This post picks up from our previous post where we are heading to Customs and Immigration in the Buenos Aires Airport.
We arrived to the immigration area and saw that there was quite a long line for “Foreigners”, which we are here. There were quite a few Immigration Officers working, but obviously, we were not the only flight to have arrived this morning. We saw a shorter line to the far left, but thought it might only be using a couple of the immigration stations, so we got in the more popular main line and started the serpentine walk to the immigration check in.
It was quite obvious that we had made a mistake, we should have gotten in that far left line, it was moving much faster than our line. We saw an opportunity to jump over to that line and get behind the last person, but we had to duck under some barriers to get there. It was worth the effort, and no one said anything to us, we were not cutting in front of anyone.
When we got to the immigration officer, we each had to have our pictures taken, then we had to tell which flight we were coming in on, we had to try and remember, and then we each had to get a digital thumbprint taken. No wonder the line was moving so slowly, it took about 4-5 minutes just for the two of us to get clearance. From there, we headed to baggage claim, and by this time, all of the baggage was circling on the carousel, it had taken at least 35-40 minutes to get through immigration.
We retrieved our bags pretty quickly, thank goodness, and then saw that there was a really, really long line to exit the baggage claim, and the end of the line was way back toward the other end of the baggage claim area. It was total chaos, the end of the line was constantly moving, and there was no one directing people, other than other passengers, to where the line actually ended. We got in line, we think at least close to the end, and started the slow movement to what we discovered was Customs.
Once we got to the customs area, you chose either to declare or not declare any items. We had nothing to declare, nor did we even know what we should be declaring, so we went down the non-declare side of the line.
At the end, there were luggage scanners to the left, and when we got to the end of the walkway, a lady pressed a button and either a red or a green light illuminated. Red was bad, you had to go to the luggage scanners, green was good, you just went through with out any additional luggage scanning for contraband.
It looked like the groups in front of us were on a red-green-red-green schedule, but when we got there, and the light was green for the group ahead of us, and our light also was green, so I guess it was supposed to be a random screening.
After exiting customs, we headed out of that secured area to another area of mass chaos. Luckily, we knew we wanted to take a Remis Taxi, the official taxi companies at the airport. There are several different companies that provide this service, and they all charge the same flat rate. We just went to the company with the next open window. The attendant said the price was US $50, and that was much higher than I had seen posted online by other visitors. Then he said we would need to wait 20 minutes for the next car. I was not wanting to wait, and was also concerned about the price, when all of a sudden, he told us a car was available. In actuality, I was confused by some signs that were on all the counters, they were exchange rates for various currencies, and I was too tired to figure that out.
Since everyone had the same set price, it was irrelevant, so we opted to purchase the fare to the city. Actually, the fare was 9,500 pesos, and at the official bank exchange rate, it would be around US $50. I gave him my credit card and then asked what currency the charges would be in, and he said pesos. Then I realized the exchange rate interaction with the original $50 price he quoted, and knew ours would be less if VISA gave us the MEP rate, which is higher than the official bank exchange rate here in Argentina.
Riding In Our Taxi To Downtown Buenos Aires
We waited about 4 minutes and someone came to take us out to our car. We had to pass through all of the people holding signs for prepaid reserved rides to the city. We were amazed how many drivers were seeking riders, and knew it would have been difficult to find a particular name on a sign with all of the chaos.
We were taken outside and met up with our taxi driver. The person who took us out to the driver asked us the name of our hotel, which I had written on an index card with the address for this very purpose, and he told our driver where we were staying. The driver then took over handling our large rolling suitcases, and we headed out to his car. It was nice and clean, and the driver had sort of a uniform on, dark pants and a white shirt.
With the luggage in the trunk, we got into the back seat. The driver wore a mask, and there was a clear plastic barrier inside the car behind the front seats, a barrier against COVID. It was clear, but really distorted the visibility from the back seat out the front window.
It was about a 45 minute drive to our hotel from the Airport. The traffic was moderate initially, but was more heavy as we got into downtown Buenos Aires. We passed through several toll booths on the ride into town from the airport, most of which we automated systems, but really slow. Some had gates and some did not, but there were always small speed bumps, more like ripples, to slow down the traffic into and out of the automated toll machines. Nothing even close to fast passes in the USA, where you can drive through them at close to normal speed.
Our driver stopped right in front of our hotel, the 474 Buenos Aires Hotel. We tipped the driver a couple of US dollars since we had nothing else to give him. US dollars are king here, so I am sure he did not mind.
We headed inside to the desk to check in and that is where we ran into some issues. They did not have any record of our reservation in their system. The lady checking us in did see where we had made a reservation for March, and then had cancelled it. That was an error on my part originally, I had selected March instead of February by mistake, but the days of the week for both months are the same since February has 28 days. At first she had just asked for our name, then she asked for our passports, I guess to make sure she had the name correct. That did not work either. Then there was a phone call, then she asked if we had a printed copy of our confirmation, which I had printed out just yesterday, “just in case”.
She then made another phone call with the reservation number in hand, but there was no record of our reservation in their system. After hanging up the phone, she said there was one item of bad news and two items of good news. The bad news was they had no suites available, which was what we had reserved. The good news was that there was an executive king room available for a lesser price (of course…) and it was ready now, these were the two “good news” items.
We were just glad there was a room available, and even more happy that it was ready now. We were tired and wanted to relax and take showers, so having the room ready now was in fact good news. We did not squabble over the mix up, maybe my cancellation of the first reservation had messed up their system, maybe not, but being angry was not going to fix anything.
We sort of felt that we had gotten a great upgrade with our Viking cruise ship room, so a slight degrade for a lesser price room here was not worth any worry.
We headed up to the room and opened up our suitcases, and got a few things out so we could shower. We were both tired, and taking showers really seems to help us to feel better after the long overnight flights. We put all of our valuables in the safe and got dressed to head out into the 85 degree heat of Buenos Aires. We did log into the hotel Wi-Fi look at our charge for the taxi ride on our Costco Visa through their phone App, and the total was shown as $28.48 dollars with the exchange rate they were using, which was really good.
We needed to get some Argentinian pesos, so we were going to ask at the front desk if there was a money changer close by where we could get the “blue dollar” rate. The receptionist gave us a business card for a jewelry store about a block away that also exchanged money, so we headed there to cash out one of our US $50.00 bill into pesos. She also said the hotel would cash them for 350 pesos per dollar, which we knew was a little lower then the blue money rate posted online.
Unfortunately, for some reason, the shop was not operating for money exchange, it was open, but the man in charge of the money was not there, and was going to be gone for 20-30 minutes. We knew we might need money for our Claro SIM cards we were getting next, so we headed back to the hotel to get their exchange rate for our $50.00.
With our 17,500 pesos in hand, we headed to the Claro phone store. Unfortunately, we headed in the wrong direction from the hotel, and after a couple of blocks realized our mistake, and headed the other way. It was about a 15 minute walk to the Claro store, and we finally arrived. It was a little crowded inside, but there were quite a few Claro employees working their respective stations, so we hoped it would not take too long.
When we got to the receptionist, she explained the promotions they were running now, and of course, it was a higher price than we expected, but not by much. We went ahead and got a numbered ticket and waited for out ticket number to show up on the automated board. We waited about 10 minutes and then we went to our designated station. The girl helping us did not speak much English, but we finally got through the process, and she installed our new SIM cards.
We were now set to go for data, these SIM cards do not have calling capability under the plan we purchased, which is OK with us, we don’t call anyone anyway and we can use WhatsApp on the data plan if we need to call each other.
Beers With Lunch
It was about 1:00 PM and we needed some lunch. A couple of block away, we saw a restaurant and went inside to get some lunch. It was pretty crowded with locals, so we knew it must be good. I ordered a roast beef with cheese hot sandwich and Stephanie got a Mediterranean sandwich.
Lunchtime
Both came with roasted potato wedges. We each ordered a Corona Beer and later a third to split as we ate. We had used most of our cash on the phone cards, so we charged this to our State Department Federal Credit Card, our credit card of choice when we travel in Europe since it is PIN priority. They did not use automated machines at this restaurant, it was charged at the counter just like at home. (Using this credit card involves another story that we will cover later).
During lunch, we looked at some other sites to visit in Buenos Aires that we had saved into Google Maps on our phioes. We discovered that the Catedral Metropolitana de Buenos Aires was only a 6 minute walk from the Cafe. After we finished lunch, we headed out to walk to the Catedral (Cathedral in Spanish). Unfortunately, we headed out in the opposite direction from where we needed to go once again.
It takes a bit to get used to using Google Maps for walking directions, sometimes it is not very responsive when walking to let you know you are going the right or wrong direction. We turned around and headed back toward the cafe and on to the Catedral. The Catedral is not very impressive from the outside, especially since some metal barriers were placed all across the front entrance on the roadway. However, the church is beautiful inside. This is the church that Pope Francis was at while he was a Cardinal before becoming the Pope.
Catedral Metropolitana de Buenos Aires
We took a lot of photo’s inside, but only with our phones. I had opted not to take any other photo gear with us today, we did not expect to really visit anything when we had left the hotel.
After visiting the Catedral, we walked to a Carrefour Grocery store and purchased a few items, a Diet Coke for Stephanie, some much needed bottled water and some wine. We loaded up the supplies and headed back to the hotel. We were tired form all of the walking and from the lack of sleep last night during our flight.
Once we got back to the hotel we rested for a while and drank some of the bottled water, which we really needed. It was hot walking outside today, close to 90 degrees, and we were a little dehydrated.
I called mom on her Alexa and we had a nice video chat using the hotel wi-fi, letting her know we had arrived safely. After resting for a while, we decided to give it another shot at the hotel recommended money exchange/jewelry store. We took one of our US$100 bills with us and headed out. It was a short walk, only about one block, and we entered the small store. It appeared that it was mostly a money exchange business, there was not much jewelry inside, not at least that we could see out for display.
Argentine Pesos – Makes You Fell Rich!
The first man we asked did not speak English, but the next one over did, he was the owner. We asked the exchange rate, and were quoted 365 pesos to the dollar, a little better than the hotel’s rate of 350 pesos to the dollar, but not as significant a difference as we thought it might be. However, it was better, so we cashed out the $100 bill for 36,500 pesos.
After exchanging the money, we walked around some of the area near the hotel. One street, Florida Street, has a lot of street vendors, and is where you also see a lot of men outside asking if anyone wants to exchange money. It looked much more shifty than the jewelry store, and we were glad we had done our money exchange there.
We stopped at a sidewalk cafe for a beer and sat outside in some covered seating. We got a menu and selected a beer, most of which come in 1 liter bottles, they are giant. In the end, we did not get anything, some of the local Imperial beer was not available, only Heineken and we are not fans of that. We headed back to the hotel to rest again and work on the blog posts from yesterday and today so we did not get too far behind. We enjoyed some of the wine we had purchased earlier at the Carrefour Grocery.
Stephanie looked up some places nearby to eat a light dinner since we had eaten so much for lunch and had eaten fairly late.
The Pizza For Dinner
At around 7:45 PM, we headed out and walked about two blocks to an Italian restaurant that had great reviews on Google. There were only a few people there, they eat dinner really late in Buenos Aires. We ordered a Pizza and a Pasta dish, and a liter of the Imperial Beer.
The pizza was a ham, cheese, pineapple, sweet red peppers and black olive pizza, appropriately called The Caribbean. We got s pasta dish of stuffed pasta, sort of like really small ravioli, with a cheese sauce. Our waiter had recommended an “individual” pizza, the smallest size, but we ordered a small size instead. Everything was really good, and we should have followed the waiter’s recommendation on the size of the pizza. It was really thick and loaded with cheese. The pasta was also very good, and very rich. We could not finish it all, but we tried, and ate way more for dinner than we had expected.
After dinner, we walked back to the hotel and rested in our room, enjoying a glass of wine and watching some TV.
At about 11:00 PM, we called it a night, knowing we would sleep well after the long day.