Why Argentina?
Argentina was never my first choice. I love ruins, I love places that have hundreds of years of history. In my head Argentina was relatively new, huge country with troubled economy, low quality wine...and people said meat tasted great there. Ok, I must admit meat did call my attention, but to fly to other side of the world to try meat? Even I was not that crazy.
Luckily this was not my turn to decide on destination. So when decision was made to go Argentina I had to embrace it and start planning no matter how I felt about it.
I couldn't be more wrong about everything. Though more than 4 months already passed after the trip, I still feel like after difficult break up. Pictures, videos, Argentinian wine in the store - everything provokes sadness and nostalgia. New vacation plans feel like dull and unsuccessful effort to replace a real "love"; and internal voice is whispering constantly: "do it again, buy the tickets".
I don't even know how did it happen, but little by little, in two weeks, this beautiful country has stollen my heart and doesn't want to let it go.
Getting In
The great thing about Argentina - is it's location in the Southern Hemisphere, which makes it perfect escape destination from ugly November weather in Western Europe. For some reason airlines don't take advantage of this fact and to get cheep tickets to Buenos Aires with decent airlines was an easy task.
Where to go
Being the eighth largest country in the world - Argentina is huge, which makes traveling around the country time consuming and expensive. Since we are not "10 cities in 10 days" kind of people, and our budget was not unlimited we decided to focus on 3 areas and get to know each of them little bit better. For our 2 weeks trip we chose 3 cities: Buenos Aires, El Calafate and Mendoza - each one representing different side of Argentina. Though there are lots of other beautiful places we would like to visit there, I am glad we limited our choice to only three of them.
Traveling inside of Argentina
Argentina has a lot to offer: glaciers, waterfalls, picture perfect national parks, cosmopolite cities. The challenge is that the places of interest are thousands of kilometers away from each other. Since we only had two weeks, we couldn't afford waisting time traveling with more economic transport - buses. Flying was our only option. Booking internal flights was the hell of experience and gave me few sleepless nights. Here are some interesting facts about Argentinian Airlines:
Fact Nr. 1: Prices differ depending on which country's internet site you are using. Apparently government subsidies transportation costs and flights for locals are cheaper than for foreigners.
Fact Nr. 2: Only Argentinians are supposed to buy tickets on local Argentinian Airlines site. Believe it or not I found this out only after I booked our first non-refundable flights on Argentinian site.
Fact Nr. 3: Argentinian Airlines have a great customer service: I couldn't finalize my payment for the tickets because I was missing local identification number. Without suspecting anything I asked customer support to help me with my "issue". They politely suggested that since I am European I should better use European site for tickets purchasing (without naming the reason!!!), and also gave me a solution how to proceed with payment on Argentinian site! I tried to transfer my almost ready purchase to European site but it didn't work. So I gave up and bought tickets in Argentinean site. Only after that I read small print that tickets are for locals only...
To make it worse I read some travelers forums that made my imagination go wild. I had wide spectrum of nightmares starting from getting arrested in the airport (total exaggeration) to being banned from my flight. In reality nothing bad happened. Nobody even checked. I don't know if it was luck or they are not so strict about this rule.
Things I would do differently
I would save money before the trip. A LOT. Don't get mistaken, even though Argentina is located in South America, it is not cheap. It can be very expensive. Lunch in a good restaurant in Buenos Aires can go as far as 300 Euros, el Calafate tours to see the glacier are approximately 150 Euros, Mendoza wine tours - 175 Euros. But you are paying for quality. Food and wine in Argentina is excellent, tours are perfectly organized, personal, informative; people working in tourism are very professional and friendly. They do a great job and it is only fair to reward them for it. And of course impressions we got from this trip are timeless and definitely worth the splurge.
I wouldn't buy US dollars. At time of our trip, Euro had better exchange rate than dollar in spite of all travel guides recommendation to bring US dollars.
I would bring lots of cash. Cash or better to say its absence was the most stressful topic of the trip for me personally. Though most of restaurants and shops accept cards, it is always good idea to ask beforehand. We almost missed our flight back home because we didn't ask - we payed our last taxi money for lunch. Who needs a stress of running around the neighborhood looking for an ATM type which accepts your specific kind of card 3 hours before the flight? We do! Ever heard about Argentinian version of Russian Roulette - putting your debit card into 8 different ATMs while exploring alternative options of getting cash in your head (from washing dishes, down to robbing the bank) till the 9th ATM finally works? Never want to play this game again...
I would lose good 5 kg before traveling to Argentina. Remember meat I mentioned in the beginning of my post...?
Not to end with a post as big as Argentina itself, I am going to split in parts. Part 2: Buenos Aires is to follow.