Uyuni

Uyuni

joylani 130pxWe ended our tour yesterday at Uyuni where we were happy to finally have our own room and a hot shower.  For not doing too much, we had a couple of random incidents including the lady at restaurant forgot what was for the set dinner (we decided not to eat there).  And then this morning a half hour before our bus was going to leave, our doorknob broke with us on the outside and all our bags and money on the inside.  Luckily the lady at the hotel was handy with the hammer and was able to pound the remaining parts of the doorknob out just in time for us to grab our bags and race (as best we could with 15kg of junk on our backs) to the bus for our ride out of town.  Goodbye Uyuni!  You weren’t very interesting (though we we’re expecting much in the first place).

Funny Photos from the Salar

Joylani and Oscar on Marty's shoulders

 

matt 120pxPerhaps the funnest part of today was exploiting the unusual landscape to take funny photos. I was kind of deemed the group photographer, so I’m not in many of them. But I am pretty happy with how these turned out:

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Marty taking a bath in a hat… 

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here´s what it looks like in real life

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Joylani waiting for a kiss from me

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Marty climbing into the hat with Joylani and Jess

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Jess pulling her husband Oscar out of his hat

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Joylani squishing Oscar

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our tour group, minus the photographer :)

SW Circuit: Day 4

Salar de Uyuni at Sunrise

 

joylani 130pxOur jeep was the first and only to make it up to Isla Incahuasi for the sunrise. The short hike up left me winded due to a combination of the early morning cold and altitude, but the view was worth it. From the time we left our beds in the salt hotel to when the sun rose, the ocean of salt went from black, to a periwinkle of purple, to blinding white.

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Golden strings of clouds threaded the sky and seemed to reflect their glow on our faces, the mountains, and the army of cacti around us. The patterns in the salt seemed to pop out of the ground as the low angle of the sun cast a shadow from the ridges of the cracks in the salt. It was beautiful, and like yesterday we were lucky that we didn’t have to share it with the noise and crowds that other jeeps would have brought. The island (really just a big rock) was unusual and many parts of it looked like dead coral, continuing my wonderment from the day before of what used to be here before it was a dessert. As we made our way back down the rock, we saw several jeeps pulling in.

 

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we climbed up this “island” to watch the sunrise

 

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Matt heading out to take more photos…

Joining in the goofiness, we posed for pictures that only look good through the camera lens, laughed at the sight of other people doing the same, had a good breakfast, and jumped back in the jeep to finish the homestretch of our journey. It came at a good time as all of us were starting to or already had gotten sick during the tour, and were tired of being in a car for most of the day.

Also of note, after three days of traveling together in the same jeep, the Australian couple, for some unknown reason, began addressing Matt as “Max.” This is a common mistake for people meeting Matt for the first time, particularly in places where Matt is not a common name, but he has never had anyone call him this after already calling him Matt for several days beforehand.

matt 120pxOnce again, Joylani summed it all up pretty good. She told me to write about the nitty-gritty stuff. Even though that sounds boring, I feel like the stats and facts regarding the Salar de Uyuni are nearly as impressive as the qualitative descriptions. It has an area of over 12,000 square kilometers, making it the largest salt flat in the world. It is composed of 11 layers and has a total depth that ranges from 2 to 20 meters! Lastly, it’s the earth’s largest reserve of energetic minerals, including: lithium, magnesium, potassium, nitrogen, phosphorus, and borax. Salt is of course mined from the salar as well.

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 On our way to Uyuni, we stopped in an area of the flats that had many ojos del sal (salt eyes), also called ojos de agua. They were just small holes in the surface filled with water and had air bubbles coming up. Later, we stopped at larger ones of all different colors, which contained various other minerals besides salt. I’m not sure what the importance is, but it seems that minerals and gases are continually rising from below ground.

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joylani 130pxSide note, a sad reality of travel. We’ve heard sad stories of accidents on the tourist trail throughout our travels, and today we heard some more. On the way over the flats we passed a couple of memorials. Any accident is tragic, but these seemed especially sad in the probable carelessness of how they happened. One cross was to remember a jeep that had been driven by a tourist who broke too hard and must have flipped the car. The tourist and driver both died. The other was a memorial for two jeeps that had somehow crashed and exploded, killing all passengers. It had only happened 6 months earlier, and the salt was still blackened where the accident happened. There were no surviving witnesses and it is a mystery how it happened in such a wide open space. Seemingly avoidable accidents happen while travelling, just like they do when you are at home.

 

 

 

SW Circuit: Day 3

Joylani at Laguna Colorada

joylani 130pxFlamingos get a bad rap as kitsch and gaudy lawn ornaments.  Today I discovered that these birds are really so much more delicate and graceful than I had thought before.  They are more than just funny looking pink things on spindly legs.  Flamingos are hearty birds that can withstand cold temperatures and high altitudes all the while still managing to look stylish.  This morning I got to soak up flamingo grace at the Laguna Colorada.  After a long day yesterday, our group slept in while the other groups woke up early for the usual 5am sunrise at the lagoon.  We arrived a little after the other groups had left, so when our jeep rolled up we were the only ones there—us, a calm, glassy body of water, and hundreds of birds. 

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The red waters of the lagoon reflected the gracefully sloping mountains along its back shore, and in the foreground the water was framed by a green fringe of stubbly grassed flocked with patches of lost flamingo feathers. 

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Wisps of steam rising from the thermally heated waters made an ever so slight fog around the edge of the lagoon.  The flamingos were milling about, their population doubled by the glassy reflection in the warmish waters. 

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They scare easily, and as we approached the birds would slowly take off in flight, gliding low over the water in a long line like a skipped stone.

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Joylani walking down the hills towards Laguna Colorada

            As usual, I got hungry (we hadn’t had breakfast yet).  I thought perhaps we’d just be eating bread or bananas in the car and so I asked if it would be possible for an early snack.  Instead, Felix (our friendly driver) suggested we just have breakfast at the lagoon, and we all agreed.  Marisol (our kind cook) surprised us all with a beautiful spread of hot drinks, and, best of all, panqueques (yup, pancakes!) with an array of spreads of fig jam, dulce de leche, and butter.  The panqueques were excellent, complete with proper pancake fluffiness (often absent in pancakes throughout Asia, murtabak excepted), and a hint of orange.  I savored the meal in the stillness of the surrounding scenery; it was, without a doubt, the most spectacular place I have ever eaten breakfast. 

Bolivia, Laguna Colorada (5)

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breakfast

            This morning seemed to make the last two days of bumpy jeep rides and crappy accommodations all worth it.  I highly recommend, and would do it again myself just to see the Laguna Colorada again.  I’ve seen many stunning mountains, lakes, lagoons, and oceans during this trip and over my lifetime, but this spot is at the top of the list for its unusual appearance (I’ve never seen anything like it), still reflection, graceful residents, and the peaceful quietness of no one else around for miles.

            At our driver’s suggestion, we ended the day’s sightseeing with an unscheduled stop at Laguna Negra before pulling into our night’s lodging.  This spot was unique from the several other lagoons we’d stopped at earlier in the day in that it was at the bottom of a small hill and surrounded by unusual rock formations.  The formations looked as though hundreds of slabs had been stacks by a devote pilgrim, but they were all natural and I don’t know how they managed to stay standing. 

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The lagoon was small, black like oil, and playful in its surroundings of the unusual rock formations and clumps of yareta, a strange coral-like plant that grows in this high-altitude desert.  I say it looks like coral for its round, lumpy shape and also for the white skeleton it leaves behind when all the green is gone.  This plant oozes a black sticky pitch (smells like a mix of turpentine and tiger balm) that is melted and applied with a cloth to sooth back pains. 

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yareta plant

Like the other life this high up, I am amazed at how this plant can survive such cold nights and days and in such a dry climate.  Seeing all these crazy landscapes and plants make me wonder how it all got here, and what the ever-changing land looked like a long time ago.  And how did people figure out you could use yareta pitch to sooth back pain anyhow?

matt 120pxJoylani pretty much covered day 3. The only other things I’d mention are a couple of other things we saw along the way.

 

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near Laguna Colorada

After Laguna Colorada, we stopped for about an hour in the Desierto de Siloli, which has dozens of huge stones just sitting in the middle of the big empty desert. Our guide said that the irregularly shaped boulders are the remains of volcanic rocks eroded by the wind and sand.

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Arbol de Piedra

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Joylani and some big rocks

Later, driving across the high-altitude tundra, we spotted an endangered Andean fox. They are supposedly very rare and the only reason we saw it is because one of its hind legs was injured and it had seemingly grown accustomed to approaching jeeps for food.

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Andean fox

We also stopped for lunch at Laguna Honda, where many vicunas and flamingos were also feeding.

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vincunas

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flamingos at Laguna Honda

SW Circuit: Day 2

Desert de Atacama, Bolivia

us 150pxToday was a really, really long day. We left the village around 6am and after about an hour stopped at the abandoned village of San Antonio. It was established as a mining town nearly around 400 years ago and was inhabited up until the early 20th century. Oscar explored the church are said he found bone fragments laying all around, probably from the old graves. It was really, really cold (7am at nearly 5000 meters!), so Joylani and I tried to stay in the sun. That took us to the edge of town, where there were awesome views down into the valley and several chinchillas hopping about the nearby rocks.

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San Antonio

Between San Antonio and our next scheduled stop, we made a couple of maintenance stops. Our jeep got a flat-tire once and then another jeep that we were kind of convoying with began having engine trouble. I didn’t mind the stops or waits though, since we were in a really scenic area. But then we stopped for about two hours, while our driver, Felix, tried to help fix the other jeep.

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 maintenance stop 1

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great scenery between breaking down

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maintenance stop 2

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our two-hour maintenance stop

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Joylani dying in the desert

Eventually, we continued on, while the other jeep had to turn back. We ate lunch not much later at a small village where there also happened to be a National Park office.

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 lunch time

After lunch, we did a lot of driving. A lot. But luckily, we broke it up with a rest/photo stop at Salar de Chalviri, a lake with blinding-white salt and flamingos on it.

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 Salar de Chalviri

We also took about an hour break to relax in the most scenic (and for that matter, cleanest) hot-springs I’ve ever been to: Termas de Polques. There was no shower last night, which made the experience that much better.

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 Ahhhhh….hot springs!

Afterwards, we headed to the Chilean border where we glimpsed Laguna Verde. Apparently, its gets its color from high concentrations of lead, sulfur, arsenic, and calcium carbonates; these chemicals also prevent the lake from ever freezing (unless temps get down to -70F).

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 Laguna Verde

Lastly, we stopped at Sol de Manana, an area of boiling mud and geysers. I’d like to say I enjoyed seeing or even taking the below photo (Joylani too it), but I was busy relieving myself behind the closest rock I could find as my stomach was sick all afternoon. Before I ran off to find a rock, Joylani warned me to not inadvertently go near a geyser, because in her words, “That’d be some bidet!” Besides the unsanitary Bolivian food, I think the altitude was getting to me, as we’d spent much of the day between 4500-5000 meters. Between the many sights and maintenance delays, it was an over 13 hour day.

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geysers

SW Circuit: Day 1

near Tupiza

 

us 150pxSouthwestern Bolivia is supposedly home to some of the greatest scenery in the entire world. We signed up for a four-day jeep tour that would take us from Tupiza to Uyuni, via the so-called Southwest Circuit. The following four blog posts will be pretty heavy on photos and light on writing. We saw an unbelievable amount of amazing sights/scenery and didn’t do too much besides talk and bounce around in the jeep for four days.

            We shared the jeep with three other travelers. First, we met Marty, a Scot living in London, who’s taking seven months off to travel the Americas. He went from Alaska to Panama overland then caught a boat to Colombia and is doing a big clockwise loop of South America. He also did a 9-month Asia trip a few years back, so we had a lot to talk about. We also enjoyed his company because he’s really talkative and pretty funny. Another couple, Oscar and Jess were also traveling with us. They’re newlyweds who are traveling from Australia (where they live) to Colombia (where Oscar is from and Jess has never been yet), via Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. Oscar is a wildlife vet, so he provided a lot of interesting commentary and information along the way. Leading us was our driver, Felix, who had a fondness of calling me what sounded like “Ma-tay-us” and Marty, “Mar-teeeeeen.” We also had a cook, Marisol, who worked pretty hard to feed us and surprised me with the quality of the food.

            The first day was not too interesting, but it was scenic. Our first stop on the first day was the Quebrada de Palala, a valley with interestingly-eroded sides. We’ve seen similar-looking formations in different mountainous areas, but never anything so grand in scale (see photo above)

            For the next few hours, we drove through and stopped for lunch in the Valley of the Moon, so called for its unique landscape. Of course, you’d have to ignore all the small grasses and colors to imagine it as the moon. We ate llama tamales and sandwiches for lunch, which were pretty good.

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 stopped here for lunch

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            We did stop at a small village briefly, just to see what antiplano village life is like. It was just mud huts, although the church was by far the largest and nicest looking building. We saw a guy making adobe bricks as well.

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            Although the photo below looks like piles of ash from campfires or something, those big black marks are really piles of llama, alpaca, or vicuna poo. Although they’re really large animals, they just poop what looks like tiny little black pellets. Not only that, but they always poop in the same place, which is why there are enormous piles of the stuff scattered around the tundra.

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view from the village where we spent the night

Tupiza

Tupiza

 

matt 120pxWe crossed into Bolivia today and made our way to the scenic town of Tupiza. Although the Salta and Jujuy provinces were noticeably different and poorer from the rest of Argentina, Bolivia is hugely different. Our bus from the border was an old rattletrap, a rude awakening from luxurious buses of Argentina. The road to Tupiza was not paved at all and all along the way, we stopped to pick up villagers who stuffed themselves in the bus. As Joylani noted, the food is bad. I don’t like Argentine food much to begin with (besides a proper juicy steak) and Chilean food was worse. And now Bolivian food is even nastier. Unfortunately, I’ve heard terrible things about Bolivian food and heard that things aren’t going to get any better as we go further north. On a positive note, the scenery around Tupiza is sublime.

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Visa and Border Crossing: Piece of Fruitcake.

Road to La Quiaca

 

View of the Quebrada on the way to La Quiaca from Tilcara

joylani 130pxWe knew that for Bolivia we would need to pay a heafty visa, or reciprocity, fee.  The cost of a US tourist visa for citizens of many other countries is around $100-135USD, and many countries in South America charge a like fee for US passport holders to visit their countries, regardless of if an actual visa is needed.  Luckily for us, Bolivia is the only place we will visit in South America where we will have to pay this fee (we avoided the fee in Chile by entering via land crossing rather than flying into Santiago, and we just missed the start of the fee in Argentina, which will begin in 2009). A few days before we were to cross into Bolivia I checked their embassy website to be sure we had everything we would need to enter.  In addition to photos, passports, proof of a yellow fever vaccination, photocopy of our credit card, and a hotel reservation I found that the $135 fee was only if we applied for the visa on arrival.  If we got the visa ahead of time the cost would only be $100.  Luckily for us there is a Bolivian consulate in the Argentine border town of La Quiaca (there is also one in Salta as well as several others in Argentina, for any travelers heading up that way but who will reach the border on a weekend). 

As soon as we arrived in Quiaca, we headed to the consulate to secure our visa.  Saving $70 between the two of us would be great.  We easily found the consulate, staffed by three workers—a main guy, his assistant, and the assistant’s assistant who, in addition to making tea, was in charge of photocopies, etc.  Since we were the only “customers” at the consulate, things went relatively fast.  The only hitch was the hotel reservation, which we didn’t actually have.  The assistant sent us of to internet with a Bolivia tourism website and told us to make a reservation—La Paz, Villazon (the border town), it didn’t matter, she said.  Great, I thought, this is so arbitrary.  But we headed off to make a reservation anyways.  Upon arriving at the internet we found that it was not working anywhere in the whole town, so we returned to the consulate to report on our lack of reservation.  The assistant nodded her head and gave us a fax number for the consulate, telling us to have the hotel fax the reservation confirmation.  So we headed back out to the internet place, this time to use the phone.  I made a reservation at a guesthouse, and the woman agreed to fax a confirmation to the consulate.  We happily returned to the consulate for a third time, where the assistant told us matter-of-factly that their fax line was down.  I’m sure she could have told us this earlier, but perhaps this was a way to punish us for not having a reservation confirmation handy in the beginning, or maybe they just wanted to see some effort on our part.  Either way, she promptly stamped our papers and handed us back our passports, which already had the visas attached inside.  We shrugged, took our passports, and quickly left before they asked for anything else. 

            The next morning we woke up early (for breakfast I ate a slice of fruitcake which I regretted having bought the night before, but that actually turned out to be pretty tasty), and walked the short distance to the border.  The crossing was easy, no customs forms, no long lines (lines were longer coming into Argentina), and soon we found ourselves in the bustling town of Villazon.  I guess that for errands and the like, you can actually cross the border without requiring stamps on either side, even if you are an American citizen.  This is handy if you just want to go to Bolivia for the day, make transport reservations, or just pull out money from the ATM (US dollars are available in one of the ATMs on the Bolivian side, at the time of writing, foreign cards are not allowed to pull out USD from Argentinian ATMs).  Due to the differing economies, I guess it is much cheaper to buy products in Bolivia, so there are many shops lining the streets closest to the border, where as on the Argentine side there is nothing.  After crossing we stocked up on Bolivianos and USD since we wouldn’t be in a place with an ATM for almost a week, and headed to the bus station to catch a ride a couple hours north to the town of Tupiza. 

We snagged a couple of the last seats on the next bus about to leave.  Considering the location of the seats in the back row of the stuffy bottom deck of the bus between a man swatting flies and an old lady with a bunch of groceries, it wasn’t exactly a great catch, but we were just happy to be on our way north.  As the bus started rolling, the woman next to me started examining her groceries–a huge bag full of baguettes, another with fruitcakes and bread rolls, a bag with bell-peppers and tomatoes, and a fourth bag with raw beef which she proceeded to take out, examine, then carefully place back in the bag, and, finally, pick her nose all the while as I (with my phobia and olfactory sensitivity to raw meat) tried not to puke.  Thankfully the ride was only a couple of hours and not six or twelve or more, as so many of our journeys have been.  We passed through many dusty settlements along the way and finally arrived in Tupiza.  It is also a dusty little town, though bigger than the other places we passed through and set in the midst of beautiful little mountains.  We were happy to arrive.

Argentine Economy

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matt 120pxThe Argentina economy over the past decade makes for an interesting case study. Argentines went through a painful crisis and just when everyone thought it was all in the past, financial uncertainty has recently reared its ugly head once again. Throughout the 90’s, the Argentine peso was pegged to the US dollar, one-to-one. While the US (and consequently the dollar) was riding the dot-com boom, South American (and their pesos) commodity-export-centric economies were being hurt by the weakened global demand caused the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98. The Argentine peso-US dollar peg was a joke, given the vastly different economic health of the two nations (similar to the obvious discrepancies with Venezuelan exchange rates today). Even as Brazil’s (SA’s largest economy) currency (the real) lost half of its value in 1999, the Argentine government clung to full convertibility. While some politicians advocated “dollarizing,” others turned to the IMF who recommended various fiscal targets if convertibility was to be protected. But it was unrealistic and nearly impossible for the Argentine government to pull itself out of the hole. The artificially-high FX rate pummeled Argentine exports and unemployment was getting out of control. By 2001, everyone knew that the one-to-one peg was unsustainable and as rumors or devaluation swirled, Argentines pulled out their savings and exchanged pesos for dollars in droves. The government then banned withdrawing money from bank accounts, pensions, and even limited access to salaries! Can you imagine the government banning people from accessing their bank accounts?! By January 2002, the government did abandon convertibility and the peso dropped to a quarter of its value, before bouncing to and settling at around 3 pesos:1 USD later that year. Many Argentine’s life savings were wiped out, inflation soared, and Argentina defaulted on its debt.

            Since then, the country has gone backwards, infrastructure-wise and poverty-wise. And since the government never settled with all of its defaulted-debt holders, the country has largely been locked out of international credit markets and is unable to fund much potential growth. On the bright side, Argentina has hydrocarbons (oil and natural gas) and benefited from the most recent global boom. Argentines had hoped that the worst was behind them. A popular billboard from a recent election said, “Your kids don’t know what the IMF is? We’ll make sure they never will.”

            While commodity prices and emerging market economies strengthened through 2007, even as developed economies began to fall, 2008 was disastrous. The credit crisis didn’t affect Argentina initially too badly, because there wasn’t really a market for Argentine bonds since 2002. The main investors of Argentine debt were domestic funds (pensions and mutual funds) who were forced to invest in the worthless things by the government. Since it cannot access international funding, the government really pushes for domestic investment in government bonds and discourages the use of dollar-denominated bank accounts (which began being offered earlier this decade for obvious reasons). When oil (and all commodities) began to tumble in July 2008, government revenues began to fall sharply. While we were living in Buenos Aires in October, the president announced a plan to nationalize all the private pension funds. This drew outrage from the media, educated, and professional classes, since the government was basically stealing workers’ money. Remember, the ban on bank withdrawals is still a recent memory. But with a majority in the Senate and public support among the lower classes, the bill was passed in the Senate. The government gets a few things from this. One, they get control of all the money in the pension funds to spend as they please. The government has already announced that it will sell foreign debt held by the funds and buy domestic debt. Two, since the pensions are some of the only ones who hold domestic government debt (and only because they’re forced to), the treasury is relieved of much of its debt payments (because it’d just be paying itself). Foreign media widely reports that the government will likely default on their debt in 2009, while domestic media seems to think that it’s a political move designed to (literally) enrich the party. Whatever the reason, these moves have obviously had consequences. The Argentine benchmark index, the MERVAL, has tanked. Argentine bonds have tanked and the prices of CDS (credit default swaps) on the aforementioned debt has soared (last I read, it cost a quarter to insure a dollar of Argentine government debt, which is ridiculous). While the government defended the peso for a couple weeks, they finally capitulated as most countries do when trying to defend their currency. When we arrived in BA, it was 3.14 pesos to the USD; today, it is over 3.4, which has made Argentina increasingly cheaper for us to travel. Several times, I encountered empty ATMs and on several days saw lines at banks around the block. With further currency depreciation expected, people are trying to get dollars.

            Travel finances aside, what is the state of the Argentine economy and what is in store? Like its neighbors, Argentina is heavily dependent on commodity exports and the worldwide slowdown has and will continue to seriously hurt it. The pain will be intensified by the fact that the government cannot get international funding, its recent history of debt-default, and the current perception that the government is scrambling to not default on its debt in 2009. Not only are state revenues falling, the state has no other means of acquiring cash. The government is running populist campaigns (“We’ll protect the pensions” or “Why is America lecturing us on financial responsibility, when they started the mess”) and only in November did it admit that the country was in trouble. Well, I think the country is in real trouble without any hope in sight: demand and prices for the country’s two most important exports have tumbled (oil and soya), the currency will certainly continue to depreciate due to both domestic and international factors, unemployment and inflation will result, and the government may default on its debt for the second time this decade.

 

Exchange Rate Tangent: Since I wrote about the weak dollar and its negative effect on our travel expenses, the credit crisis has intensified and initiated a “flight to safety” in currency markets. The dollar has strengthened against every single currency we’ve used over the past 18 months, except the Japanese Yen (since Japan’s central bank is deemed to be more solid than even America’s and the yen was heavily undervalued due to the carry trade which helped fuel this latest bubble). The Yen has strengthened from about 125 to 90 over the past year (it was 107 when we were there). Although I’m glad we weren’t in Japan a month later than we were, it kills me to see the Korean Won at 1500. It was around 1000 when we were there, which means we would’ve spent a third less money if we visited now- a good margin in a somewhat expensive country. Honestly, I don’t care if the Indian Rupee, Thai Baht, or any other developing nation’s currency has fallen 20-30%, because those countries were so cheap anyways. Argentina and Chile were expensive countries to travel, but considerably cheaper due to FX moves. Bolivianos are pegged to the dollar, many Peruvian prices are denominated in USD (although still payable in soles), and Ecuador’s official currency is USD, so I think we’re pretty much done watching exchange rates. But, for you Americans out there, now may be the cheapest time to travel literally anywhere in the world (except Japan).

 

My tangent’s tangent: In my opinion, the best value destinations for American’s right now are: three of the world’s most expensive nations have become way cheaper: the UK (pound down over 25%), Iceland (kronor down between 60-90%), and Russia (ruble down over 30% and getting weaker). Additionally, I believe the Euro will continue to weaken due to all the once-boom-and-now-bust-nations like Spain, Greece, and all of Eastern Europe. Commodity-centric economies like Australia and all of South America are getting cheaper by the day too (all currencies hurting bad versus dollar). All of Asia has become even more cheap, except China (RMB remains up about 20% versus USD for 2008) and Hong Kong (HKD is pegged to USD at 7.8). Okay, I was going to list three countries as being a good value, but almost everywhere is as cheap as its ever been. I know times are tough in the US, but with cheap oil and a strong dollar, flying to and traveling almost anywhere internationally is unbelievably cheap. This is one long post….I think it’s time for me to sleep….