We’ve commented recently on the BA real estate market, wondering if there might be a bubble… While we do think there is a short-term bubble, our general feeling is that Argentina has nowhere to go but up. We’re bullish on the country. But rest assured it will be a bumpy ride…

The Argentine economy is an enigma. We’ve read numerous commentaries and analyse-es which can be summed-up to the following… strong recovery, peso will go up, as will inflation, price-control policies will create problems, Argentina will probably prosper, but anything can happen…

The more we learn about the country, the more time we spend here, the less we seem to know about it…

Crime is an enigma here. While we feel perfectly safe all the time. We do read in the paper about the occasional kidnapping attempt, or armed home-invasion on locals or foreign nationals somewhere in the country… As much as we’d rather not think about it, it does happen. While all the expats and Argentines we’ve talked to have hardly ever had any kind of problem… We’re not afraid, though maybe we should be… (Of course, the biggest danger for tourists/foreigners is getting hit by a car.)

Even poverty is an enigma. We see a lot of the same people out begging each day… We’ve been told that most of them are gypsies and it’s a way of life for them. We first thought that that was nonsense. But the more we’ve observed these people the more it seems to be true.

We live in one of the nicest areas of the city… but there’s a shanty-town not even ten blocks away (that we never see, except from a nearby over-pass)…

The weather is great most of the time… but the g*ddamn mosquitoes are enough to drive a man insane… (We’ve been told that this is a very unusual invasion… the stores have sold-out of repellent.)

In the streets, except for extreme examples, you can’t tell if people are rich or poor. How much of the famed Argentine middle-class has bounced back after the 2001 crisis? No one seems to know.

And we’re well aware that our vision is blurry. We’re foreigners in a foreign land. Our world in Argentina is an insulated one. We try to break-out, but we never truly will, or maybe even want to…

Argentina does this to you. It regularly stimulates some strange unknown part of the brain… making you wonder about things you wouldn’t usually consider in Anytown USA. This is a kind of stimulation that many could probably do without. But for us, it’s a natural high that we enjoy and it makes us call Argentina home…