Discovering Buenos Aires

Back in the 60s and 70s the British invasion consisted of iconic bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and Led Zepplin taking the US by storm, and rightly so…

In the 80s there was an action movie called ‘Invasion USA’ consisting of a narco-terror group sneaking into the US and their inevitable demise at the hands of Chuck Norris in his prime…

The recent forced hype surrounding the Beckhams’ relocation to LA from the UK more resembles the latter invasion rather than the former to us, but of course in a less threatening way… (and thankfully for the Beckhams, Chuck Norris is not involved, at least not yet…)

The frat-like-metrosexual-pop-futbol-star is cool out on the pitch, and his fembot-chav-contrived-popstar-wife looks the part… But are they cool enough for LA?

You bet they are!

And they’ve got the cash to buy their way in anywhere… 

We admire the organizational and promotional efforts by their media team to attempt a coup in the US ‘celeb’ marketplace… It seems by all measures to be an impressive, well thought-out, mulifaceted, multimedia approach… all they have to do now is shake the perceived forcedness of the campaign…

But don’t we already have enough empty headed subjects for our empty headed media…? Do we really need to import more? Maybe so, there’s evidently room in the American celebritard consciousness… And thank goodness for that!!

Anyway, at least we can hide from it all down here way south of the border… if we really wanted to…

This post was supposed to be about self-worth, and how it doesn’t really matter what you look like as long as you enjoy life and do something productive. But we got derailed by those damn Beckhams.

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

Real Estate Booms and Busts

Buying Real Estate in Argentina, The Process

An Italian Palace on the Cheap

A Bit of Hedging

BA Real Estate Tapped Out?

Property We Passed On

Real Estate Drama

Sausage Houses the Problem with Soho

The World’s Best Value

Francis Ford Coppola Buys Petit Hotel in Palermo Soho

Petit Hotels for Sale

Seeking Value in Belgrano

Immediately Under Contract

Palermo Soho, Palmero Viejo

Tempting Property

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.

We must apologize, dear reader, for our sluggish editorializing on your behalf of late… That’s because we’ve been two-timing you… We’ve fallen into the embrace of another, blog, a political blog no less…

Much of our free time has gone towards promoting the candidacy of presidential hopeful, Texas Congressman Ron Paul at: http://goronpaul.blogspot.com/

We’re not really even ‘in to’ politics, but Dr. Paul, actually has us excited…

I know, I know, this is a blog about Buenos Aires. What do American politics have to do with anything? Well, as an American living overseas, it has a lot to do with it actually…

The US is powerful and highly influential around the world. Argentines know a lot about the US and American politics… because it affects them… You’ve probably heard that Argentina is anti-American, that’s true in a sense. But they, like most people in the world, understand the difference between the American people, and the US government.

Why don’t they like us? Well, I’m not going to get into the entire history of economic and political relations between the US and Latin America… but it comes down to the fact that they don’t like us pushing them around, manipulating things in the region, and acting with favoratism towards some countries and not others. You can argue till you’re blue in the face about whether we do this or not. But you’d be hard-pressed to deny that we don’t throw our weight around down here…

The fact is that our image as a bastion of democracy and economic prosperity is tainted by our bullying… So called, ‘foreign aid’ is used for political gain… We practice protectionism in agriculture to help American farmers, however the vast majority of those benefiting are in fact large corporations… In the past we have supported oppressive and anti-democratic regimes to advance our own self-interest.

Ron Paul is the only presidential contender who will put a stop to all that… Paul will end all foreign aid. He’ll put a stop to ‘corporate welfare’ and protectionism. He will put an end to our military-adventurism overseas. He will bring our military, currently occuping over 100 countries, home. He will close the thousands of overseas military bases. He’ll protect the US borders instead of the border between Iraq and Jordan…

He is a non-interventionist, not an isolationist… Look at how we trade with Vietnam now, how much better that works than fighting them and losing 50,000+ lives… Trade, not war seems like a good motto to me…

Then, we can stop ignoring Latin America and help them the best way possible which is to trade with them… and not the corporate sponsored, trade organization sort of (NAFTA)trade either, but real ‘free trade’ that brings prices down and increases the quality of goods and services.

By doing this we’ll make a lot more friends than enemies.

There’s a lot more that can be said about all this, but we’ll leave it at that.

Please take a moment to look into Ron Paul and see what he’s about. At his official website: http://www.ronpaul2008.com or my other blog at: http://goronpaul.blogspot.com/

(Also, be sure and check out the videos about him on Youtube.com… There’s a very interesting online grass-roots campaign swirling around the man.)

You might not like his positions on everything, but, he is honest and has real integrity. You can vote for him and not feel like you have to take a shower afterwards… Why take one of the ‘lesser of two (very evil) evils’ when you don’t have to?

Here’s Ron Paul at a recent appearance on Bill Maher’s show…

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.