material, though, there’s equal uncertainty about tourist services. In my short time in South America, I discovered new restaurants, such as the Peruvian Loretano which, at present, continues serving takeout meals in Pucón. Still, in the aftermath of the public health crisis, many restaurants, accommodations and other services are sure to fail or, at least, change dramatically. It’s too early to say whether Loretano, or even established accommodations and restaurants with a solid track record over the decades, will necessarily survive.

I'd love to try the Peruvian-style ceviche at Loretano again.

Even if the travel and tourism sector re-opens, there’s another obstacle for me (and many other US citizens). Everybody knows, of course, about the notorious vanity wall under construction at the Mexican border, but now the current White House occupant’s minions are taking it to another level entirely. My US passport expires in early September, and I recently learned that the State Department is not processing either new or renewal applications so that, even if Argentina and Chile open up for tourism, it's uncertain (at best) when we'll be able to return.

In early March, when I entered Argentina from the Chilean side, I saw this camper van with Washington State plates. What their status might be at present, I can only guess, but the immediate outlook is not promising for US travelers.

The United States, of course, always used to criticize the Soviet Union and its allies for confining their citizens within their borders—most notably after the erection of the Berlin Wall. Now, it seems, any supposed “reopening” of the US has its limits, as its citizens must contend with walls—not just to keep foreigners out, but also to keep us in.

Ice Cream, Empanadas, and the Pandemic

It’s been more than three weeks since I “escaped” from Argentina and Chile, but I never stop thinking about them. I have many relatives in Argentina, and friends in both countries, who’ve been in touch in the coronavirus “aftermath” (obviously, it’s not over yet), but we express concern about each other and the future (short- and medium-term especially). The public health crisis seems to have hit Chile harder than Argentina, although the latter’s statistics seem incomplete according to the regional live data update at NCOV2019 (disclaimer: this site often seems to be overwhelmed with traffic).

A recent screenshot of Coronavirus stats in South America

Last week, I did receive an email from my friend Gabriel Famá, owner of the landmark ice creamery Heladería Cadore in Buenos Aires, and he’s feeling the pinch of Argentina’s near total lockdown. Though food providers such as himself can remain open for delivery, he was in hard-hit Italy when the crisis began, returning at the end of January “with no restrictions or controls, and look what. A lot of people underestimated the situation.” He comes to work “by car, with one of my sons, to avoid contact on public transportation and we operate with as few employees as possible.”

In non-virus times, Cadore can get really crowded.

Another friend, Marcelo Ferrante of Periko’s Hostel in Bariloche (where I spent a night before crossing back into Chile on my odyssey home), found himself on an RV vacation in Spain, another country devastated by the virus—“With luck I was able to get back to Bariloche, it was difficult but I managed it.” On April 8th, he wrote me, “We had to close on March 20th when the last guests left” (I had departed on the 16th). Then, he added, “I don’t think we’ll be able to open before before June 1st,” which would coincide roughly with ski season, but even that sounds optimistic to me.

That said, Argentina appears to be relaxing its strict quarantine restrictions, though the details are not yet clear. It's not been so draconian under California's "shelter-in-place" measures but, on an early Saturday supermarket run, I stocked up on Three Twins ice cream which, sadly, has folded under sustained economic pressure exacerbated by the plague.

Empanada Time!

On the bright side, here in the East Bay we have multiple options for Argentine-style empanadas, which are my favorites. There are four places within 2.1 miles (3.4 km) from our home in Oakland’s Temescal district.

9 de Julio Empanadas at the annual Temescal Street Fair on Telegraph Avenue

Unfortunately the one within easiest walking distance, the 9 de Julio Empanada Kitchen, hasn’t yet opened its new physical location in Rockridge, though it appears to be doing catering. Taking its name from the date Argentina’s independence day, it’s the creation of Erica Sanders, an Afro-American woman who moved to Buenos Aires to learn the art of the empanada. In past years, I’ve tasted her product—which features empanada styles from throughout the Americas—at street fairs in Montclair and Temescal, but the public health crisis appears to have delayed the opening.

Windows at the Wooden Table Café have fileteado flourishes.

The next closest is Uptown Oakland’s Wooden Table Café, which I’ve only sampled erratically because I usually pass it after taxiing my wife to work (she’s now telecommuting). Parking is scarce, though, so stopping is a matter of opportunity on my way back home. It’s very specifically Argentine, to the point of offering yerba mate drinks (the current crisis makes me wonder whether Argentines—and Uruguayans—will give up the custom of passing around the mate gourd, with a shared bombilla, among friends and family). It also offers a variety of sickly sweet alfajores, dulce de leche concoctions which are not to my taste. I do like the decorative fileteado on the windows, though.

Javi's Cooking is the empanadería I've most often patronized.

Nearly as close is Javi’s Cooking, in the Hoover-Foster district, whose products I first saw in the frozen food section at Berkeley Bowl West, and later sampled in Javier Sandes’s food truck during an event at Lake Merritt. It’s a place that I’ll make an occasional escapadita to when food in the fridge is scarce, and it also offers facturas (pastries) including my personal favorite medialunas (croissants, of a sort).

With its sidewalk seating, Café Buenos Aires feel more like a spot in the Argentine capital.

The most distant of the bunch is South Berkeley’s Café Buenos Aires (2.1 miles or 3.4 km), which I stumbled upon while taxiing an Argentine political scientist to a downtown event there. It has a wider menu than the others, especially with regard to pastries, but it’s not quite so convenient as the others. It’s a bit more spacious as well but, under current conditions it—like all the rest—is for takeout or delivery only.

María Laura's homemade empanadas - chard in this case - are our default choice these days.

In any event, we’ve not bought empanadas recently. The local price of roughly $5 each would appall most Argentines but, fortunately, my Argentine wife is capable of making them much more cheaply with no sacrifice in quality. Still, I look forward to revisiting all these others, so nearby, in person when our shelter-in-place restrictions relax.

Childish Games? In Buenos Aires?

Recently, reviewing the English translations on a Chilean hotel website, I came upon the bewildering phrase “childish games” as one of the hotel's features, and I had to refer back to the Spanish original to find the term “juegos infantiles” to realize that what they meant was “playground for kids.” They'd apparently relied on translation software—thanks, Google!—to promote themselves to English-speaking audiences.

Recently, in the New York Times travel section, Danielle Pergament offered an account of seeing Buenos Aires through her children’s rudimentary Spanish. For Pergament, who proudly proclaims that neither she nor her husband speaks a word of Spanish, this was a potential interesting conceit, but one that failed in its execution—at least in my opinion and my Argentine wife’s.

So far as I can tell, Pergament ignored what should have been visible evidence regarding the status of children in Argentina, and Buenos Aires in particular. I say that as someone who helped raise a half-Argentine daughter, with many Argentine nieces and nephews whom I’ve known since their early childhoods.

Somehow, Pergament concludes that children are peripheral to local life—she cites the example of an English-speaking waitress and a concierge who chose to address her rather her kids—but she mightn’t think that if, somehow, she had noticed that young children often accompany their parents to very late meals, often well after 9 p.m. In fact, dinner at home is often that late and even the youngest children are an integral part of the event, though if it’s a big family dinner the kids may have their own separate table.

Children watch a street performer at the Feria Plaza Francia.

She also missed a big opportunity by not having her kids—ages eight and ten—interact with their Argentine counterparts by paying more attention to parks and playgrounds. Easy walking distance from her lodgings at Recoleta’s Hotel Mío Buenos Aires, the Feria Plaza Francia (a sophisticated crafts fair that she dismisses as a “trinkets market”) often has street performers that appeal to children, and the Plaza Emilio Mitre has a fine playground.

Plaza Emilio Mitre is one of many where Porteño parents bring kids.

Freddo is a fading presence in the quality ice cream sector.

She does recognize one aspect of Buenos Aires that certainly appeals to kids, and that is ice cream. Sadly, her kids appear to have sampled only chains like the moribund Freddo (no longer the go-to choice it once was), Lucciano’s (very decent) and Rapa Nui (a chocolates specialist that originated in Bariloche but has branches here and in beach resorts). In fairness, these were conspicuous locales the Pergament and her family were likeliest to come across in their walks around the tourist-oriented northern neighborhoods, so more distinctive choices like Heladería Cadore were not on their itinerary.

Rapa Nui is primarily a chocolatier that got its start in Bariloche, in northern Argentine Patagonia.

At Palermo's Jardín Japonés, the colorfully carp-filled ponds appeal to kids.

Other child-friendly sights she suggests are the Abasto Shopping Center, the Centro Cultural Recoleta with its motto of ¡prohibido no tocar! (not touching prohibited!), Palermo’s Jardín Japonés and Planetario Galileo Galilei, and the often quirky Museo de Arte Latinoamericano Buenos Aires (MALBA). All of these are worthwhile, especially the MALBA, but I can’t stop thinking of her own childish oversights.

A young Porteña stands alongside the late León Ferrari's dark-themed "Mushroom Cloud" at the MALBA.

Argentina Opens Its Skies

One deterrent to travel in Argentina—the world’s eighth-largest country—has been the deplorable state of its air services. Throughout my lifetime, the state-run Aerolíneas Argentinas—occasionally under private ownership—has dominated a Buenos Aires-centric system that, with unavoidable stopovers, sometimes made flights as time-consuming as bus trips. The arrival of Chile’s LAN (now LATAM) improved the scenario, but political obstacles kept it from challenging Aerolíneas’s dominance.

State-run Aerolíneas Argentina now dominates the country air services.

At one level, there’s a logic to this pattern, as roughly a third of the country’s population lives in and around the capital, but it also re-enforces the city’s primacy. Traditionally, even important cities with upwards of a million inhabitants, such as Rosario, Córdoba and Mendoza, can only make connections to other provincial destinations via Buenos Aires. It works against the tourist industry as well, when flights between popular visitor destinations such as Mendoza and Bariloche require lengthy detours via the capital.

Many domestic flights require changing planes at Aeroparque Jorge Newbery, the Buenos Aires city airport.

It’s about to change, though. Earlier this month, the administration of President Mauricio Macri approved 135 new routes by five new or expanded airlines, including the budget carrier AirBondi. Bondi will not begin operations until September, but Neuquén-based American Jet, Córdoba-based Alas del Sur, and the capital-based Andes Líneas Aéreas may begin immediately. Tucumán-based Avian, an affiliate of Colombia’s Avianca, should soon join them.

The idea, according to Macri, is to more than increase the number of flights and more than double the number of passengers by 2019. Given that distances are so great, that long-distance trains barely exist, and that bus services are time-consuming (although the quality is generally high), there’s potential for modernizing Argentina’s transportation system and the tourism sector in particular.

In a perfect world, AirBondi would live up its name by adopting the color scheme of this classic city bus.

Whenever Argentina announces great changes, it’s always advisable to retain a certain level of skepticism, but greater competition in the transportation sector should be a welcome development—even if part of that is a budget airline likely to charge for checked baggage and other “extras.” For what it’s worth, Bondi’s name derives not from the famous Australian beach, but rather from a lunfardo (slang) term for city buses in Buenos Aires.

Emptying the VAT? Argentina, Chile & Uruguay Offer Tourists Tax Breaks

Recent developments in tourist taxation, in the Southern Cone countries of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, should interest readers of this blog. In the near future, though, I’ll also be addressing potential visa complications in the face of the United States’ new xenophobic government.

CHILE

For many years, I’ve advised visitors to Chile that, when paying for accommodations in US dollars or by foreign credit card, they are entitled to a 19 percent discount. That’s because foreigners on a tourist visa are exempt from the country’s Impuesto de Valor Agregado (IVA, or Value Added Tax).

Termas de Puyehue, an historic spa hotel eligible for IVA discounts

For those unfamiliar with VAT, it’s a sort of sales tax that levied on products and services within Chile, but not on those intended for export. For some reason, Chile has chosen to define accommodations and some related services as export items, though it’s always mystified me that sleeping in, say, a Puerto Natales hotel might qualify as an export. It’s a legal fiction that also applies, in some cases, to meals and even tours that are part of an all-inclusive package at destinations like Termas de Puyehue Wellness & Spa and the Puyuhuapi Lodge & Spa.

The remote Puyuhuapi Lodge & Spa can also grant IVA discounts.

It’s not quite automatic, though. In the first instance, not all hotels can take advantage of it—they must apply to Chile’s Servicio de Impuesto Internos (SII, Internal Revenue Service) for a franquicia tributaria (export permit) and, in the process, prove that a minimum percentage of their clientele comes from outside the country. In reality, this requirement excludes many modest but perfectly acceptable hostales (B&Bs) and hostels from consideration, even though such facilities could probably use the tax break more than their far wealthier counterparts.

Modest accommodations, like Puerto Natales's Hostal La Cumbre, are often ineligible for IVA discounts.

There’s a recent change in the law that merits noting. Generally, on arrival, foreign visitors receive a 90-day visa, and hotels must make a photocopy of your passport and tourist in order to provide the IVA discount. Though the immigration policy itself has not changed, however, visitors who have been in the country more than 60 days are no longer eligible for the discount.

While the great majority of visitors are unlikely to stay longer than 60 days—even a brief detour in Argentina or another country restarts the clock—it’s worth noting. If it’s more, though, you might as well be a Chilean resident. Note also that the discount depends on an exchange rate that the hotel may have set early in the season, and could be less (or perhaps more) advantageous than the current daily rate.

URUGUAY

To receive an IVA discount at Jacinto, pay with your foreign credit card.

I spend far less time in Uruguay than I do in Argentina and Chile, and only recently became aware of developments in their tourist taxation regime according to Ley 17934. Set at 18 percent, Uruguay’s IVA discount benefits tourists not only in accommodations refunds, but also services such as car rentals and meals. Last year, while dining at Jacinto in Montevideo’s Ciudad Vieja neighborhood, I was surprised to find the discount applied directly to my bill when I paid by credit card. In some cases, though, the discount appeared only when I received my credit card statement at home in California.

My receipt from Jacinto indicates the IVA discount under Ley 17934

For none of the transactions in question did I have to show proof of tourist status—merely paying with a foreign credit card was sufficient. This makes the Uruguayan policy far more convenient than its Chilean counterpart but also potentially vulnerable to abuse—in theory, I suppose, a foreigner could pay for a large dinner by credit card and be reimbursed by Uruguayan friends who would thereby receive the benefit indirectly.

It’s worth adding, though, that the IVA discount for accommodations is only 10.5 percent, and it has seasonal limits—this year, for instance, it is available only until April 21st. Still, the policy benefits everyone, or at least these able to pay with the proper card.

ARGENTINA

Stays at Camping El Bolsón - which has its own brewery - are now eligible for IVA discounts in Argentina.

Both Chile and Uruguay have been doing IVA discounts for some time, but Argentina’s a latecomer to the party. The law’s been on the books since 2001, but only this summer did the government of President Mauricio Macri declare that foreign hotel guests would not have to pay the 21 percent IVA that applies to all other products and services in the country. It’s also applicable to all accommodations, ranging from campgrounds to five-star luxury hotels, though clients will have to show their passports or other identification (visitors from neighboring countries may not need passports). The only acceptable means of payment, though, is a foreign credit or debit card, or a bank transfer. Cash is not acceptable (though Argentine hotels often provide cash discounts).

A stay at Bariloche's classic Hotel Llao Llao also means an IVA discount for foreign visitors.

As always, there’s a strange twist in Argentina’s new measure—it applies only to provinces with international borders. Thus, the interior provinces of Tucumán, Santiago del Estero, Santa Fe, Córdoba, San Luis and La Pampa will not benefit from it. All these provinces probably draw more in-country visitors than foreigners, but Córdoba, San Luis and Tucumán especially could be at a disadvantage to neighbors which do have foreign borders.

Because Córdoba province has no international border, guests at Hotel Sierras in Alta Gracia - Che Guevara's boyhood home - cannot receive IVA discounts.

One final note. The current issue of Condé Nast Traveler misleadingly says that “Argentina did away with its 21 percent hotel tax for foreigners.” This is simply wrong—there never was a hotel tax for foreigners, and Argentine tourists and residents will still be on the hook for that 21 percent IVA (presuming they’re not paying cash under the table).

This kiosk poster in Santiago de Chile promotes Argentina's new tourist tax refund.