Nov/097
The Last Three Months
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Well, it’s been almost three months since I posted to my blog and I feel like an update is in order. Since writing my last post after crossing from Argentina to Chile a lot has happened. Here are the highlights:
- I spent a week with a friend in Santiago, Chile.
- I did some wine tours in Mendoza, Argentina.
- I went to Cordoba, Argentina to visit a girl from last year’s Oktoberfest in Villa General Belgrano only to discover she was “muy de novia” (very much in a relationship).
- I spent 10 days in a hostel in Buenos Aires where I discovered how 8 strangers’ lives could come together at the right time and we could somehow get along as well as old high school friends. I don’t usually make great friends with backpackers so this particular group was a rare find (well, only a couple were technically “backpackers”).
- A friend from Sao Paulo, Brazil invited me to her home town Lima, Peru for a week where I got to experience great food (ceviche and more) and great parties (pisco sours and more).
- I went to Cusco, Peru, the city that used to be covered in gold–complete with gold-plated buildings and plazas with mock corn crops and gardens made of gold. All of that was melted down and sent to Spain hundreds of years ago of course.
- I climbed up to Machu Picchu alone… at 3am… without a flash light.
- I witnessed the most incredible view of my life: the view sitting at the top of Wayna Picchu.
- I suffered through “Bolivia Belly” which I got from a llama steak in La Paz and the accompanying melancholy of being lonely and sick at the same time.
- At the lowest point of my trip, I had lunch with a friend from a boat party in Miami two years ago. He tipped me off that there was something more to Bolivia than sickness, coldness, dirtiness, poverty and ugly people. The Promised Land: Santa Cruz.
- After turning down a 1-hour flight for $900, I suffered through an 18-hour bus ride from La Paz to Santa Cruz on a “local’s bus”, the highlights of which were: no heat in the cold mountains as we drove out of La Paz, sitting next to smelly locals on a smelly bus, being awoken at 2am by the sound of a large pipe flying through the windshield and hitting the glass behind the bus driver (3 inches above his head) nearly decapitating him and sending us off a steep cliff, no A/C in the sweltering jungle heat when the sun came up, vomiting and defecating in the lavatory every hour or so.
- I arrived in Santa Cruz emaciated and miserable. I booked a plane ticket home within an hour of arriving at my hotel.
- Just getting my health back from being the sickest I’ve been in my life, I went to a fair and met a nice girl who went to lunch with me the next day, 4 hours before my flight home.
- At lunch, I really liked the girl so I took a chance on love and changed my flight for a week later.
- After getting home to Tampa, I’ve been busy working very hard. I went to the Bahamas for 4 days and went on a business trip to New York for Ad:Tech.
- I just booked a plane ticket to go back to Santa Cruz, Bolivia to continue my adventures.
That’s been my life for the last three months. Now that this blog is updated I won’t hesitate to post more often.
Aug/092
Argentina to Chile
I had high expectations for you, Bariloche: Skiing the most beautiful off-piste the Andes has to offer by day. Partying with hoards of Brazilian tourists by night. (Although in Argentina, Bariloche’s lifeblood is Brazilian tourism… so much so that it is called “Braziloche”.)
If only it had snowed instead of drizzled ice bits and freezing rain for twenty days (worst South American snow season in 15 years). If only the Swine Flu hadn’t scared 90% of Brazilians into canceling their vacations.
Oh, and Thoreau, mi amigo, you forgot to mention one thing: Cabins are boring and lonely places.
For me, Bariloche was Boriloche. By day, I found myself in a Walden-esque cabin waiting for snow that never came, passing the time working on my computer. By night, I found myself in an Irish bar called Wilkenny drinking beers with an Irish backpacker/ski bum, pondering what our lives would be like if the Brazilians had shown up.
Then I got an email from a friend in Santiago, Chile, inviting me to visit her. I had already paid for my cabin for two more weeks, but I jumped on the opportunity to leave. A little rent money lost and a 16-hour bus ride was a cheap price to pay for my happiness and sanity. So here I am in Santiago.
Aug/090
My Argentine Diet
Argentina has the best food on the planet. Thanks to superior breeding, there’s no doubt they have the best beef on the planet. Thanks to irrigation from the Andes, their wine is consistently excellent. Their Spanish, Italian, German and Swiss food is arguably better than what you’ll eat in Spain, Italy, Germany or Switzerland (with few exceptions). If you love food, you’ll love Argentina.
Dinner:
The staples of my Argentine diet: Medallon de lomo (filet mignon) and Malbec.
Lunch:
Choripan... "Chorizo" + "Pan"
I think I need to take some cooking classes here.
Jul/093
Leaving Medellin and Arriving in Bariloche
“What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two; melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land” - Che Guevara, Diarios de Motocicleta
Leaving Medellin was difficult emotionally. I had lived there for three months and had begun creating a life there. When I left, I was leaving a place I had begun to consider home and people who I had come to love. I could have happily continued living there for a year or two.
I felt the “melancholy for what was left behind” on the entire flight to Argentina, wondering “Why did I leave?” It wasn’t until after I arrived and started walking around the town of Bariloche that I felt “the excitement of entering a new land”. I realized how much I had missed the culture and people of Argentina. I headed down to the square of this Swiss-German-Italian-Spanish ski town, bought a “choripan” from the “choripan man” and then sat on the shores of the lake eating and admiring the beauty of the lake and mountains.
When was the last time you were in awe of Nature? It had been a long time since Nature struck me with its beauty the way Bariloche is doing. This is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to in my life. I’ll fill you in with more details of the town later, but here’s the view from my cabin:
View from my cabin in Bariloche, Argentina
I’m happy to be back in Argentina. I had missed this country and its people. Since I’m in a town that is new to me, I’ve just pushed the reset button on my life again. Time to go find new friends, new love, etc.
Jul/093
How Fluctuating Currency Rates Can Affect Your Travels
In my former career as a currency trader at a hedge fund in Cyprus, I learned a thing or two about analyzing and predicting the directions of markets. Yes, I’ve thrown out my suit and tie and found less stressful ways to make a living, but all that knowledge is still stored there in the back of my mind and it actually is useful sometimes. Today, instead of using charts to do currency trading, I use them to chart my “lifestyle trading”. Here’s how. . .
Can currency exchange rates really make a difference in your experience while traveling?
Well if you’re a trust fund baby, maybe it doesn’t make a big difference (nothing wrong being one by the way). But if you’re like me and you’re making your own living to support yourself while traveling, it can make a difference. It doesn’t matter if you’re going to be on a “dirt-poor backpacker” budget or on a “beach-front condo/party like a rock star” budget (I’m happy with either lifestyle). If you have a budget, currency exchange rates will probably affect your experience and your wallet.
Of course, I would never plan my travels around currency exchange rates. If that was my thing, I’d be throwing back some ice-cold Thule with blond girls in Iceland right now. I’ll go where I want to when I want to, but knowing what exchange rates are doing can be helpful for budgeting and planning.
For example, on my last trip to Brazil in November and December of 2008, I happened to be there for the best Brazilian Real to USD conversion rate in over three years.
Edit 07/10/2010: With excellent timing, I was able to get a great deal on Brazil--saving me a few thousand in the month I was in Brazil. The original blog post had the currency situation in Brazil mixed up.
Did this currency situation have an effect on the cost of my trip? Sure it did. First of all, Brazil isn’t cheap (unlike most of its South American neighbors). But by going when I went, it was about 30% less expensive than if I had gone three months prior. That means that instead of spending $6000 on food/trips/rent/drinks that month I spent about $4000 (I don’t know what my actual expenses were).
The good news for all of us travelers is that the global recession is good for the US Dollar (which is still a safe-haven currency, meaning people turn to dollars when the global economy gets sketchy). Since I was last in Brazil, it has become about 25% more expensive for US visitors, which is bad news for this pimp I know who is in Medellin and heading to Brazil soon (and good news for me too if my “unfixed plans” work out as planned and I end up in Brazil later this year).
Currency exchange rates may not matter much when visiting countries such as Colombia where it is always cheap and due to their dependency on heavy trade with the US they tend to maintain a fairly level exchange rate, but in ten days I’ll be going to Argentina so I started to check out the Argentine Peso to USD exchange rates. It turns out that it’s a great time to go to Argentina.
As you can see in the chart below, the Argentine Peso/USD exchange rate hasn’t been this good (or bad if you’re Argentinian) since the end of Argentina’s economic meltdown of 1999 to 2003.
Granted, things in Argentina are not as cheap as they were during the 1999-2003 meltdown (when people couldn't withdraw money from their bank accounts and prices crashed), but the exchange rate is about as good as you can ask for.
This great exchange rate might not last long. Unless Argentina has another financial meltdown (which is not out of the question due to their ridiculous export taxes and knowing that something disastrous is likely to happen to Argentina’s economy every 6 or 7 years), it will probably not break into all-time-highs . . . What I mean to say is if Argentina’s economic house of cards stays upright, the recent trend will probably reverse and this might be the best time to visit Argentina for a while.
Edit: Another possible cause for a reversal would be if we are on the verge of a global economic recovery (no matter how short-lived it might be) and the capital that fled to the US for safety is brought back into other, “riskier” markets thus devaluing the USD.
When we “zoom in” on the recent trend to see what our chances are of making a new high, we don’t see any solid signs of reversal just yet. From the chart below, we really can’t tell if it will continue higher or reverse. The uptrend has slowed down, but has not shown any signs of reversing (by making new lows). Argentinians want cheap exports, but I think the 3.00-3.20 is the range they want their currency in. Anything higher and imports are too expensive… anything lower than 3.00 and their exports will crash (tasty Argentinian steaks and wine would get too expensive).
Can't tell what will happen with the peso just yet. It has slowed its uptrend, but there are no signs of reversal.
In the next couple months, we will see what the Brazilian Real and Argentine Peso do in comparison to the USD. Although both currency pairs are at strong resistance levels and have slowed down in their uptrends, neither has yet shown strong signs of reversal.
If I were to trade these currencies, I would need to dig deeper to make a more definitive trading plan. That job was so stressful! Since I don’t have to worry about that anymore, I’ll just continue “lifestyle trading” and fly to Bariloche, Argentina next week to get a bargain on my ski trip.
