Buenos Aires Beaches.

If you look at the map you will see that Buenos Aires is located at the shore of a small bay in the Atlantic Ocean. So, naturally you would expect nice beaches all around Buenos Aires, right? Wrong! What looks like a small bay is actually a big mouth of the river Rio de La Plata. The waters of the river are very muddy and absolutely unsuitable for any kind of swimming.

Notice the color of the water.

Sorry, no beaches in Buenos Aires!!!  The closest beach resort is probably Punta del Este in Uruguay, across the river where Rio de La Plata meets the Atlantic Ocean. The closest beach resort in Argentina is Mar del Plata at the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. It takes 4 to 5 hours by bus or train to get there or less than an hour by a plain. I didn't go to any of these two resorts and consequently I cannot offer any comments.

BUENOS AIRES ACCOMMODATION

Did I mention where to stay in Buenos Aires? Of course you can use hotels, but if you come for a little longer, then this might be an expensive proposition. As an alternative I suggest exchanging your own home for one in Buenos Aires. Follow the link to browse Buenos Aires Home Exchange.

The other option is to do what I did, which is renting a furnished apartment. Here is the list of Buenos Aires Vacation Rentals.

By the way, I recently figured out that if I took a city bus to the airport on my way back I would only pay 2 pesos (about 50 cents).  When I arrived in Buenos Aires, I took a taxi from the airport and payed 180 pesos (ouch !!!!!) However, it takes almost two hours to get to the airport by city bus, and I don't think that I want to do that. I will take a shuttle bus that costs 60 pesos (about $15) and cuts the travel time by more than 50% (it takes about 50 minutes instead of 2 hours).  Yes, I am extravagant sometimes... :-)

Her husband, Nestor Kirchner, who was the President of Argentina from May 2003 until December 2007, when Cristina took over the presidency for the first time, died out of heart failure in October 2010.

One person can serve as a president for only two consecutive terms in Argentina, but that person may again be elected after a term away from power. It seems like the plan of Mr. and Ms. Kirchner was to keep the presidency in the family for a number of years, but the heavens seemed to have had a different plan for them as was evident by Mr. Kirchner's passing away over a year ago...

One of the challenges that Cristina faced at the onset of her presidency was high inflation. She was accused of misreporting the true inflation figures in order to make a false impression of handling the problem. Whether this is true or not, the fact is that for whatever reason the present policy is to keep a tight grip on the flow of funds. The direct affect of this policy on people like myself is that it is a big chore for anyone to exchange foreign currency. Once you go to “casa de cambio” to make an exchange, each time you have to present your passport and give the address where you stay. Each time the clerk types that information into the computer before making any exchange. As a result even the simples exchange operation takes 5 to 10 minutes to perform. That results in big line-ups at the exchange places. After going through that nonsense two or three times I decided to avoid that by exchanging my dollars on the black market where the operations are as efficient as they should be and exchanging a hundred dollar bill for pesos doesn't take more than 10 to 20 seconds.

This kind of government control will always result in failure. If the government-approved ways are inefficient the black market will always take over. I have seen that in the socialist Poland in the 80's when exchanging foreign currency (mainly American Dollars) legally was next to impossible but the business was just booming on the black market. And the same thing I am observing now in Argentina. As a result of such faulty policies the government looses as it is not able to control the flow of funds, tax the exchange businesses, etc.

During festivities Argentines like to throw in the air huge quantities of small pieces of paper. I am not sure if this custom is also practised in other South-American countries, maybe so, but I have observed it here. Sometimes you can see it at the stadiums at soccer matches. I have seen it on the TV report from Cristina Kirchner's inauguration to her second term of presidency earlier in December. Millions of small pieces (maybe a quarter or an eights of a standard page size) of white and blue paper (Argentine's national colours) were floating in the air from time to time. When I went to the Plaza de Mayo a few hour later, I could see the large amount of paper lying on the ground.

This custom is also performed at the end of each year at the last day of work of that year. This year that was Friday, December 30. The office workers cut all kind of paper into small pieces and throw them through the windows. This time the problem is much worse, as this is done not in one isolated area of festivities that is relatively easy to clean afterwards, but all over the city.  For this and next few days the streets are simply littered with paper pieces, some of them being very small pieces from paper shredders...

Streets after the last day of work in the year.