Volume 3, Entry 1
It is day three in Buenos Aires and the third volume (i.e. South America) of my global adventures have gotten off to a rocky start. When one starts to think of oneself as a seasoned traveler, one gets a little careless and I regret not doing my homework.
Firstly, I am wearing the same clothes I have worn continuously for four days because my luggage is…somewhere. I had a strong suspicion that something like this would happen because I was scheduled for a tight transit. Did I trust my premonition to stick a pair of underwear and small towel in my carry-on bag just in case? No. Nor did I spring for the travel insurance which would give me supplemental compensation for the lost luggage.
Meanwhile, Argentina’s economy is a pile of oily rags next to an overloaded electrical outlet, poised to burst into flames with the coming election on Sunday. I did not plan for this or the real need to bring enough hard currency with me to last several months. I converted all the left over euros from phase two at the Central Bank of Argentina in the airport after an hour wait. That should last me a month, unless the inflation kicks up a few notches to match the plummeting devaluation of the currency. I have watched the exchange rate change from 59 pesos per USD to 65 pesos per USD in the span of a day.
The ATM situation is also quite dire with daily limits of about 100 USD (and some of the world’s most expensive fees). I was counting on funding the trip through my Chinese bank account, but–doing my research too late–have learned that the roughly 130 countries which take UnionPay do not include South America (with the exception of Peru). I started kicked myself for not hitting the ATM before leaving the US until I did some further research and learned that none of the 1000s of UnionPay ATMs in the United States are located in the State of Washington. It doesn’t help either that ICBC (my bank) issued me a debit card with no magnetic strip, making it that much harder to find a functional ATM. Pro-tip, if you are planing to travel, check out UnionPay’s ATM locator first.
It is not a state of emergency as there are ways to fund myself with US-based savings, but it really puts the lie to my go-to excuse for traveling, i.e. that my traveling is justified as a way to spend out my Chinese savings because capital controls prevented me from just transferring it to the US or exchanging it all into cash US dollars. Furthermore, because of new rules requiring tax receipts to “invest” money in China, that pile of money is just sitting in a 0.5% APY checking account (as opposed to some relatively safe options with estimated yields of 4-5%) where as my US savings account actually earns a decent interest rate. Oh well, that just puts pressure on me to earn some money and spend less.
Finally, the smallest but possibly most annoying detail is I didn’t even bother to check what the electrical outlets in South American countries are like, simply packing my “universal” (EU/UK/US oriented) adapter. It turns out Argentina uses the same plugs as China…after I deliberately jettisoned my Chinese plugs before this trip. *Annoyed grunt*
It’s going to be hard to give accurate price estimates with such unstable exchange rates, but I bought 32100 ARS for 500 EUR at a 64.2:1 ratio. Those euros were worth about 3900 RMB when I bought them, meaning I’ll use an operational 8.25 ARS:RMB exchange rate for the time being.
| Flight | 5864.8 RMB (USD 830) |
| local tourist sim Card (30 days, 3GB) | 800 ARS |
| Sube (Buenes Aires bus card, 200 credit) | 290 ARS |
| Hostel (4 nights) | 228 RMB |
| Baguette and Water | 71 ARS |
| Plug adapter | 95 ARS |
| Padlock | 150 ARS |
| Total: | RMB 398.4 (56.39 USD) |
| Hostel Breakfast | 210 ARS |
| Empanadas | 130 ARS |
| Beers | 230 ARS |
| Carne Asada (tip-based) | 100 ARS |
| Total: | 670 ARS (81.2 RMB) (USD 11.50) |
Running Total: 6344.4 RMB (USD 897.92)
Daily Average: 2114.8 RMB (USD 299.31)
I’m giving myself a break by counting the flying day as a travel day, which it must surely count as one as it took about 30 hours to get from my parent’s house to the hostel in Buenos Aires. At the same time, I’m not going to factor in the cost of the Lonely Planet travel guide, new rolling duffel bag, or luggage cubes which I bought for the trip.