Things to Know About Traveling to Argentina in 2016

I’m on my second day here in Buenos Aires, Argentina and am slowly figuring out how life works here.  Here are a few of the things I didn’t know about that others may find useful.

• How to get from the airport (EZE) to Buenos Aires:
  • When you arrive at the airport in Buenos Aires (EZE), there isn’t really a way to get to Buenos Aires via train.  I’m sure there is a bus, but most people take taxis.  You have a number of options, but most of the taxis take cash only.  However, there are a few that will take a credit card. You pay in advance and they’ll drop you off at your destination.  I used WorldCar, but there is also TiendaLeon, which is highly recommended.  These are called “Remis.”  You can get one of these just after you clear customs (which is after immigration) but before you walk out into the area where non-ticketed passengers are.
• Getting money out of an ATM:
  • I was planning on using my debit card to get cash at an ATM when I got to the airport since I arrived after the government had gotten rid of the “blue rate” for exchanging currency and everything was a standard exchange rate.  I don’t use the money changers (e.g., Travelex) as they screw you over big time (your credit/debit card company will give you a good or the best rate).  Turns out, every single ATM in the airport was out of cash.  So, that sucked.  That’s why I was glad to find the Remis (see point above) that took a credit card.  I’ve since tried three other ATMs in various locations around Buenos Aires and my debit card doesn’t work in any of them.  I needed some cash to pay for a few things and started getting desperate.  Eventually I found out about Xoom. If you’ve got a checking/savings account in the US, this is a great, cheap way to send yourself some money.  They have a lot of places where you can pick up the cash (the primary locations are “]More[: Money Transfers” or “Giros” with a fair number of locations).  This worked really well for me.
• Buying groceries
  • Now that people actually want to use credit/debit cards because there aren’t multiple rates for everything, any time you want to use a credit/debit card, you’ll need ID.  If you’re a foreigner, that means a passport.  I went to buy some groceries my first day here without knowing that and they almost didn’t let me purchase them.  I gave them my driver’s license, since I had it with me, and they let me buy the groceries, but be prepared to show your passport whenever you use your credit card.
• SIM cards and cellphones
  • I brought my LG G3 from Sprint (I use ting.com as my carrier).  It has dual modes, so it will work on LTE or GSM.  I used it last year in Ireland, but it takes some configuring to get it working on GSM networks.  The day I got here, I bought a SIM card from Movistar for about $3.00 US, but for some reason you can’t actually pay Movistar for service.  You have to use a Pago Facil location to pay your bill.  The closest one to me has a line that takes forever (nearly an hour).  Also, they only take cash.  So, be prepared for this.  (FYI, the latest iterations of the Android OS for the LG G3 removed the option to adjust the APN; I had to download an app to let me do this after setting the network to GSM.  Once I did that and got the settings from Muvistar’s website, I finally get internet access on my phone.)
• Cars and Traffic
  • I’ve already almost been hit by cars multiple times.  Cars don’t yield to pedestrians.  Be very cautious!
• Uber
  • Going to try Uber tomorrow.  I’ll post here how it goes.