Happy New Year everyone.

Our return from Ushuaia was uneventful and we have settled back into our temporary home in Buenos Aires. The couple of weeks around Christmas and New Year have not been very busy for work but I am gearing up for all the end of year stuff that needs to be done now that the new year has started.
The summer has certainly arrived here, the temps are in the mid 80s Fahrenheit (mid 20s Celsius) and the days are very long. It is wonderful. Sue and I try to get out every day and walk around the neighborhood for an hour or so.

On Saturday we went looking for a store that we saw once and walked up and down the streets staring in every shop window because all we could remember was that they had dates (the food not the calendar items) in the window. When we did not find it, we consoled ourselves by stopping in a little café and having coffee and a factura (pastry) at a place called Rita. Somewhere along the way we spotted a club called Uptown, that had a New York City subway sign in the entrance.

In the evening, we headed back to the Thelonious JazzCclub to listen to a band playing John Coltrane. They were great, and we had a thoroughly good time. We went to the early show (8 p.m.) and I think next time we go back we will go to the late show again because at 10 p.m., it is too late to have dinner, but too early to call it night.

Sunday we took the Subte (metro/underground/subway) to San Telmo. It is an area that has a large street market and also an indoor market with a bunch of restaurants. The Buenos Aires subway is pretty nice and we had an uneventful ride and then walked about 20 minutes to the market. We wandered around and looked at a bunch of stuff that we weren’t going to buy. Then into the food market, which was massively crowded and hot. Way too crowded for our liking.

We decided to head to an area called Puerto Madero, which has a bunch of restaurants on the river and a nature reserve. We wandered over and walked through a little artisan market and into the nature reserve. It was very pleasant, cooler because it was near the river and very shady. After about an hour we found a restaurant and had lunch. Then back to the Subte and home. We were hot and tired when we got home, so we headed to our pool and just relaxed.

Tuesday evening we had dinner with a Dutch couple that we met in Ushuaia. They were in Buenos Aires for a few days and then were heading to Montevideo. We always say we should go there, but haven’t managed so far. Maybe we will head there if we find we have a free weekend.

We had a quiet New Years Eve, it just didn’t seem worth it to go to out to be around people we didn’t know and would likely have trouble communicating with.I am finding the economics of Argentina fascinating. The new president has tamed inflation – at least by Argentinian standards – it has fallen to just under 3 percent PER MONTH (or about 38 percent a year). That is down from something on the order to 220 percent PER ANNUM. When we were here last time, the banking system was virtually non- existent. The Blue (unofficial) exchange rate was approximately 300 pesos to the dollar, while the official rate was about 175 to the dollar. Now those rates are within 10 percent of one another, at 1,100 and 1,000 pesos to the dollar respectively. Virtually the entire economy was cash-based with people carrying large amounts of currency for even small purchases. Now credit and debit cards seem much more common, and while some places offer a discount for using cash, most large places do not seem to. The rate of inflation over the previous months means that even though the peso has depreciated, everything is more expensive for us. Please don’t take that as a complaint, it is just an observation. We have also noticed that imported goods are now very very expensive. At the grocery store a bottle of salsa for Mexican food runs about $12, twice the price in the U.S. The same is true for Asian foods that we found in Asian markets.

On the bright side; wine and meat are still very cheap. 🙂