Argentina, 1 April to 23 May

The blue dollar

One of the first pieces of advice I was given before arriving in Argentina was to turn up with a lot of cash on me, euros or dollars. The country having been through (and still going through) fairly serious financial crises, the exchange rates in the official bureaux, or the ones you get with a cash card, are very unfavourable.. Well, I don't know whether that's linked to the crises.. but the result is there either way. One way around it is to use what Argentines call "the blue dollar".

What is it? It amounts to changing foreign currency in rather "unofficial" offices, which you find by word of mouth, or by being hailed in the street in certain districts. The exchange rate is considerably better as a result. Using my bank card I got 9 Argentine pesos to the euro; with the blue dollar I got 14.

Exchange rates vary over time, of course — these are the values at the time I was in Argentina — but it'll clearly always be worth looking for blue dollars. They did a lot for my purchasing power.

A quick aside: this exchange system is clearly tolerated, but still slightly underground... When I went to the office I'd been recommended, I felt like a secret agent :-D.

El Che

A little history now: you may not know this, but Che Guevara, the revolutionary who became famous mainly for his exploits in Cuba, was Argentine. What I learned during my trip is that "Che" is a nickname the Cubans gave him, because of the Argentine habit of replacing certain words with "CHE" when they speak. And they do it a lot... The letters "Y" and "LL" get replaced by CH... it threw me quite a bit at first — for instance, instead of saying "yoga" they'll say "choga"... Aya = Acha, llave = chave....

And to think that after Cuba and Mexico I expected to get on better in Spanish :-D . They also replace "tú" with "vos".... just to complicate my life a little further :-D.

Dulce de leche

Unlike what I'm used to, there isn't a huge amount of chocolate pastry or confectionery in Argentina.. What's popular is dulce de leche. As the name suggests, it's sweetened milk (to simplify), it's the colour of caramel and it's very sweet :-D. But honestly, it's not bad. You can eat it with a teaspoon dipped into a big jar, like Nutella, or more conventionally you get it via alfajores.

Now, I'm a great lover of chocolate, so I'll admit this particular point threw me considerably, but I adapted and got used to this "sweet milk" for the duration of my time among the Albicelestes... I was glad to find my chocolate again at the next stop.

Mate: pass the mate

Here we're really into the basic utensil that identifies an Argentine anywhere in the world. Although it's a characteristic they seem to share with their immediate neighbours (Chile, at any rate). For me it's tea.. well, a particular herb — "yerba mate" — drunk as an infusion. It's drunk through the following instrument:

A yerba mate vessel

Where it gets interesting is the whole social dimension behind it. Mate is shared: when you're together in a group it's entirely normal for there to be a thermos and a small pot of yerba mate. You pass this kit around in turn, fill the vessel with hot water from the thermos, drink through the sort-of straw until the water's gone, then pass the mate and the thermos to the next person. So, if you go out for an evening with Argentines, the odds are very high that you'll be sharing your germs with everyone present :-) .

Empanadas y medialunas

To finish, two little things that kept me company during my time in Argentina :-) . Empanadas are a sort of filled pasty.... All right, that's hugely reductive and I almost feel bad describing a dish that's sometimes so refined, and that so rarely disappointed me, in those terms... but it is a bit that (and it isn't really all that refined either :-D ).

Empanadas can be chicken, beef, cheese/ham.... Note, my French friends, that if you get them with cheese as an ingredient, there will be a lot a lot a lot of cheese in there.

Medialunas are sweet croissants. There are different recipes, some can be a bit sickly, but here again I was rarely disappointed... My little pleasure was enjoying one with coffee! hmmmm.