We have one week before we leave for Buenos Aires. We have been busy with non-travel related issues, mainly with both of our Mom’s. Stephanie’s mom had a brief setback last week, but now she is home and doing better. My mom is fine other than her memory, we are just having some problems with the company we hired that provides her with a caregiver for four hours each day. We have had to be more proactive and direct the caregivers a little than we had thought so that they provide the assistance we asked for and mom is paying for.
It has been a little bit of a distraction for both of us, and we now need to start to concentrate on preparation for the trip.
Today, we will get things organized in the bedroom upstairs that we typically use for laying out all of our clothes and gear for packing. It is the only space we have where we can shut the door and keep Sophie from depositing cat hair on all of our clothes and especially in our suitcases, one of her favorite places to sleep.
It is a little bit of a hassle having to carry everything upstairs, only to then have to haul the heavy suitcases back downstairs when they are packed. Certainly a downside to only having spare bedrooms upstairs.
We are going to make sure we do not overpack for this trip, now knowing fully what we need to take for this special trip from reading about suggested packing items on the dedicated Facebook group for Viking Antarctic Expedition cruises. That group has been a tremendous help on all aspects of the trip. There are so many different things to consider for this trip as compared to a regular Viking cruise.
We plan on trying a trial packing of the suitcases later in the week, possibly Thursday or Friday, just to get an idea of where we are on the overall weight. We really want to meet our self imposed 40 pound limit per suitcase. We had that same goal for the last cruise, and exceeded it by a few pounds. We know that we need to be light going out in order to be able to bring back our special Expedition Cruise Jackets that are provided by Viking when we fly home and need to weight our bags.
We have changed our hotel reservation in Buenos Aires for the first two nights from the Holiday Inn Express to a hotel called the 474 Buenos Aires Hotel. It was nicer looking, and we were able to book a Suite directly on their website for less than the cost of the Holiday Inn Express regular room. The suite is much larger and the rate we selected includes a breakfast, which has gotten great reviews. I almost made a substantial error on the dates of our hotel reservation, somehow the first reservation was for March, not February. Luckily, I was able to discover the error a few days later and able to cancel the original reservation and select the correct dates. The error I made was while I was waiting for the suite to be available again in the hotel’s reservation system after our original Booking.com cancellation. We had originally booked through Booking.com, but then found the rate was much less booking direct with the hotel, so we cancelled that booking, but the room was not released back to being available very quickly.
Unfortunately, the suite did not show up as an available room on the hotel’s reservation system for quite some time after our initial Booking.com cancellation. I kept checking and must have hit the incorrect calendar and selected the same days of the week, just the wrong month, March. That is only possible in the month of March since February generally has 28 days, and all of the dates in March fall on the same days of the week as in February (except for leap years of course). We were really glad we found the error and that the Suite was still available for our actual dates.
This hotel is also a slightly shorter walk to the Hilton Hotel that we stay in for one night as part of the Viking cruise package. This helps Viking to have everyone together for the charter flights form Buenos Aires to Ushuaia that leave very early on Thursday morning.
We have also investigated getting a SIM card for our phones from a company there called Claro, one of the larger cell providers in Argentina. With the exchange rate, even the most costly prepaid plan is only about $12 for 25 Gb of Data. There are supposedly cheaper plans, but this is for the “tourist” SIM. We will see what they offer when we go there on the first day, possibly while we are waiting for our hotel room to be available since we will arrive well before the official check-in time.
We have been looking at possible ways to get from the airport into downtown Buenos Aires, and have decided just to take a taxi. There are special taxis that you can prepay at a set rate at kiosks inside the airport, which is better than hailing one outside. Apparently, there is no guaranteed fixed rate on the outside taxis. We can also use a credit card and take advantage of the new favorable exchange rate for tourists that was implemented by the Argentinian government in November. That keeps us from having to use an ATM to get Argentinian Pesos, and pay fees and get a worse exchange rate.
The money is quite an adventure in Argentina. Their economy is not very good right now, and inflation is rampant. This leads to a system of “black market” money exchanges and there is a special exchange rate on the street called the “Blue Dollar” rate. It is based on the desire of the Argentinian people to obtain US Dollars, which is a much more stable currency. The blue dollar rate name is based on the blue stripe on the newer US $100 bills. These money exchanges are part of everyday life in Argentina, and overlooked by any government enforcement. In order to combat some of this, the government put into place a system where foreign credit cards receive what is known as the MEP rate, which is an official rate set by the government, and just slightly less than the Blue Dollar Rate on the street. Sometimes there is the option to exchange money at the hotel for the better rate, or they may know somewhere nearby to go to for exchanging money at the Blue Dollar rate.
We will be taking some pristine US cash with us, this is a pseudo requirement in order to get the best exchange rate, they want new or almost new crisp bills at the exchanges. You get the best rate for US $100 denominations, and slightly less as you exchange lesser denominations. You can also pay with US Dollars at stores and restaurants, and may receive change either in US Dollars or Argentinian Pesos (ARS), it depends on the store or vendor.
As of today, the Blue Dollar exchange rate is approximately $1 US to $373 ARS. The official bank rate is $1 US to $187 ARS, so you can see the difference. The bank rate is what you receive from an ATM and you generally also pay a fee on top of that, so using an ATM is sort of a last resort.
The current MEP rate that is listed on the Visa Exchange website is $1 US to $326 ARS. There have been reports in the Facebook page for the Antarctic Cruise that many Visa users have gotten the MEP rate, somewhat less successful for MasterCard users. We will be using only Visa cards, so we hope we do get the higher MEP rate. In the end, we will just have to see what actually happens. There is a possibility that it is up to each individual bank to set the rates, so it is not universally accepted to get the MEP rate with every Visa card.
We have also added several interesting sites to visit in Buenos Aires to our saved Google Maps locations on our cell phones, which makes it easier to get directions through Google Maps to each site. We have also done a little investigation on using Public Transportation in Buenos Aires. They have a good system, but many times it is quicker to walk than to ride either a Metro or Bus. In addition, we would need to purchase a SUBE Card, which is the official electronic card used for paying all public transportation. Cash is not accepted on buses, and no tickets are sold in stations for individual metro rides. There is a slight charge to purchase the SUBE card at machines in the metro stations and then it has to be loaded with money at either a kiosk or through a ticketing machine, using Argentinian Pesos only. It may not be worth the hassle unless we can exchange some money early in the stay.
That is all for today, next up is packing…..