Uruguay and Back to Buenos Aires

In mid-March I flew from Paraguay to Uruguay, where I traveled along the coast for ten days. A fun fact is that the coast of Uruguay has a truly bizarre hippie settlement, which is just five hours by bus from Montevideo, but felt like another planet. The town, Cabo Polonio, wound up on the backpacker route somehow, so the local hippies (of which there are 95, according to the latest census) are joined by the backpackers for a social dynamic that is just as intriguing as it sounds. Here’s a photo from Google Earth — Cabo Polonio is the knob on the right:

You may notice that there’s no road to town, and herein lies the first abnormality of Cabo Polonio: it can only be reached by large 4x4 trucks that drive through the dunes and along the beach:

The town consists of both a random assortment of small houses on a grassy hill, and a main strip with a few restaurants, bars, and hostels. The bus station had this handy map, should you get confused:

The architecture of the small houses had no uniformity whatsoever. Some photos:

As for the main strip, here’s a photo from the internet that describes the place far better than any picture I took:

You may notice the roof that says “Hostel” in large white lettering — I stayed there, but they’ve since painted the roof with the actual name of the hostel (a nice touch):

Cabo Polonio was a neat place, but after three days it was very much time to leave, as the town was often lacking in comfort. For example, a guy in my hostel got bed bugs (this was not a surprising development in the least) and was nonchalantly handed a bug spray to fix the problem himself. Sleeping was not pleasant after that night.

From Cabo Polonio, I continued onwards to Punta del Diablo, an awesome surf town with dirt roads, beautiful beaches, and a great hostel where I met Sonja and Franzi. They are both traveling solo through South America as well, and we traveled onwards through Uruguay together, first to a third beach town, then to Montevideo, and eventually back to Buenos Aires.

Sonia and I at the bus and beers in Montevideo

Buenos Aires

Avid blog readers may recall that I recently spent nearly two weeks in Buenos Aires, but after traveling through Paraguay and Uruguay, returning to my old Airbnb felt like heading home, and I couldn’t resist. Backpackers universally love Buenos Aires, and it’s not hard to see why: the city has more first-world comforts than practically anywhere in South America, but is remarkably affordable. I’ve been meaning to describe the Blue Dollar Rate (which explains the affordability of Argentina) for about three blogs, so I will do that now. If you’d prefer the short-hand explanation, here’s a recent CNBC headline that sums it up:

The longer explanation: Because of inflation in their native currency, Argentineans prefer to store savings in foreign currencies. However, the government restricts the amount of cash they can exchange each month. From this dynamic emerged the “Blue Dollar Rate,” which is essentially a black market for foreign currency, utilized by Argentineans attempting to convert their cash beyond the allowed amount. The exchange rate on this market reflects the true demand for foreign currencies, and thus is quite a bit higher than the official exchange rate, which is controlled by the government. ATMs convert at the official exchange rate (208 pesos per USD), but Western Union converts at the Blue Dollar Rate (390 pesos per USD) for wire transfers from U.S. domiciled accounts. In other words, if you pay with cash obtained at a Western Union, then every purchase in Argentina is basically 50% off.

For the backpackers of Argentina, Western Union trips are as routine as grocery shopping. The lines can be multiple hours long, so it’s best to arrive early in the day, unlike Franzi here:

Back to Buenos Aires: We celebrated Sonia’s birthday, which was great fun:

Franzi on far left, Sonia on far right. The others are locals whom Sonia befriended in Chile and elsewhere

My lifestyle in Buenos Aires largely resembled that of New York (vegan food delivery, etc.), and after five days of this, I was ready to head North. The goal is to reach Bogota, Colombia by early July.

Heading North

I initiated the Northbound travel with a short flight to the city of Salta, where I saw the most beautiful sight in all of Argentina: a Western Union with no line (unheard of):

I then needed to get to Bolivia, which is typically accomplished in one of two ways: a series of busses through Northern Argentina to the Bolivian border, or an overnight bus from Salta to a town in Northern Chile, then a border crossing into Bolivia at the Chilean border. The entire Salta hostel was contemplating this choice, and teaming up for group border crossings.

I chose the Northern Argentina route, made a few stops at small towns along the way, and reached Bolivia this afternoon. I’ll describe the border crossing in greater detail in my next blog, since it took 22 hours (at the actual border, not including transportation) and was generally absurd for many different reasons. But we made it. Thanks for following!