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It’s nearly a year that we’ve lived in Buenos Aires. A whole hell of a lot has happened and we don’t even know where to begin… But, we’re not going to get into all that right now anyway… Instead, we’d like to shamelessly self-promote a project that we’re involved in.
If you can read Spanish and would like to know what’s going on in Latin American and world financial markets then be sure to check out this free daily email newsletter at: http://moneyweekes.com/
Here are some of the latest articles:
Baja de Tasas, Sólo un Remiendo
Más Acerca de por qué el Sector Inmobiliario Mexicano es Prometedor
¿Cuál Será la Suerte del Dólar?
Semana Negra…¿Hay una Luz al Final del Túnel?
Saludos!
Much more to come as we approach our one-year in Argentina anniversary…
Over the last 8 months of living in Buenos Aires we’ve had the pleasure of visiting quite a few of the city’s excellent restaurants. We had some family in town recently and on their final night here we decided to give them a fancy last hurrah dinner at one of the best restaurants in the city.
We used this, normally very reliable, Argentine restaurant website to make our selection: http://guiaoleo.com.ar/list.php?orderby=Comida&ad=desc&Rank=true&pricemin=80
We should’ve been paying more attention because the restaurant in question was French ‘haute cuisine’ and that’s not exactly what we were in the mood for… and we found out that the restaurant is haute price as well without the equivalent value… It was by far the most expensive meal we’ve had and the food was not notable in any way other way than the small oddly-presented portions… Also, there was an extreme lack of selections. We kept flipping back and forth puzzling over the two pages of the menu. The wine list wasn’t lacking in selections as long as those selections cost more than $100 pesos…
There’s a fine line between fine dining and farce in the realm of haute cuisine… pretty presentation only goes so far when the stakes are raised by high prices… We’re sure one could have a fulfilling and sophisticated dining experience in this establishment, but we felt like we got worked-over like suckers.
Any day of the week we’d take a steak at La Cabrera in Palermo or the Balcony in Recoleta over that other clap-trap.
Until next time.
Despite the high profile robbery of Francis Ford Coppola’s petit-hotel in Palermo Viejo (Soho) two weeks ago, the area is nevertheless booming…
This weekend the weather was absolutely gorgeous and the streets of this small area of Palermo were packed with tourists, hipsters, regular ol’ Portenos, your editor, and his beautiful wife. The area has it’s detractors, but we’re not drinking the haterade…
No, Palermo Viejo is probably the most appealing neighborhood in Buenos Aires. Plaza Serrano, the hub of this little sub-barrio, can get old quickly, as it tends to get too busy, too touristy. But you can easily avoid it and enjoy the boutiques, the wares of the street-vendors, the bars, restaurants, and charm of the surrounding streets.
With the lower building heights, usually no more than three stories, the place just gets more light… it also allows for car pollution to escape more easily…
We’ve sometimes hesitated to give Palermo Viejo much acknowledgement in this blog because it feels like kind of a cop-out… The neighborhood has too many foreigners… It’s too gentrified… That may be true, but, those factors can also make the place more appealing. To each his own we say.
But if I were to place a bet on a neighborhood, we’d put our money there… but it can be tricky as there’s little for sale, plenty for rent, but little for sale… But we’ve seen some deals around.
Especially if there’s a dip in the economy here after the election, we’d watch this area like a hawk for any good deals…
We apologize for going missing in action the past two weeks… Our excuse(s)? Meetings and travel in Europe, a move within Buenos Aires, and turmoil in business have kept us busy buried little bees…
We’re recovering our composure and will get back to our regular blogging duties as best as we can starting today dear reader.
In recent news, we moved to a new apartment that has TV. We’ve been told that the mayhem level in Argentina is going up in advance of the approaching presidential elections… that various factions have an interest in arousing the displeasure of the populous. So, the professional protesters, the ‘piquetaros’, labor groups, and other political mafia organizations are mobilizing to instill a feeling of unrest.
We didn’t see it before, but, on the evening news these days there is a fair amount of chaos around Argentina. The news is obviously sensationalized. But there’s a good amount of real footage of real trouble. And the robbery of Francis Ford Coppela’s house was the icing on the cake this week.
Anyway, our daily life here in BA moves on uneventful, in terms of outside disruptions. The weather has transformed into perfect spring. Life is good. Perhaps we should return to the bliss of no TV…
In so many ways Buenos Aires is calm and safe. In so many ways it can be just the opposite…
News just came in that Coppola’s home and office was broken into last night, his employees tied up and his laptop, containing work for his new movie, stolen along with other electronics… Ouch!
http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Movies/09/27/people.coppola.ap/index.html
From the Clarin in Spanish: http://www.clarin.com/diario/2007/09/27/um/m-01507593.htm
Visit this blog for more about Coppola in Buenos Aires:
http://trendypalermoviejo.blogspot.com/search/label/Francis%20Ford%20Coppola%27s%20hotel
We hosted our first Argentine-style ‘asado’, for 20 or so people, on the roof of our apartment-building here in Buenos Aires on Friday.
Argentines take their asados seriously. Our spanish teacher was going to be there and our Argentine colleagues. We were a bit nervous about embarassing ourselves, and at first, most of our fears were realized…
I don’t know what it is, but, there’s something about being in a foreign country that sometimes causes you to lose all your senses… this happened to us on Friday when starting the fire for the asado… We’ve started hundreds, maybe thousands of fires in our day, back on the farm in Virginia and elsewhere. We know exactly what to do. But in the frenzy and pressure of hosting this asado our instincts and good sense just went out the window…
There we were having hastily thrown some charcoal and sticks into the parrilla grill, blowing and fanning a pathetic smoky pile as our guests started arriving… It must have seemed to the Argentines who were there that this was going to be some kind of slip-shod yahoo yanqui bbq. We could see the concern and pity on their faces…
Luckily for us, an American friend who’s married to an Argentine helped us with the shopping, tipping us off to the items that we were going to need to do this thing right… And so when the fire finally got going (with some input from just about every male guest) all the other elements started to come together as well… The drinks and music were flowing from bottles and speakers. And with the perfect warm spring night air of Buenos Aires things turned downright pleasant.
Maybe it’s genetic, but a weird dicotemy started to manifest itself during our little shin-dig… The Argentines all seemed to drift over to the parrilla where the meat was cooking and the Americans and Anglos all seemed to huddle around where the beer and wine was… Imagine that…
Anyway, cliches aside, we thought a pretty good time was had by all… And that’s the story of Gringos’ First Asado.
If you’ve been thinking about visiting Argentina… If you want to experience the vibrant culture, the friendly people, the opportunities, the beautiful and diverse landscapes… then you won’t want to miss this tour organized by my friends at Agora Travel this November 3rd-16th.
This tour is unique and exclusive (only 16 people) as it is done with a private chartered plane, so, you can travel quickly, comfortably, and hassle-free around Argentina, covering more destinations than you could with traditional airlines (especially Aerolinas Argentinas!).
The tour is also interesting in that it is oriented towards investment opportunities around the country: apartments in Buenos Aires, developments, vineyard and forestry projects, and rural estancias …
Over the years Agora Travel has established some excellent contacts in Argentina. This tour gives you access to those trustworthy and knowledgeable professionals, which is extremely important for you to be able to invest with confidence…
The investment aspects aside, the tour covers some of the most enchanting locations in Argentina: Buenos Aires… Bariloche… Mendoza… Salta (pictured above)… Misiones… the Iguazu Falls…
Basically this is a trip of a lifetime, a chance to explore the best that a beautiful country has to offer…
Click here to get all the details: http://www.agoratravel.com/investsouthamerica/wb/
FYI: We’ll be speaking to the people on this tour in Buenos Aires. We don’t know what we’ll say but, we’ll do our best to offer some interesting “off-the-blog” insights to Buenos Aires and Argentina, what we don’t want everyone to know about…
Last night we finally delved into the Buenos Aires art scene… We went to the gallery night event where many of the art galleries in Retiro and Recoleta stay open late and serve champagne on the last Friday of every month. The event is sponsored by a number of banks and local businesses and about 30 or so galleries participate. We went there with a group of expats, mostly Americans, including a couple of Argentine Americans… We had a very nice time.
We’re not exactly in the income bracket that purchases art, certainly not in the US, but here in BA we can almost pull it off. And, hell, when there’s free champagne involved you can consider us collectors!
But, in a gallery with a lot of uninteresting crapola you’ve got to play it cool. You can’t just go barrelling towards the free champagne and then run out of there, even though that’s what you want to do. The complimentary bubbly is usually strategically placed and guarded, so one must feign interest in order to win a legitimate refill.
Your editor at times found himself enquiring the price of some monstrous canvas or another so that he could suavely replenish his glass… And we know we were not alone in this…
That said, we did come across a couple very nice works… some high quality still-lifes… an interesting surrealist piece… and some intricate landscapes… We may well count our pennies and return to one of these galleries and see if we can come away with something.
All that gallery hopping gave us quite an appetite, so around 10pm (a respectable dinner-time for Portenos) we headed over to a parrilla restaurant to add the weight of some redmeat to the artsy evening. On the way there we came across a soccer-hooligan rally that was being closely monitored by riot police. Some in our group saw this as a photo-op and posed alongside the riot police standing by… surely a keeper for the photo album…
We enjoyed a great parrilla dinner and some nice conversation. It seems to us a bit of a copout to hang out with Americans when in Argentina. But the thing about Buenos Aires is that it attracts certain kinds of Americans, the more interesting types, who can make for good company… So, while we don’t spend a lot of time around expats, we tend to have a good time when we do…
Caetano Veloso doesn’t look like a rockstar. He resembles more a middle-aged tourist… And he doesn’t dance like you’d think a Brazilian rockstar would… instead his onstage moves were more like those of a drunk accountant at a wedding. But he and his band absolutely rocked the Gran Rex in Buenos Aires.
Most of the songs were technically impressive with tricky time-signatures and a lot of change-ups. It resembled American jamband/rock music, but with a large blend of styles and some brazilian flare…
Argentines are generally very reserved at music concerts, but Veloso brought them to their feet on quite a few ocassions…
We and our friends were all very impressed with the concert. If you get a chance to see this guy somewhere we’d recommend it.
The Argentine peso is one of the few world currencies that has lost ground lately to the US dollar. Canada, Europe, Russia, Asia, even Brazil… virtually everywhere is getting more expensive for American visitors as the US dollar slides…
As a middle class American you can live well in Argentina… but only if you continue to receive an American wage in dollars… Unless you have some kind of special opportunity with an Argentine company or money to invest, we would not recommend moving to Argentina with the hope of finding a job here… You do not want to be beholden to the Argentine job market, as an English teacher etc, the wages are just too low…
What you can do is get some kind of online business going and get paid in dollars with your expenses in pesos, then outsource in rupees. (Of course, we recommend this to our Argentine friends as well.)
Getting an online business going from scratch is hard. But if you want it badly enough, you can do it…
We’ve been working and traveling heavily of late… which has cut down significantly on our posting… But we’re going to fight this trend and do our best to start posting regularly again.
We enjoyed our trip to North Carolina, it was familiar, easy, and relaxing… plus great to see friends…
But we’re happy to be back in Buenos Aires… where we have to stay on our toes in terms of the language, of course, but also in terms of opportunity… We met a guy at the wedding in North Carolina who had just returned from Argentina. He was extremely bullish and excited about our new home country… Evidently his business mentor told him, “if I were a young man, I’d move down here immediately”. He was trying to figure out how to persuade his wife to move the family (three kids) down… We, of course, identify with his enthusiasm. But we didn’t do him any favors when we accidently dropped the bomb on his wife by saying, “So, you’re planning to move to Buenos Aires?” “No.” was the abrupt reply… That little faux pas probably set him back a couple weeks in his plans, but, he still seemed confident that he could persuade her…
There are opportunities out-the-whazoo here. A couple of Americans recently opened The California Burrito Company on Lavalle in el Centro. When we went there the place was packed, business looked brisk, and the burritos were tasty… We’ve met a number of foreigners and Argentines involved in real estate, and the opportunities in this arena are virtually endless. There are places in Argentina where land is selling for less than $5 an acre…
We must admit to you dear reader, that we’ve been a bit tight-lipped about some things because we don’t want everyone to know about these opportunities… For that we apologize, but we’ll reveal all, or nearly all, in due course… Also, we don’t want to mislead you. As one Argentine friend said, “Argentina has opportunities, but it’s opportunity from crisis. Don’t forget that.”
We’re working with our Argentine financial writers, as that’s our biz, to prepare a report about what to expect in the markets around here in the short, mid, and long term. There’s anxiety here on the eve of the presidential elections, and certainly some pessimism. There’s inflation no doubt. Will it expand? Contract? What’s going to happen…? We don’t know any better than anyone else. But we won’t let that stop us from making some predictions…
Hasta la proxima.
It’s been a surprisingly cold winter here in Buenos Aires, not just for us, but for Portenos as well. It’s been one of the coldest on record… of course, it’s not that bad, but does take us delicate Floridians by surprise…
Anyway, we’ve been letting you down this past week dear reader, it’s becoming a bad habit with us…
It was a busy week, half of which we spent up in the northwestern corner of Argentina, in Salta province, on business. It was refreshing to get out of the city and Salta is way out… Where we needed to go, it’s a five hour drive, mostly on dirt roads, from Salta city. The land is like the southwestern US, high-desert. The big open sky was perfectly clear for our drive and the landscape was beautiful. But as we got close to our destination, the sky began to get sort of fuzzy up ahead…
There still wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but the wind was picking-up and we realized that the fuzzyness was airborne dust. By now the sky was dark with dust clouds and we watched as seemingly sentient walls of dust moved back and forth across the mesa. As we continued on our way one of these walls of dust slammed into the side of our truck and briefly blacked-out visibility from all windows… But the dust walls seemed to content themselves by staying to the other side of the valley. When we arrived at our dusty destination the roar of the wind was impressive and constant. It sounded like there was an ocean a couple of feet away repeatedly crashing against invisible rocks. The loud and powerful wind continued all night long and it seemed sometimes that the doors and windows might give way… We’ve ridden out powerful hurricanes before, and this was something similar. The next morning it was sunny and beautiful, with a light breeze…
Before this trip we had looked forward to showing off the new Castellano speaking and understanding skills that we thought we now had… But nay, it was not to be.
We were terrible. Maybe it was all the dust in our ears, or the altitude. Whatever it was, we spoke horribly, making even very simple mistakes… We could barely understand anything. Maybe it was that Saltanian accent, or the farm subject matter, that was throwing us off… No, no excuses can explain away the fact that we’ve made much less progress in the Spanish-language department than we thought we had. Luckily for us a bilingual friend was there to help out. But our plan of being linguistically independent and incisive, shedding the tourist foreigner label, becoming nearly Argentine with a slight accent, a Porteno out visiting Salta… was soundly dashed…
Until next time… and next time we might even write about something remotely useful…
At The Walrus English bookstore in San Telmo, our better-half picked up a copy of the historical chronical of the Buenos Aires Herald. This over-sized periodical contains headlines and story excerpts about Argentine history in English since September 1876… this is very useful for us to have a general idea of what’s been going on around these parts since then…
One hundred years ago the Herald was very British. Some of the excerpts from that time say things like, “The Prince of Wales visited dear Argentina and the entire country rejoiced in the splendor of his presence. Throughout his stay the people could forget all their worries, at least for a short while, and they loved him for that.” We exaggerate, but, only slightly…
Anyway, we’ll spare you any pompous commentary on the history of Argentina, other than to say that it’s been a wild ride…
The Herald has been a nearly continuous daily source of English-language editorial about events in Argentina for all that time. We salute them for that. However, some of the articles we read in the paper these days are a little shakey… perhaps written by non-native speakers. Well, with our 4th grade-level Spanish competency we dare not criticize…
Hasta la proxima.
Oh dear reader, we’ve really failed you this week… We’ve had to neglect our blogging duties in favor of more seemingly pressing day-to-day affairs…
But to bring you up-to-date… The weather got cold, we caught a cold. The next day the weather warmed and we recovered… We’ve been semi-diligently attending our spanish classes. One off-site conversational session was held at the tea-room of the newly renovated Hyatt Palacio Duhau, talk about fancy pants…
The Hyatt bought the place from a wealthy family just about two years ago. Renovations commenced immediately and the result is impressive… While the dollar plummets against all major world currencies, you really can still get bang-for-your-buck here (that probably won’t last long). A tea, which includes four different polished silver vessels, costs $12 pesos, or $4 dollars, a beer is $5 dollars, all the while you’re waited on hand-and-foot in high-style.
A harpist played in the background, old ladies with old money socialized, and yours truly butchered the conversational Castellano… There couldn’t have been a more elegant setting for a Maryland/Virginia countryboy to be linguistically enriched, that’s for sure.
More to come soon, we promise…
One of our contacts here is a New Zealander involved in real estate. He reports to us that there is a phenomenon of Kiwi farmers selling off their farms in New Zealand and relocating to take-up farming in South America where the costs of land, labor, and expenses are lower.
One favored location is Uruguay. There are evidently quite a few farms for sale in Uruguay for reasonable prices. So, these Kiwi farmers relocate with their families, selling off the pricey New Zealand land and buying a functioning farm down here.
New Zealand agriculture is highly sophisticated, primarily because the government lifted all subsidies for farming and agricultural products, so Kiwi farmers were forced to compete on the world market. What happened was that they did exactly what people have to do when competing in a free-market… they worked hard, they innovated, they were efficient… or they went out of business. The result was, predictably, that New Zealand is now a world leader in agriculture, having pioneered some highly successful methods of farming…
Could there be a lesson here for other countries? In the United States big-farm subsidies have lowered prices for junk food and for food additives like high-fruitose corn syrup, which have made these items ubiquitous in the American food supply… And we would wager that this is a major contributing factor for the expanding waist-lines of the American public. A big conspiracy no doubt, no pun intended… But, this is all fodder for another post, let me get back to those innovative Kiwis and their new farms in Uruguay…
So, when the New Zealanders relocate to South America they find themselves in the midst of a new and different culture of course. One issue that our acquaintance had noted was that if a Kiwi woman worked on the farm as Kiwi women are prone to do, they find themselves sometimes ostracized by Uruguayan women who wouldn’t be caught dead socializing with someone who does manual labor, let alone do manual labor themselves…
So, this culture clash can sometimes be an issue for these immigrants from down under. One could cry foul at the lack of ‘progressiveness’ amongst these Uruguayans, but that would be a waste of time… Instead these Kiwis have opted not to stray too far from the major cities, Montevideo, Colonia, Punta del Este etc so that they can go into these cities to satisfy their social inclinations… and as long as they get a good manicure before going to any parties… no one will be the wiser that they may have sweated during the week.
Anyway, we hear that the fancy farming techniques of the New Zealanders are paying off. They are grabbing market share for certain agricultural products. This spells trouble for inefficient and mismanaged farms in the area… and could create some resentment. We, on the other hand, praise these innovations and efficiencies born of the free-market and hope that this wacky idea spreads in South America and the rest of the world.
We’ve written before about the perplexities of San Telmo… and during our time in BA we’ve visited there quite a few times, and we’ve talked to quite a few who’ve lived there… (we’re by no means experts, and as always, we won’t let that stop us from pontificating) but we still have no resolution on our feelings about the place.
Readers have asked about the barrio, and because of our own secret fascination, we feel compelled to continue ruminating about it…
What we can say is that it feels on the verge of gentrification, but it’s certainly not there yet for better or worse. It’s rumored to have the largest expat community in Buenos Aires, but we have no confirmation of that theory. We believe Palmero Viejo may out-edge San Telmo in density if not number of foreigners, but we have no evidence for that estimate either.
Real estate prices, though lower than the more established barrios of Palermo, Recoleta, Puerto Madera etc, do take into account the interest of expat investors. So it ain’t dirt cheap for BA, as it once was, but certainly cheap by world standards…
Now most Argentines we’ve talked to about San Telmo practically despise the place… they wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole… “It’s dangerous.” “It’s a good couple degrees colder than the other barrios.” “It’s dirty and full of poor people.” etc. Now, we’re doubtful of the temperature claim, but, in general it is pretty dirty, the people are poorer than the more upper-crust sides of town, and it does seem more dangerous, (yet we rarely hear of much happening there)…
We’ve gone there a couple times when we’ve looked around and just wanted to get the hell out. It looks really dingy. There are a bunch of sketchy looking dirt-bags hanging around… The ugly buildings that are unfortunately ubiquitous amongst the nicer ones seem to stick out to us. The shops only seem to have a bunch of useless junk. “Ugh. Take me back to Recoleta!”
But, other times we go there (the Sunday market is nice, when not too crowded) and we are really impressed. The architecture of the nice buildings just seems to stick-out to us. All the funky little shops seem so authentic, yet hip. There’s art and bohemian flavor in the air. “This is the real Buenos Aires!” we think.
The Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde phenomenon in San Telmo is pervasive for us. We never know what we’re going to get when we go…
So dear readers we leave it to you. It depends on your taste. We’re not making a move to San Telmo any time soon. But we may well be jealous if you do…
As part of our onging sincere, yet lazy, efforts to gradually immerse ourselves in Argentine culture… We’ve decided to only read the giants of Argentine literature, who we’re embarrased to say we haven’t read before, like Jorge Luis Borges, Ernesto Sabato, Julio Cortázar, and Aldofo Bioy Casares. [And some Márquez too, though he's not Argentine.]
So far we’ve cracked into the ‘Labyrinths’, a collection of short stories by Borges. We’ve realized that you don’t go casually flipping through a Borges story… If it’s a light, quick read you’re looking for these stories are not it…
Some of his work like ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ takes commitment and perseverance to stay on top of what’s going on… We read the classics in college and majored in philosophy (and math). From what we’ve read so far it’s an understatement to say that Borges is extremely well read, a formidable thinker, and wordsmith… a deservably world-renowned writer… We can’t wait to dig into more of his stories…
[NOTE: We're reading these in English... We bought some English-language books this weekend from a nice little shop in San Telmo, called the Walrus. It's on Estadous-Unidos at Peru.]
Travelers voted Buenos Aires the second most desirable city to visit after Florence, Italy… While we find that an impressive coup for this south american metropolis, it’s not surprising. The longer we stay here the more we like it…
Hasta la proxima.
It’s snowing today and really coming down… No sooner did we finish our last post about how mild the climate is than the temperature dips to historic levels and a snowstorm kicks up the likes of which hasn’t been seen in 89 years… I’m looking out the window at snow accumulating on palm trees…
The weather practically eclipsed a national holiday today, when Argentines celebrate their independence from Spain… The streets and shops were dead, which usually happens during holidays here. We had to go over to the tourist area of Recoleta for lunch. We were actually well rewarded for the decision.
At the ‘Balcony’ Steak House across from the Four Seasons we had a killer sirloin… one of the best steaks we’ve had in a while… It was 30 pesos or $10… Definitely grassfed beef, unlike the feedlot beef that Yanqui Mike recently noticed has been slowly edging into the Argentine marketplace. That would be a travesty if the famed Argentine beef would be degraded to lesser quality following the plight of the US market… But we’ll worry about that in a future post.
Signing-off from snowy BA…
The weather was excellent all week, especially considering it’s mid-winter here… It was sunny, clear, in the upper 50’s and 60’s and warmer in the sun… After lunch, we had to pry ourselves out of the outdoor cafes and back to the office on most days.
But of course when Saturday rolls around, it gets cooler and overcast… This could blow our trip to Tigre today, but we’ll see…
Overall though, the winter here in BA is extremely mild… It’s a great climate in general…
It’s no secret that they eat late here in Argentina, but for whatever reason the reality of this fact takes time to sink in…
We hold out for as long as we possibly can, till around 8:30 when the restaurants will actually let you in, and then we’re usually the first or second people there… When we finish dinner at around 9:30-10 we know that things are only just starting to pick up.
It takes some getting used to.
One secret to holding out till so late to eat is maté. We’re always impressed by the feeling of well-being after drinking maté. Also, this yerba tea helps stymie your hunger…
When we were in Salta, a gaucho who worked on the farm we visited would pretty much only drink maté throughout the day and then eat a big dinner… He was slim and trim… He inspired us to invent ‘The Gaucho Diet’, a new and exciting diet craze consisting of drinking maté, horse-back riding, spending many lonely days out under the big open sky, and wearing cool traditional outfits…
Or maybe it’s just the maté. Whatever it is the Argentines eat good food, lots of meats and carbs, things that taste good. They eat late. They do everything that Americans are not supposed to do… yet, it’s very rare to see a fat Argentine…
Today we’re standing-up the US Ambassador to Argentina… We were invited to a 4th of July party hosted by the US Embassy and the current ambassador Earl Anthony Wayne. We were invited not because of our connections to the embassy, we have none, but instead because of some Argentine business partners of our employer and their connections to the embassy. (Of course, every American expat with a pulse was probably invited to this same event.)
Anyway, we say “no thanks”!
The 4th of July celebrates US independence from Great Britain. We feel that the US government currently embodies the imperialism from which the forefathers of our country revolted. The founders were the insurgent leaders against British military might and suppression in the colonies.
The founding-fathers of the United States were intelligent, worldly, and brave men… nothing like the men who currently lead our distressed country.
We grew up a few miles from Jefferson’s Monticello, a house which he designed himself, filled with innovations invented by him and books of learning that he actually read… He traveled the world and spoke multiple languages.
After leading the colonial army to victory on the battlefield, General George Washington had to be begged to leave the farm that he had quietly returned to and become the leader of the country.
To compare any of these men to George W Bush or Dick Cheney is laughable.
No, we celebrate the 4th of July in our own way, apart from any association with the current US government.
The plot always seems to grow thicker, like the recent half pardon (which will probably become a full pardon) of Scooter Libby. Just when you think they can’t sink any lower, they find a way to do it…
It tears our soul. There’s turmoil in the soul of America and the only solution is something better… and that’s what we’ll celebrate this 4th of July, that, and how our ancestors fought like real patriots against the suppression of liberty by the establishment super-power imperialists of the day.
It goes something like this…
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands, which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. [Declaration of Independence]
And on… Amen!
Happy 4th of July!!
We recently gave you a list of online resources for finding property in Buenos Aires. One of those resources is the Argentine MLS website. There’s a trick you can do to use that MLS website to quickly find additional information on any property that you might see elsewhere… This is simple but it might not be obvious.
Any listing that’s in the Argentine MLS has a code, a ‘codigo’. All of the Argentine MLS listings URLs are, for example, as follows: http://www.topinmobiliario.com/detalle.aspx?findcod=LLC797
What you can do is slap on the ‘codigo’ that you find on any other website for a property that you’re interested in and add it to the end of the typical listing URL: http://www.topinmobiliario.com/detalle.aspx?findcod=(put code here)
So if you find something on this list for instance: http://www.leporepropiedades.com.ar/SOM/vta_casas.htm
They all have a codigo (to the far right of the list), so you can plug that codigo on the end of the typical MLS URL to find more info on the listing (you can do this more conventially on the MLS website, but I prefer doing it this way) for example: SH11207
http://www.topinmobiliario.com/detalle.aspx?findcod=SH11207
Then you go straight to the listing and can get all the details on it and usually pictures as well… You can do the same thing for any ‘codigos’ that you find on any real estate websites… Doing this you can move quickly and easily through the listings.
Hope you find this helpful…
Cheers!
For those of you readers interested in BA property we decided it would be a good idea to put together a quick reference ‘cheat-sheet’ for how to find properties in the city… so here are some of the best links for doing that…
To orientate yourself, this is great map of the city (you can plug in any address to find the location): http://mapa.buenosaires.gov.ar/sig/index.phtml
This website features the Multi-Listing Service (MLS) of Argentine property: http://www.topinmobiliario.com/
The problem is that many properties are not added to the MLS. So here are some of the top sites and agencies for the more popular areas (most have listings across the city):
Recoleta
http://www.realestate.com.ar (Probably the best agency in BA)
http://www.toribioachaval.com.ar/
Palermo
http://ojopropiedades.com.ar/
http://www.shenk.com.ar/
http://fastpropiedades.com/
http://www.enbuenosaires.com/
San Telmo
http://www.leticiafirpo.com/venta.php?criterio=precio
This is a good list of available ‘casas’ across the city: http://www.leporepropiedades.com.ar/SOM/vta_casas.htm
Buenos Aires Craigslist has many interesting and new listings. If you have some Spanish language knowledge La Nacion classifieds and the Clarin classifieds are good.
A recommended resource is the Argentina: Owner’s Manual from International Living.
Good luck!
Last night we went with some Porteno friends to the Opera Pampa show at La Rural. As usual we had no idea what it was we were going to see, and our assumption that it was an ‘opera’ in the traditional sense was completely faulty…
Instead it was a live action theater production telling the story of Argentine history through song, dance, battle reenactments, and impressive horseback-riding…
La Rural, situated next to the US Embassy in Palermo, is a nicely restored complex that was once a sort of livestock convention arena… It has some stands that surround a rectangular riding rink and stage. From the stands we watched the dancers and horseman act out various stages in the taming of the pampas and the establishment of Argentina.
We had a pretty good general idea of how Argentina was founded and this show confirmed our view of how similar it was to the founding of the US… colonization of a bountiful new world, the purging of the natives, the fight for independence from the colonizing nation, the battle between the federalists and anti-federalists, the settling and taming of the wild west, and the hardwork and prosperity that followed… Of course, the colonizing nation was a different one which made the legal and government structure different, but the similarities are many…
Now back to the show, as we said the horseback-riding was quite good. The horses that they rode were Criollos a very well dispositioned Argentine breed, a decendent of the horses that the Conquistadors brought. In the show they did demonstrations of Argentine equestrian events. They also did tricks, like having the horses all lie-down in unison, and galluping into formations…
All in all it was an enjoyable show that we would recommend to visitors.
We’re going to try and round-up some pictures from someone… unfortunately our new digital camera slipped off an ottoman the other day and is no longer functioning. It was a disappointing loss, before we’d gotten even a fraction of our money’s worth out of the thing… uggghh.
There’s little hope of it being fixed and I don’t know if we can bring ourselves to buy another one in such short order. But for you dear reader we trouble and toil, perhaps we’ll get a cheap little gizmo, so at least you’ll have some pictures to look at to distract from our boring writings…
Today, this little blog was surprisingly included in the London Times Online list of the ‘Top 25 Property Blogs‘, at number 25 no less!
Cheers to the Times Online!
And a warm welcome to Times readers. We don’t always write about property, but here are some of our top more recent posts about the topic:
A Farm Just Outside Buenos Aires
Buying Real Estate in Argentina, The Process
An Italian Palace on the Cheap
Sausage Houses the Problem with Soho
Francis Ford Coppola Buys Petit Hotel in Palermo Soho
Real Estate Hunting, The Neighborhoods
Or, click here to read everything tagged as real estate.
Oh dear reader, we’ve really been letting you down this week…
We used to be involved in a business that sold productivity and time management programs, we need to look back and take some of that advice right now… We are overloaded with projects.
And now we’re semi-involved with two simultaneous real estate transactions, which have kept us distracted from our many projects that all desperately need our attention…
It’s good to be busy no doubt. But why does it have to be so seemingly chaotic and taxing?
Why can’t we have a four hour work week like Tim Ferriss?
Well, because we don’t want to… We need pressure, that’s how we work…
Things are as they should be. But it puts important but not urgent items like our Spanish lessons in the backseat.
We’re jealous of those jerks who come down here on a semi-vacation to learn Spanish and that’s all they do… But in the back of our mind we know we wouldn’t be comfortable doing that anyway.
We’re responsible for our own destiny everyday. And it’s our own damn fault that we’re not making progress in the language department. Any moment, any day now, we’re going to change all that… but just as long as it’s tomorrow…
We’re supposed to go to the opera tonight. We have no idea where it is or what to expect. But we’ll let you know what happens, stay tuned…
Our better half was concerned that our last post might give the impression that we are a raging alcoholic… Since many of our friends, relatives, and business associates may at some point or another read this blog we felt we better set the record straight. But the real story is in some ways more embarrassing than the label of a chronic imbiber…
Last night was our second time going out to a night club the entire time we’ve been here. And it proved to be even more of a disaster than the first time. We realized that we had indeed not been out dancing in ages, so to ward off the moniker of the old married couple that we are we decided to stay up late and go out on the town.
We opted for Opera Bay in Puerto Madera where there are a couple different levels with different music and dance floors where we thought we’d have a greater chance at finding some music that we like. We got there at 12:30 and it was as dead as a door-nail. But this is Buenos Aires, and we figured things don’t get going till the wee hours and we followed another couple in, paying the $10 cover…
But we very quickly realized why the place was dead and that it wasn’t going to get any better… We went up to the bar to order drinks and we were told that because of the election they could not serve alcohol. Thus the ban ruined our little attempted night out… and thus we were irked…
As a reader recently pointed out the mayoral election is very important to us foreigners as it is the mayor who makes the majority of the decisions that affect us… like the laws regarding real estate investment… We are extremely ignorant of Argentine politics. So, please excuse the ignorant ranting of our last post. We’re going to do a little research into the mayoral race and figure out who’s who and what it means…
Hasta la proxima.
We had a bad brush with the Argentine political system last night… we were denied alcohol on a Saturday night because of the Buenos Aires mayoral election.
As typical with political entities they inflate their own self-importance while their silly ideas, and attempts to control people, backfire… In this case, everyone, except for the uninformed (like us) and those who do not have the resources to get out, leaves town (the ban does not affect the rest of the country) during the election weekend and therefore do not participate in the vote. So, essentially the lowest common denominator decides the election… [Actually, we've read that there's another round of voting so that the booze hounds can be included and that voting is mandatory... that being the case, what's the point of the ban?]
We discussed this with a taxi driver and he explained how the entire city suffered from the economic blackout caused by the alcohol ban…
Of course, the justification is that everyone is to be sober when voting, and that they take the election event seriously. We would plead the opposite. Booze should be half price, to wash away the misery of voting… But we digress.
This may well be a long-standing tradition in Argentine politics, but we think it stinks.
Notice how we become more belligerent without our liquor, dear reader? That’s why Prohibition didn’t work…
Today we found ourselves visiting a broker on behalf of a client. This particular broker has penthouse offices in one of the taller buildings in Buenos Aires. When the elevator arrived at the top floor we stepped out onto a glass encased landing with large glass doors with gold handles. No one was around. We looked across the entry way to a fancy conference room with floor-to-ceiling windows and an incredible view of the Puerto Madera harbor and the Rio Plata.
We stood there gawking at the view for a moment then came to our senses… We knew there must be a little call-box around there somewhere. It was hidden off to one corner. “Hola. Senor Bonner para Senor So-and-So”, we said into the box. “Si, Senor” said the box. Then a neatly dressed secretary came and opened the door for us.
The broker came out and we were surprised that he was about our age, about our same stature, with unruly hair like ours, but much better dressed… We had a quick and productive meeting on behalf of our client. He asked us how we were taking to Buenos Aires and we told him how much we liked it… They take pride in their city, so that usually wins some points. Anyway, our business was already done and it was time for us to leave.
They had to practically push us out of the office as we wanted to stay around and take in that view for a while longer… But back down to the busy streets we went. Hustling and bustling, noisy, wonderful streets…
We’re self-conscious about our rate of immersion into Argentine society. We’re not learning Spanish fast enough. We’re not making enough Argentine friends… Blah, blah blah…
Our better half told us to just relax and it will happen of its own accord over time… Sage advice of course…
Your editor likes to put pressure on himself to get things done… And yes we do need to ramp-up our efforts in the Spanish language department. But other than that there’s really not much we can do to enter Argentine society other than what we’ve been doing… which is living, working, and trying to pay attention…
Things are coming along just fine.
We continue to make more business contacts because business is what we do. And we’ve enjoyed meeting and working with Argentine businessmen and women. They’re mostly English speakers, but that doesn’t make them less Argentine…
But we are particularly embarrassed when we meet with an Argentine business person who is about the same age as us (as if that really makes a difference) and we converse in English instead of Castellano… of course, no business would get done if we were speaking Spanish, which is why they choose English. But here we are in Latin America asking them to speak our language, how embarrassing… I don’t know if Castellano is the official language of Argentina or not, but it doesn’t really matter, as an immigrant you know you’re at a disadvantage not speaking the national tongue even if you can get by okay for a while… They say necessity is the mother-of-invention, and not-really-necessity, well, that’s our situation…
Sharing mate with people is an Argentine cultural experience. You drink it out of a wood gourd, sometimes elaborately decorated, with a metal straw. We’ve had mate with gauchos in Salta in northwestern Argentina, farmers in Buenos Aires province, and portenos (Argentines who live in BA).
At first we didn’t know what all the fuss was about… Mate is very bitter. The first couple sips from the gourd are like drinking boiling grass water. But once you learn to deal with the bitterness, mate is really quite rewarding. There are the social rewards of bonding with other people while sharing mate, but also a noted feeling of well-being after drinking it. It makes you alert yet relaxed…
My wife and I have taken to having mate, like tea time, around 4-6pm… It’s an acquired taste, for sure. But, little rituals like having mate are special in that they make you slow-down, talk, and reflect… something most of us should probably do more of…
An American friend who’s been living down here for three years was telling us some investor horror stories the other day…
One was about a new apartment building in Belgrano where the developers sold each apartment twice pre-construction, then skipped town… That was a year ago and the place is tied up in intense litigation and probably will never be finished…
While Argentina has great value in real estate, like any place, there is risk involved. You’ve got to do your homework. Make sure you’re dealing with reputable people…
I’ve recommended the Argentina Owner’s Manual in the past and continue to do so, as it’s a great way to instantly get reputable contacts in the country… Just because people speak good english does not mean that they necessarily share your business values…
That said, our experience here has been a very good one. The more time we spend in Argentina the more we like it.
The subject of American coffee came up again at a dinner we went to last night with an American expat and his 6-month pregnant Argentine wife… She revealed to us that the Argentine nickname for American coffee is ‘umbrella juice’, perhaps a tad more flattering than the French ’sock juice’…
But umbrella juice is coming to a street corner in Buenos Aires soon, fellow blogger Alan Patrick reports… Starbucks will be opening up here in the coming months…
They said it would never work in Paris. But, of course, it did. We’re quite sure it will flourish in BA as well… especially if it’s true that there are 70,000 Americans now living in Buenos Aires according to our new expat friend. That’s a lot of umbrella juice drinkers! But it’s not the foreigners that will make it work, it’s the irresistable fashion of carrying around those cups and the convenience of getting that fix on the go…
More to come from way south of the border…
Yesterday we got to tag-along with a friend to visit a farm just outside Buenos Aires. It was about an hour and half from downtown, north of Pilar in an area called Cordales. This is farm country that is unfortunately being developed into gated communities. But, for it’s proximity to BA, it was surprising rural, with one attractive horse farm after another and few developments. Our friend, who had business there, invited us, as he knew we were curious about the land out of the city.
It was a lot like parts of northern Texas… pretty country…
We saw a lot of ‘for sale’ signs in the area. Evidently, land there goes for about $20,000-$25,000 per hectare. A hectare is about two and a half acres…. So, it’s not dirt-cheap. But, it was nice and the proximity to the big city is a real plus.
We arrived back in BA this morning… It feels great to be back!
Here’s some of what we missed in the US:
- The coffee. (This is going to sound very snobby, but, the French have a name for American coffee which translates to ’sock juice’. After enjoying Argentine coffee for months, cafe americana tasted awful… even in nice restaurants, you order espresso and they give you some diesel fuel in a small cup…)
- The food. (We went to some of our favorite restaurants back in Florida, and despite a few exceptions it was disappointing…)
- The excitement. (We missed the daily adventure that comes with the language, cultural, and geographical complications we face in BA.)
- The prices. (It’s tacky to talk about prices, but, we were shocked to find how fast money disappears in the US comparitively…)
We could go on, but you get the idea. We enjoy life down here…
But it’s not for everyone… We talked to a couple of Latin Americans in south Florida, who had been to BA, loved it, but had absolutely no desire to live here. They appreciate the lifestyle, the culture, and the many things that the city has to offer… but their main complaint was the business environment. They say there’s a different set of values in business. What people say and what they do can be entirely different things…
We have not experienced this ourselves. People have kept their word in our dealings… That’s because these people understand how important ethics are to a lasting and successful business. Sure, you can screw someone once or twice, but that’s it… Then you’ll no longer have the opportunity to do business with them, or their contacts, again… Especially in this internet age, word gets around, fast… Reputation is important in South America. If you’re careful and deal with the right people you can reap the substantial opportunities that exist down here.
To find some good contacts, I recommend the Argentina Owner’s Manual from International Living. It doesn’t cost a lot, but could save and make you a lot of money if you’re thinking about doing business in Argentina.
When we first left Florida for Buenos Aires the real estate bubble had just burst… or, maybe it had popped months earlier, but people were only then realizing it… Now it continues to slide. Many of the bright red ‘for sale’ signs have faded to a pink in the Florida sun…
Most people we know are pretty savvy real estate investors (or savvy enough not to be real estate investors at that time). They weren’t really effected too much by this, but we’ve heard of some people in serious trouble… who bought way more than they could possibly afford. When the market went south, these people were caught with massive mortgage payments and negative equity.
The Buenos Aires market is humming with little or no credit. That was the problem with much of the US boom is that it was funded by creative and risky mortgages. So, there’s a theory among real estate speculators in BA, that when the Argentine banks do offer mortgages (and they’re supposed to in the near future) that BA real estate will really take off.
The BA market is still cheap relative to other major world cities… It’s this perceived value that’s driving the market. However, as prices continue to rise, they’ll reach a point when this value no longer exists in the eyes of buyers (other than the speculators) then price increases will slow, stop, or fall… As we expats and Portenos enjoy this boom, we need to keep our eyes out for that time. It may well be a long way off, but you never know…
We’re still in Florida where it’s warm… But reports from back home in Argentina say that it’s gotten damn cold, in the 20’s and 30’s. It’s late fall in BA, so, this extra cold wave comes as a surprise.
There’s been a spike in electrical and gas usage: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&refer=latin_america&sid=av0tvGQPKLKU which has caused Argentina to withhold some gas exports from Chile.
The cold is the only thing we’re not looking forward to on our return trip to BA…
We covered a lot of ground this weekend, visiting touristy and not-so-touristy sights.
This is what a “strip-mall” looks like in San Telmo…
The other side of Puerto Madera, where locals come on Sunday to relax with their families.
Street performers draw crowds along the banks of where the Puerto Madera land reserve begins…
The tall and modern buildings are springing up like weeds…
The stairway of the Decorative Arts museum.
A walk through Plaza de Mayo past the Casa Rosada…
A corner of the famous Cafe Tortoni.
We have a friend who’s buying an apartment here in BA. He let us tag along throughout the process… which allows us to give you a simplified overview of how it works…
We learned about the three main stages in the buying process… the Reserva, the Boleto, and the Title Deed.
The Reserva is pretty much like going under contract in the US. It’s making an offer and putting a token amount down to engage the seller.
Next is the Boleto, which is typically a few weeks after the Reserva is signed. At this stage the buyer forks over around 30% of the purchase price. And the Seller hands over all the title documents to the buyer’s Notary.
Now, there really isn’t any title insurance here in Argentina, like we have in the US. The Notary is your title insurance, so, you want someone with a great reputation.
The Boleto itself is a bill of sale, that outlines the specific terms of the transaction. Once signed it binds the buyer legally to the property. The seller can’t back-out at this point.
Then, at the Title Deed stage, the buyer pays the balance of the sale price and the seller signs the deed over to the buyer…
Now, as a foreign buyer, the trickiest part is getting the money for each of these stages.
As we understand it, there are three main ways of doing this and many variations… You can:
- Make a wire transfer from your bank to a bank in Argentina (or sometimes via Uruguay) then the bank gives you cash, that you give to the seller. This is done in a secure location, and you basically push the cash across the table and the seller counts it… (costs about 2.5%)
- Buy Argentine bonds and then turn them into cash, or transfer ownership to the seller. (costs about 1%)
- Transfer money from your account in the US, to the seller’s account in the US. (costs about 1%)
The first method is the most common. The last two are more sophisticated and require a more sophisticated and cooperative seller. Also, these methods are not necessarily recognized by the Argentine government.
Tax-avoidance is much more commonplace here than what we’re used to. When you buy, there’s typically a difference between the actual sale price and the reported sale price, so that the seller can avoid some tax. And as the buyer you can avoid some too.
There’s some ‘black money’ in the transaction when this is the case, which complicates matters slightly. This practice, while still common, is being increasingly scrutinzed by Argentine tax authorities…
Above all, the most important thing is to have good people helping you through this. A good lawyer to represent you and help you get the money together, and a good real estate agent to deal with the seller.
We’ve glossed over a lot, but hopefully have given you a some-what accurate overview of the buying process. But we’ll probably have some actual experts on this topic write in to tell us, that we are mis-representing the process entirely. If they do, we’ll be sure and share that and whatever else we learn with you dear reader…
With friends in town we’ve been going out to eat a lot lately… Visiting these restaurants has really affirmed something we’ve thought since we got here… Argentines know food and how to cook!
The ingredients, the execution, and presentation are of very high-quality in most of the better restaurants. The steak goes with out saying, but we’ve been impressed with so many other dishes as well…
We’re going to go way out on a limb, and venture that, unless you’re a multi-millionaire who can afford the outrageous prices of nicer establishments in New York or Paris, Buenos Aires offers some of the best options for great cuisine anywhere in the world.
The salmon, in the salmon sushi is amazing… We’ve heard it comes from Barlioche, near the border with Chile, and from Chile itself…
And the vino, oh the vino… so many great whites and reds, you can hardly ever go wrong…
We’re going to put together a list for you, dear reader, of restaurants we’ve enjoyed, and recommendations from some trusted sources…
“Everyday in Buenos Aires is a relentless battle for cambio.” That was what an acquaintance told us when we were newly arrived in the city… It struck us as silly then.
But, oh how true it is… The conspicuous $100 peso note ($30USD) inspires fear and loathing in the hearts of cab-drivers and cashiers across the city… The reason for this is partially because of all the counterfeit currency in circulation. But it boarders on the ridiculous as you’re driven to desperate lengths in search of small bills…
Yet again, upon arriving at our destination with nothing but one of these dreaded hundreds we had to run around in the night, like a chicken with our head cut-off, in search of the coveted cambio.
Yes, we were prepared earlier in the night. We had cambio. But cambio has a way of disappearing like you wouldn’t believe…
We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Last night’s taxi ride brought us from our first tango show, the ultimate Buenos Aires tourist event… With a visitor in town we figured we might as well take the plunge. So we signed ourselves up for a dinner and show at Esquina Homero Manzi in Boedo. Manzi apparently was a famous tango lyrics writer in the 40’s. He wrote his first show when he was 14 years-old…
The ambiance seemed authentic. The music and the dancing were very nice. We weren’t bowled-over by it. But it was memorable. The food, however, not so much…
It’s inspired us to check out some more tango shows in San Telmo. We bought the musicians’ CD at the show. And we’ll probably listening to more tango music… All and all a good experience, just next time, we’re bringing more cambio…
