I was only supposed to be in Argentina for about two weeks. Then disaster struck. The cruise I was supposed to take — the whole reason I had planned a trip through Argentina — was canceled by my father.¹ I spent about twice as long in Buenos Aires than I expected to. Of course, a week after my Russian friend and I arrived in Argentina, an actual disaster struck, putting what I had naïvely considered my previous disaster firmly in perspective.

It’s hard not to feel like the world order which emerged with the collapse of the Soviet Union has definitively ended with the invasion of Ukraine. And the human cost of that collapse is simply staggering, borne especially by the Ukrainians. George Orwell famously ended up defending the Western world they had so eloquently critiqued once the full horrors of Stalinism became apparent. It seems we’re in a similar place now, caught in a global existential war between authoritarian plutocrats — headlined by China and Russia — and somewhat less authoritarian and slightly less plutocratic nations on the other. But the vision and ambition of Russia and its ilk is so rapacious and bloody, as the videos coming out of Kyiv reveal, that we really have no choice. Whatever the broader risks of wealth inequality, the rise of illiberalism is a more pressing threat. You can’t remodel a house while it’s on fire.

So there’s a shooting war in Europe which threatens to spread, a renewed threat of nuclear annihilation, and a growing humanitarian disaster/refugee crisis. And I was tucked safely away in Argentina. All the possible responses felt² inadequate and inconsequential. It’s barbaric to keep touring as if nothing was going on in the world, but beyond doomscrolling and donating to charities I don’t know what else to do.³ So I check in on my friends in Kyiv and make sure they’re doing as well as can be expected, and then turn back to my own life. Because what else is there?

We have an obligation to do everything we can to help. But making ourselves miserable, without providing any benefit to those who are suffering, is useless. Worse than useless, since it makes us less able to help when we can. We can’t turn away and pretend it’s not happening,⁴ but at the same time we have to get on with our own lives, the quotidian worries about groceries or work or rent — the very things the Ukrainians were worrying about a month ago — while knowing atrocities are happening across the globe.

It’s an uncomfortable balance. I read the latest updates then worry about where to buy lunch. I make plans for April then try and figure out what charities are doing the most good for refugees. I try and stay engaged but then go out to a movie to try and forget about it all for a couple hours. It’s awkward. But if we’re being honest with ourselves, we’ve always lived this way. It’s just harder to pretend you don’t when you know the names of the people being bombed.

I arrived in Argentina a few days earlier than I expected to, flying into Buenos Aires less than 36 hours after arriving in São Paulo⁵ after juggling flights and skipping Chile. So I got to do some touristy stuff for about a week before the invasion of Ukraine, touring Buenos Aires and flying to Puerto Iguazú before heading to Córdoba.

Both are worth seeing, if you can spare the time. Puerto Iguazu is the more touristy of the two, with a massive cascade of waterfalls — if you’ve seen the poster for The Mission featuring a crucified Jesuit priest falling over the edge, you’ve seen it — that’s plenty impressive in the dry season but you probably should plan on visiting during the rainy season.

Córdoba’s a regional administrative center with a lot of universities, more funky than Buenos Aires⁶ and home to the Manzana Jesuítica, a UNESCO world heritage site comprised of a cluster of 17^th century buildings. The Jesuits loom large in the history of the region. And we tried to make up for Chile by booking a day trip to a couple wineries in the area. The best wine regions in Argentina are far to the west, but there’s a tradition of local wineries in the area — somebody had to produce the communion wine once the Jesuits moved in — and it was great to see how the wine used to be produced, and how they’re modernizing.⁷

Afterward we returned to Buenos Aires, where we spent the majority of our time in Argentina. Thankfully it’s lovely, with a substantial number of Beaux Arts and Art Nouveau buildings from the turn of the 20^th century.⁸ The city’s more cosmopolitan than I was expecting, with dozens of museums and hundreds of cafés and a population that enjoys dressing up and showing off in the restaurants and night clubs.

Part of what makes Argentina so attractive for tourists is the exchange rate, which is crazy. Argentina has a history of inflation⁹ so the locals prefer to invest in foreign dollars. The government would prefer business be conducted in pesos, so they limit the amount of foreign currency locals can exchange. This creates a weird situation where the official exchange rate is fixed at about 100 pesos to the dollar but the demand is actually much higher than that. So there’s something called the “Blue Dollar” exchange rate, which is what you actually get if you exchange dollars for pesos on the streets of Buenos Aires. It’s currently about 200 pesos to the dollar.¹⁰

So if you’re visiting Argentina, bring cash. It’s easy to exchange in country. I’ve been here long enough that I was able to wire money via Western Union — they started exchanging dollars at the Blue rate about six months ago — and pick up more than enough pesos to last through the extra couple weeks I was staying. Prices are reasonable enough that you can use a credit card in an emergency — I’ve been using one for Uber, just because it simplifies travel — but the difference between paying $80 for a hotel room or paying $40 for the exact same hotel room is stark.¹¹

The restaurants are good but not great.¹² Argentina has a reputation for steakhouses and you can certainly find all the parrillas you’re looking for, but there was a huge wave of European immigration from Italy so there are plenty of Italian restaurants as well.¹³ And Palermo¹⁴ has a decent selection of vegan restaurants as well, so I haven’t been starving.¹⁵

The nightlife, on the other hand, appears to be phenomenal. I say appears to be, because I haven’t really sampled as much of it as I’d have liked. It starts late. Restaurants often don’t open until 8pm. Cocktail bars are sluggish until 11pm. My friend has been steadfast in trying to set me up with a local and asked around when the best time to hit the clubs was. It’s around 2am. I’d rather be in bed by midnight.¹⁶ But if you’re young or at least more thoroughly time-shifted than I managed to get, it looks like a blast.

The country’s a little shambolic, which I guess gives the nightlife a certain fin de siècle energy which is only reinforced by the architecture. Nothing seems to work quite right. I tried to hop the metro with my friend only to discover you could not actually buy tickets — you need a card in order to use it, and they are simply unavailable.¹⁷ But no worries; the person in the booth just waved down the attendant, who made sure we were headed the right direction and cheerfully unlocked the turnstile to let us through.

That’s Argentina in a nutshell. The attitude seems to be you can’t trust the banks or the government, things will break down as often as not, but that’s just all the more reason to be friendly and helpful. People will go out of their way to lend a hand when they can and will be apologetic when they can’t. It’s been a good place to crash for a while while the world goes crazy. Things may move slowly, but we’ll all get there, in good time.

Argentina marks the last stop on my Latin American sojourn. In about four hours I’m flying to São Paulo, where I’ve got a long layover before heading to Paris. You’re prohibited from going to your gate less than three hours before your flight, so I’m chilling with a beer outside in the Hard Rock cafe at the airport.¹⁸

I got the requisite COVID test an hour ago at a tent they’ve got set up outside the airport, so I couldn’t be sure I’d be allowed to fly until then. I would have gotten one sooner, but my flight to Paris tomorrow passes through the United States and you need a test taken the previous day. That’s been the worst part of the testing requirements; it’s not that your flight gets canceled, it’s that you don’t have any time to deal with it when it happens.

I had to say goodbye to my friend in Argentina. I’ll have more thoughts about what it’s been like traveling with someone the next time I post, but for the moment it’s still novel and weird adjusting back to traveling on my own. It was always the plan and I knew it was coming, but it’s still sad.

Next: São Paulo (GRU) to Paris (CDG)
Prev: São Paulo (GRU) to Buenos Aires (EZE)

Footnotes

¹ Mostly due to Omicron. The cruise company had already canceled all the stops in Brazil, so I can understand the jitters. It’s been rescheduled for October.

² And continue to feel

³ I did briefly — very briefly — consider flying to Ukraine, or at least Poland or Romania, as if awkwardly standing around in or near a warzone would be somehow more useful than donating money to people who actually know what they’re doing. I wanted to be doing something.

⁴ A position far too many Americans took during the Iraq War, to say nothing of other conflicts.

⁵ The PCR test I got Tuesday morning allowed me to book a flight to Brazil Wednesday evening and another one from there to Buenos Aires Friday morning without getting retested.

⁶ I kind of dug the vibe; my friend did not.

⁷ The best one, Terra Camiare, included a tour of the vineyard where you could pick the Malbec and Tempranillo and Chardonnay grapes right off the vine and try them for yourself.

⁸ Granted, many of them are a bit run down — Argentina was rich in the ’20s, and the Great Depression and subsequent years of political instability ensured they wouldn’t be replaced but also that they would be inconsistently maintained.

⁹ 50% inflation in 2021. Yeesh.

¹⁰ It’s also technically illegal, although you can watch the money changers yelling out “Cambio! Cambio!” while the police stand around looking bored.

¹¹ I wish I had known before I arrived. One obscure consequence of the pandemic is most guidebooks are horribly out-of-date. I skimmed one from 2019, which is before the current government took power and the latest policies went into effect. There’s a brief and woefully inadequate note on the blue market. I wonder if they didn’t want to lean into advice which is technically illegal.

¹² I have heard the hot trend in Argentina is puertas cerradas — private supper clubs — and under different circumstances I’d have been tempted to try and track them down. They’re often dicey as a vegetarian, with a fixed menu and no substitutions, which is why I didn’t even try.

¹³ Fascinatingly, that immigration has left a significant mark on the language, so Argentinian Spanish is pronounced very idiosyncratically — a lot more like Italian, in fact. Example: ll and y are pronounced identically in Buenos Aires, like the “sh” in shine. Chicken is po-SHO not po-YO.

¹⁴ The upscale, touristy district

¹⁵ And the vegan deli around the block of my AirBnB does a Milanesa sandwich which is pretty great.

¹⁶ I’ve never been big into clubs to begin with. Audio processing issues and ADD make me a mess anywhere there’s loud music. If I’m staying up until dawn I need someplace quiet to do it.

¹⁷ The government just stopped printing them, because there’s a shortage of NFC chips. My friend went in search of one across the city and came up empty. In the end a friendly porteña merely handed over theirs and offered a reminder to top it up.

¹⁸ An odd choice for an airport restaurant. Lionel Messi is the current brand ambassador, so maybe that explains it. The music’s also ridiculously quiet, which I appreciate, but would surely degrade their cred further if they had any left to lose.