Our first task upon arriving in Buenos Aries was exchanging our money.  Normally we would order currency ahead of time, but in Argentina there is an official rate and the Blue Dollar rate.  Few visitors to Argentina are foolish enough to officially exchange their money in a bank.  The Blue Dollar, a softer expression for the black market, came into play during the 2002 Argentinian debt crisis when the fluctuating state of the peso became uncertain and the government imposed heavy restrictions on the acquisition of the much more stable American dollar by Argentinians looking to stabilize their savings.

The value of the Argentinian peso can change so quickly and significantly that a loaf of bread might be listed at one price in the morning and a different price by the evening.  There is not enough American money floating around Argentina to meet the demand so its foreigners like us who are providing the precious currency in return for more pesos than the bank will give out.

Given that we only had 3 days in the Buenos Aries, where the Blue Dollar rate is always best, we picked our hostel location based on the fact that we could walk to Florida Street, the central nerve of the Blue Market, exchange our money and quickly return to the hostel to leave it in a safe place before exploring the city.

We navigated our way to Florida Street easily and within a minute the men we walked past asked us “Money exchange?”

We approached the second man who asked and began our negotiations. In case anyone is reading this and finding it somewhat sketch, the Blue Dollar is so well known that it has its own facebook page and is listed in the national newspaper daily. On this particular day it was listed at $14.8 pesos to the  American dollar (the official rate is closer to $9 pesos).  We managed to negotiate $14.6 from his original offer of $14.2 and were instructed to follow him.  I got somewhat nervous when I saw that he was walking us towards a group of police officers (there seemed to be a lot on the street) but he walked us right past them towards a newspaper stall and told us to enter.  Inside the stall was a man with a money counting machine ready to do the exchange.

After carefully counting our thousands of pesos we headed straight back to the hostel, but a parade appeared to have started with an impressive amount of military personnel lining either side of the street as hundreds of men on horses passed by.  A white car passed us and a man waved out the window.

“Maybe that’s the president” said Steph. I thought this was optimistic of her, as I figured it had to be a pretty important parade for the president himself to make an appearance, but whatever it was it did seem to be a politically driven event.  We had to laugh at our poor timing as we found ourselves surrounded by people in the exact situation we had been trying to avoid with large amounts of cash on us.  After returning to the hostel to drop off the money we left again to visit the cemetery where former Argentine president Eva Peron (Evita) is buried.  The crowd around the street was even larger now, with people leaning over their balconies throwing scraps of paper into the air while those on the street waved both small and over sized Argentine flags. The crowd went wild as the same man that had waved at us earlier came by again in an open roofed car waving at the crowd.

We soon realized that this was not a parade in which the president was making an appearance, this was the inauguration of the president.  We followed the crowds into Plaza de Mayo and watched on a large screen set up outside as Marci officially became the new president of Argentina. The whole thing felt a bit like the recent Trudeau mania we had just both experienced in Canada.  The president even danced on the balcony to the joy of the signing crown.

Waiting for the president to make a speech from the balcony

We found out later that night from a girl named Antonia who was making a documentary in Buenos Aries that the crowds were much bigger the previous day as President Christina bid farewell to office. Many Argentines are nervous about what the change of regime will mean for them.

Our second day in the city was far less eventful as we covered various districts of the city on foot, starting with La Boca, famous for its colourful houses, although the touristy area of La Boca was a bit too touristy for Steph and I.

Exploring La Boca

A second attempt to visit Evita’s grave failed, as the cemetery was closed by the time we got there.  We did get to see how awesome the graveyard looked from outside the locked fence.

The cemetery where Evita is buried

When our feet (and by that I mean my feet which had swollen to twice their size from the flight) could take no more we decided to try our hand at the city’s metro system.  The original plan was to head to the “Hipster” area of the city known as Polermo for a fancy steak dinner with wine, but we quickly ditched that idea for take-out pizza and a bottle of malbec from the kiosko near the hostel.

Pizza and Malbec at Hostel Sabatico

We made fast friends with the others sitting around the hostel and made the impulsive decision at 12am to go to a “Christmas Salsa Show” despite having a 4am shuttle to the airport in the morning.  Naturally, being Buenos Aires, the band didn’t take the stage until 2:45, but we had a good 45 minutes of salsa dancing before grabbing a cab from the club to the hostel just in time for our airport shuttle.

It was time to trade the hot capital for chilly Patagonia…