Finding an Apartment in Buenos Aires

The magic site.  Listing upon listing of Argentines eager to share their apartments with you.  For the worried house hunter, it is a gold mine.  And for the traveler used to American major city rents, from New York to San Francisco to Washington, DC, these prices will make your jaw drop.  $400 a month for a bedroom in an apartment downtown; $300 a month for a bedroom in a big house in adorable Montserrat; $250 a week for a sunny, chic studio apartment in upscale Palermo.  The sites are accompanied with pictures showing the windows that brighten up the space, the kitchen adorned with modern appliances, the bedroom with the full-sized bed and comfy bedding.  And the best news, the icing on the cake: these prices include all utilities, usually Wireless Internet, and most of the time a weekly or bi-weekly cleaning service.  In addition, your bedding, towels, and kitchen utensils will also be provided within these fees, and it goes without saying that the apartments are all fully furnished.  What you see really is what you get, no surprisingly sky-rocketing electric bills or mounting receipts from house-hold items. 

 

Here is the downside: Americans are over-charged.  Plain and simple.  These prices on Craigslist are truly inflated, and as an American renter in Buenos Aires, you will probably end up footing the whole of the rent, while your Argentine roommate or landlord is turning a sweet profit.  Yes, it is frustrating, without a doubt, but it is the way things are done here.  Truly, if you are not fluent in Spanish and do not know friends on the inside in Buenos Aires, there is no other way.  And let’s face it: it is hassle free and a package deal.  You take the good with the bad; you get ripped off, but you pay less than you would in the US, and everything is included.  My advice to you is to rent a shared apartment with an Argentine, as renting a room is far cheaper than renting your own studio or one-bedroom apartment.  Also, if watching your pennies, stay away from Recoletta, Barrio Norte, Puerto Madero, and even Palermo SoHo.  I recommend researching Palermo Viejo, Palermo Hollywood, Caballito, Flores, San Telmo, San Cristobal, and Montserrat.  Out of those more affordable barrios, Caballito and Flores are probably the safest neighborhoods, though a little removed from the hub of the rest of the city.  Once again, these living decisions in Buenos Aires are a balancing act, and you must weigh the decisions.

 

When weighing these decisions, I recommend renting an apartment in a very safe neighborhood for one month, while deciding on a more long-term decision.  If you pay a little more the first month, it will be a wise investment, as it will buy you time to search high and low for an affordable, secure, and comfortable living situation.  A big plus side to these Buenos Aires renting shenanigans is that Argentines rarely ask you to sign a lease or an agreement to stay beyond one month, sometimes even one week.  The apartment-renting scene is based on verbal agreements and Argentines have come to expect the comings and goings of travelers.  Therefore, it would be rare to find yourself stuck in a living situation not suitable for your tastes or finances.

 

To give you some idea of the renting scene, let me tell you about my apartment.  I live in San Telmo, a quaint neighborhood that my boyfriend and I love because of its cafes and community atmosphere.  It is very affordable: together we pay $550 a month for a bedroom in a spacious apartment that is covered in windows and is flooded with light on sunny days.  We are a 10 minute walk to a subway station and two blocks from 9 de Julio, the widest boulevard in the world, which is needless to say, littered with cabs and bus stops.  However, with the affordability and accessibility come certain prices—it is not quite as safe as some of the Palermo neighborhoods or Flores or Caballito.  We are aware of this, and take great care to avoid walking alone at night, and we keep English speaking on the street after dark to a minimum, as English conveys American tourism which signals dollars.  We won’t stay in San Telmo forever, but for our first apartment in Buenos Aires, it is perfect, as it allows us to truly taste some of the Buenos Aires flavor and culture, and also to learn some of the ways in which the city moves.  Here are some pictures of our place so you can see what you can get for this price: 

 

Eating in Buenos Aires on $30 a Day

With an exchange rate of 3 pesos per dollar, Argentina is certainly a deal for the American tourist and the nomadic Yankee traveler.  However, because inflation here is on the go-go-go, prices are on the rise, and it is not the dirt-cheap cosmopolitan metropolis it once was.  However, it is still very possible to live a good life in Buenos Aires for relatively few American dollars; it is just that now, things such as eating cheaply require a little planning, which can even make things more fun.  Who knows, your quest to find cheap eateries may even lead you to new culinary discoveries.

 

As an American now making pesos as an English teacher in Buenos Aires, and also as an American with a never-ending appetite, I have searched high and low for the cheapest way to culinary delight.  Let’s start with breakfast.  When my boyfriend and I first arrived in Buenos Aires, we had dollars, and were frequenting cafés in the Recoletta, Barrio Norte, and Palermo neighborhoods for café con leche and croissants or fresh fruit.  Soon, though, these rendezvous began to take a toll on our finances; Recoletta and Palermo are chic barrios that are soft on the eyes, but no so soft on the wallet.  Our morning coffees & fruit were beginning to cost us about 30 pesos a day, with the café con leche itself costing 7 pesos each. 

 

After we moved to San Telmo, we discovered the joy of café con leche for 3 pesos.  These cheap cups of joe can be found at any number of the corner Ma & Pa-run cafés that dot the streets of this barrio, as well as the neighboring Montserrat and San Cristobal neighborhoods.  Often for 4 or 5 pesos, you can get a café con leche, a glass of orange juice and a little chaser of sparkling water, as well as a basket full of medialunas, croissants encased in a sugary glaze.  Delicioso.  And affordable.

 

A few hours after one’s memorable date with a croissant and coffee, it is already time for another date, this time with lunch.  Lunch at a restaurant gets unexpectedly pricey, as such things as bottled water can be sold for upwards near 7 pesos a pop, with tap water being virtually unattainable in any café.  The most economic way to have lunch in Buenos Aires is to go to a grocery store and plop down with your goods for a picnic, the good old fashioned way.  It is cheap, and a great way to learn the layout of the land, and to do some people watching while you’re at it. 

 

Grocery stores–supermercadeos or autoservicios in Spanish—come a dime a dozen per street.  No matter which one you choose, it will certainly have logs of salami hanging from the deli counter.  The salami here is scrumptious, juicy and full of spice and flavor.  You must buy one.  Sliced and topped with a hunk of fresh mozzarella cheese makes it a perfect picnic snack.  On your way to check out at the store, grab a bottle of Quilmes to wash down your salami and cheese.  I guarantee a liter will not cost you more than 3 pesos. 

 

After you’ve got your goods, you will not find any shortages of plazas or small green spaces.  I specifically recommend the river-front in Puerto Madero.  The picnic benches overlooking the water make it a primo-picnic spot on a sunny day.  However, any plaza will do just as well, from Plaza de Mayo to Plaza Italia to Plaza Evita.  Bring out the meat and cheese, crack open the beer, and there you have it, a muy affordable bon appétit.  

 

After a day like this, of maybe cutting back here and there, it is time to get excited for dinner.  Dinner in Buenos Aires is a late affair, usually taking place around 10 pm.  It is never rushed; this meal is as much for the social aspect as it is for the nutrient aspect.  And the dinner menu in Buenos Aires is truly mouth-watering.

 

As I’m sure you have heard, the steak in this city is something to write home about.  The city is filled with parillas, or steak restaurants, that serve tender and juicy servings of red meat cooked to perfection.  It would be a crime to visit the Paris of the South without trying a parilla.  Just like the café con leche, parilla lines the city, but the most affordable ones are found in the San Telmo, Montserrat, and San Cristobal areas. 

 

My other favorite food in Buenos Aires is the pizza. I know, I know, coming from the US you want to try something exotic.  But trust me, the pizza here seems exotic compared to what we are used to.  The mozzarella cheese is softer in Argentina than in the States, which is not always a good thing, but when we are talking about being melted on top of a delicious focaccia-style crust, the softer the better.  Toppings range from green olives to shrimp to thick pieces of salami to fresh leaves of basil.  It is not the cheese soaked, grease drenched pizza of home (that don’t get me wrong, is sometimes just what you need).  In Argentina, it is the barely greasy, fluffy, and delicately flavored pizza pies that must not go uneaten when one is in Buenos Aires.  Please, at my insistence, order a grande and enjoy.

 

And there you have it, an affordable and highly edible three meals in Buenos Aires.  Remember to top everything off with a glass, or two or three or four, of famous Argentine Malbec, and your day will truly be complete.

Buenos Aires Catching the Collectivo

Monedas.  Some may say your days in Buenos Aires are characterized by a struggle to find coins.  Yes, that’s right—coins, monedas, something that in the US piles up in our pockets and the bottoms of our purses and on the floors of our cars.  We don’t really count it as money.  I for one think I got something for free if I paid with coins in the US.  But no, in Buenos Aires, they are indeed a precious metal. 

The collectivo is the bus system in Argentina’s capital.  In a city with 14 million people and nearly as many neighborhoods, the collectivo is shall we say, crucial.  However, although its name may suggest otherwise, it is a privatized bus system.  Yes yes, freedom to choose and all of that, but let’s put it this way: there are literally hundreds of bus lines in the city, different companies pulling the strings on different lines, each company with its own idea of a good route.  And each route was unimaginably completely undocumented until the arrival of the GUIA. 

Ten years ago, the GUIA was born, ingeniously invented to document each collectivo route into one guide.  Landing in Buenos Aires and deciphering the collectivos without a GUIA would be virtually impossible if one so choose to also pursue other activities.  This guide lists all of the streets within the city limits of Buenos Aires, from Acassuso to Zuviria, in the first pages of the booklet.  Proceeding the listed avenues comes a map of the city, spread out piece by piece over 36 pages.  Each page, or 1/36th of the entire city map, is further broken down into 24 squares.  Each square is accompanied by a list of buses that frequent that area, which is 5 city blocks.  However the collectivo list does not tell you the exact stopping point of the bus.  Therefore, to find a certain bus, you must walk that square area of 5 blocks, and hope to find a marked spot, or perhaps a queue of public transportation veterans waiting with resigned helplessness at an unmarked but somehow designated point. 

To make things just a little bit more adventurous, the routes are subject to change at any time the various owners of the collectivo lines so choose.  Therefore, the bus that the GUIA points to for your destination square may have changed its route, may have voted your square off the island.  But, the best you can do is hope that doesn’t happen, and wait for it to come.  The good news is that because bus drivers see traffic lanes as suggestions, there’s really no way you could miss a passing bus, as it is usually the only automobile in three lanes. 

Okay, so imagine that you have miraculously found the stop, and the route has not changed, and the bus has arrived.  You hop on as the doors fly open and the bus driver removes his foot from the gas for a generous 20 seconds.  You tell the driver “noventa”, because unless you are going outside of Buenos Aires, it only costs 90 centavos to go anywhere within the city.  The bus driver starts the meter, and you drop your coins in.  And here is where we go back to the aforementioned issue of monedas.

In an act of saving grace, the city of Buenos Aires has decreed that all bus rides within the city are 90 centavos, as I said before.  The buses do not accept bills, only coins.  And there is a coin shortage, to say the least, within the Capital Federal.  When I say there is a coin shortage, I can not adequately convey the off-kilter supply and demand balance without examples.  Take, for instance, a trip to the grocery store.  I gather my groceries into a basket and head to check out.  The cashier tells me the total is $20.80.  I hand her $22.00.  She looks at the money with such a look of disapproval that she barely stops short of wagging her forefinger at me.  “Do you have 80 cents?” she asks me.  Do I have 80 cents?  Just luxuriously jingling in my pocket?  And would I willingly hand it over to a grocery store? ”No,” I say without apologies.  This is getting ridiculous.  I see in the till that there are only a few coins, but enough to give me my 20 cents change.  Let’s just think about that for a second.  She asks me for 80 cents, when she only owes me 20.  Where is the logic?  Just as I am once again asking where the hell are all the monedas, the tiller opens up a locked drawer underneath her register, and I see the sparkling, rolling hills of hundreds of coins.  She sourly hands me two 10 cent pieces, as if parting with these coins is a major infringement on her day.  On my way back home from the grocery store, I take note of the dozens of kiosk and shop store window-fronts that warn customers that they “have no monedas.”  Don’t even try it, they seem to say.

For this shortage, there are various rumors.  One of my favorite explanations is that apparently, the metal that composes the coins is actually more valuable than the monetary value of the coin itself.  Therefore, some shrewd swindlers stash away these coins, melt them down, and sell the metal on the black market.  Perhaps an even more ridiculous, but no less accepted, rumor is that the Chinese mafia—yes, specifically the Chinese mafia—hoards the monedas until there are desperate shortages, at which point the Asian gangsters sell the coins for a hefty profit.  I’m pretty sure that’s the real reason. 

So, as if finding the appropriate bus is not hard enough, the Chinese mafia has now made paying for the bus an equal struggle.  In a city that never sleeps with a subway system that closes at 10 pm, you do what you can to get to a bus, and you do what you have to to pay for it.  When I walk down the street, I can spot the glint of the sun against a dropped coin from yards away.  And I will knock people over to be the first to reach that fallen treasure.  Precious metals and unpredictable routes.  A day in BsAs.  The upside of all this is that taking the bus now is really the only thing I need to do to feel as though I have led an accomplished day.

The Unique History of La Plata

Argentina is home to some fairly large cities, and most with several hundred years of history behind them. These include the extremely sophisticated Buenos Aires as well as the college city of Cordoba. The third largest city in the country of Argentina is La Plata. While it is now over two hundred years old, the entire city was created using modern concepts in design, urban planning, and was even photographed throughout its construction.

The governor of the region, Dardo Rocha, decided to create a new city meant to serve the needs of provincial government institutions and a new university. Pedro Benoit was then hired to design the new city. He did so by developing it around an urban center – La Plata has a city center with two main, intersecting avenues that run along a diagonal. All other streets are built along a grid of six blocks by six block patterns which meet at small parks.

Rocha effectively created the design using standards of the day, and to take it even further opened up the architectural design of the main city buildings to an international competition. This is the reason today that the city has such a cosmopolitan appeal – its city hall was won by the German designers, who had their own European influences, and the Governor’s Palace was created by an Italian firm with concepts of their own.

La Plata is the home to some other unique “firsts”. In addition to being the first city on the South American continent designed by urban planners, it was the first city to install electricity throughout the entire town – as early as 1884 the streets of La Plata were lit by electric lighting.

It is also home to the largest church in the country – the Cathedral of La Plata. The city also contains one of the only two buildings designed by Le Corbusier (a Swiss architect known for his contributions to Modern Architecture) in the Americas – the Curutchet House was fully restored in the 1980s and is a national landmark of Argentina.

Clearly, any visitor to La Plata has a great deal to see and do. The many parks are lined with Linden trees, the streets are full of interesting shops and restaurants, and the University is known for its remarkable observatory and paleontology museums.

When planning a visit to the well designed city a traveler can count on a wide range of accommodation choices. In order to enjoy a great deal of savings in time and money visit HotelsCombined.com, where both a room and flight reservations can be made with a few clicks of the mouse!

See a Gaucho in Argentina

What is a “gaucho”? While many cultures have historic laborers who relied on their horses to get a job done – think of American cowboys and many military groups – in areas of South America there was, and still remains, the gaucho.

In Argentina the gauchos historically lived in the Pampas, Chacos and Patagonia grasslands. Originally they were thought to be strictly nomadic people, with generous and friendly natures. They lived off the land, relying on their inherited skills to locate food sources to survive.

While there is no documentary evidence as to the background origins of the gauchos, they soon became symbols of nationalist feeling in the areas they dwelt, particularly in Argentina. For example, the epic poem entitled “Martin Fierro” written by the Argentinean poet Jose Hernandez was actually a long complaint against the forces of modernization introduced through European influences. In the poem Hernandez reminds the readers of the gaucho’s role in Argentine independence from Spain, and in the Argentine culture.

Though such a poem did little to prevent industrialization or modernization, the primary industry of certain areas of Argentina meant the survival of the gauchos, and their culture. Today they are still seen riding their horses and working on large cattle farms.

The influence of the gaucho ways can be found in many areas of Argentine culture. For example, many foods and recipes are originally those of the gaucho, including the roasting of meats, and the reliance on mate (a strong caffeinated tea). Additionally, the gaucho has become a popular symbol throughout Argentine culture, appearing as the logo for clothing companies, the name of sporting teams or musical groups, and is often the focus of tourist’s visits to certain areas of Argentina.

Some themed tours are built around riding or trailing the gauchos in their day to day work, and while their activities are interesting the surrounding scenery can be quite spectacular as well. Many photographers take a trip led by a gaucho or one organized to follow them on a cattle drive.

For visitors looking to see and perhaps photograph the gauchos in person there are wide range of options available. Most journeys into Argentina will begin with a stop in Buenos Aires, and it is here where the tour will probably set out. To find an accommodation in the city, and to save money by combining both airfare and hotel reservations, visit HotelsCombined.com where an entire journey can be arranged in only a few moments!

Pampas & Sierras

Some of the most important cities in Argentina are situated in this region: Buenos Aires, La Plata, Cordoba, Rosario, and Santa Rosa. The Pampas is perhaps the best-known region in Argentina. The bare mention of its name is enough to bring forth a feeling of legend, mystery and infinitude. It is a word of Quechua origin meaning “treeless plain”. As a matter of fact, most of its surface is composed by vast grasslands and crops where the image of the “gaucho” is still present in the mores inherited by countrymen. There is very little vegetation that is native to the pampas. The only tree that grew here as an authoctonous species is the “omb?”. The main city in the region is Buenos Aires, “la Reina del Plata” (the Queen of the River, as the tango lyrics go), also known as the “Paris of the South.” Enjoy the magnificent European architecture and dining, nightlife, and dancing, specifically the romantic tango. Wander through the vibrant neighborhood of La Boca, and enjoy the excellent shopping in the neighborhood of San Telmo. Undoubtedly starting point for any itinerary within Argentina. However, there are some other very important cities such as Cordoba and Rosario because of their population and cultural patrimony.

Northeast - Litoral

The region bordering Brazil and Paraguay is a region of large rivers, humid tropics, red earth, magnificent forest, a virgin forest full of huge trees and extraordinary flora and fauna. Great Waters – “Iguazú” in the Guaraní language – overflowing into one of the world’s wonders: the Iguazú Falls. A scenery of exuberant beauty spreading along the Iguazú National Park, Saltos del Moconá (Moconá Falls), Río Pilcomayo National Park, El Palmar National Park, Esteros del Iberá (Iberá Swamps), or the Chaco plains. Apotheosis of Nature, where the Jesuit ruins, declared World Heritage by the UNESCO, are a vivid testimony of the Society of Jesus’ fruitful wor

North Argentina

Argentina’s northern provinces feature traces of Pre-Columbian cultures, mingled with ruins of natives’ villages, as well as forts and constructions dating back to the time of the Conquest and colonization. Time seems to stand still in the high plateau of the Puna, a land full of mountain ranges, steep mountain paths, and gorges. Villages have been built in the small valleys. Multi-coloured and monochromatic hills covered with huge cactuses on the slopes surround the village. This region offers landscapes full of contrast for tourists to enjoy, from the high peaks to the plains, the salt pans, and the subtropical rain forests, where Latin American culture took root.

Buenos Aires, Argentina Travel Guide

The capital of Argentina is Buenos Aires, “la Reina del Plata” (the Queen of the River, as the tango lyrics go), also known as the “Paris of the South.” Enjoy the magnificent European architecture and dining, nightlife, and dancing, specifically the romantic tango. Wander through the vibrant neighborhood of La Boca, and enjoy the excellent shopping in the neighborhood of San Telmo. Undoubtedly, the starting point for any itinerary within Argentina.