01.20.12

Best ice cream ever

Posted in Travel at 12:34 by RjZ

Even compared to Italy? That’s what everyone says when I say Argentina has the best ice cream in the world. Yup. Italian ice is amazing. And it’s served in more extravagant concoctions than ice cream from an Argentine heladeria (ice cream shop). Argentine ice cream is obviously influenced by the Italian variety, but where Italians rarely serve their sweet confections in a cone, opting for artful glass bowls and adding cookies and toppings, most heladerias stuff a waffle cone full and then swirl another flavor on top in a staggeringly tall cone of goodness, and that’s it.

Shops offer dozens of flavors, including multiple variations on Argentine favorite dulce de leche. Most are handmade in the shop and, while it’s possible to find Ola and Nestle and other world famous brands of packaged ice cream at convenience stores, it’s not clear why anyone would want to.

Ice cream is just as popular in hot and humid Buenos Aires as it is at 11:00 at night in cold and windy Patagonia. There doesn’t seem to be a time or reason necessary for ice cream and we saw kids and adults wandering in shops or sitting down to enjoy a lick any time they could. Once we’d tried it, we could see why.

But why? It’s smooth and creamy and never icy. Where U.S ice cream (which is quite good, thank you very much…nobody has more flavors than Americans do!) often separates into a bit of water and melt if you don’t eat fast enough, Argentine helado which was soft enough to easily scrape out of the the buckets was also consistent enough to remain unmelted the whole time. The helado was sweet, of course, but fruit flavors like Patagonia’s famous Calafate berry (legend states that once tasted, you must return to Patagonia) were aromatic and tart, while ubiquitous dulce de leche tasted of warmth and baking.

Or maybe it’s the way it’s always stirred and swirled, like American chain Cold Stone. Or maybe it’s all natural and homemade? Or maybe it’s all the terrible industrial chemicals and polymers that they have yet to forbid in latin American? All I know for sure is that this is stuff you just sit there marveling at while eating and wondering if maybe you should order another couple of cones and just skip dinner!

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01.12.12

Because UNESCO told me so

Posted in Travel at 17:40 by RjZ

I feel sorry for Uruguay. I didn’t see very much of it, and I am quite sure it’s a lovely place with friendly people, untouched beaches, and plenty to do. And heck, they clearly have some very effective people doing their public relations, because Colonia del Sacramento sure gets raves. It’s even a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Except, I really can’t see why.

That’s not to say the tiny town isn’t worth visiting. The barrio histórico (historical neighborhood) is lined with original cobbled streets and 18th century houses. The town is historically interesting as a pirate’s den and black market trading zone and even today celebrates it’s history a free trade zone and an extremely popular destination for ferries from Buenos Aires.

The thing is, it costs $128 for two people to take the ferry over and you either have to arrive and leave the same day with only a few hours to visit (this is what you should do) or spend the night so you’ll have enough time to take in the multiple museums in this, like I said, UNESCO World Heritage site (do this only if you have a long trip and time to kill).

While we were deciding between those options I was considering all the World Heritage Sites I’ve been to. On this trip, we’d just been to Los Glaciares National Park and walked on a river of ice moving two meters per day. (Tour not withstanding, the Perito Moreno glacier is not to be missed.) World Heritage Sites don’t disappoint. A complete list of sites shows some of world’s unmistakable destinations.Khajaraho, India is on there. Regensburg, Germany is there. Angkor Wat made the list as well. So lofty is the list that the Eiffel Tower doesn’t make it. Neuschwanstein Castle doesn’t rate either. With that in mind, the bus price and a night’s stay make sense, and at the end of the day, I figured it would be cheaper than making it up to another UNESCO site, Iguazu Falls. One site is as good as another, right?

That’s why, after about an hour walking through the town, I started to wonder who paid off the folks at UNESCO to include Colonia? According to UNESCO, sites have to be nominated and then they are selected based a list of criteria. The best I can figure, Colonia get’s un under the wire based on:

2. to exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design;

Not that the town was “planned.” It was handed back and forth between the Portuguese and Spanish half a dozen times but I suppose that exchange represents a “significant interchange of human values.” Colonia is now doubt important to Uruguay and to its history. No wonder school children were roaming its streets on field trips. That’s fine! And I can’t knock them for promoting the little town, it was, indeed, fairly charming. It’s just that I expected a bit more from a UNESCO registered site and had I known, I might have spent less time, or just forked over the cash for the Iguazu Falls.

So go. Have lunch, enjoy. If you’re in the area, and there wasn’t much chance I’d be in Uruguay any time soon, I’d even recommend it. Just know what you’re getting. While you’re there, see if you can tell me who they had to pay to get listed. ‘Cause I’m thinking Louisville, Colorado needs to be included too!

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01.09.12

Look, new fonts!

Posted in 2¢ at 17:30 by RjZ

In junior high I decorated my text book covers with hand drawn letters and designs strongly influenced by Manchester designer Peter Saville. Don’t know him? He created iconic album covers for bands like Ultravox and the famous Joy Division Unknown Pleasures which I still see on t-shirts today. (Isn’t that an oldie? Get on with it kids, that (great) album was released in 1979!)

I remember playing with my dot-matrix ImageWriter II and being impressed with a new found array of fonts. Logical favorite then was “Ransom” designed by Susan Kare (she also designed the original mac icons!)

When the LaserWriter came out I wound up printing whole binders full of font samples. I took them oddly, naturally, and had an uncanny ability to identify font from samples. With so much proliferation of fonts, ugly and amazing, copies and variations, I no longer can just look at a font and tell its name. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about them.

So, have a look, I’m trying out Google Web Fonts. Did they make this page too long to download? Can you see the difference and do you like it? Let me know what you think. Bonus if you can name the fonts….

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01.03.12

Hey, no Big Macs!

Posted in Travel at 18:25 by RjZ

Food is one of the joys of travel. Savvy travelers make a point to try local delicacies whether they’re proffered by gourmet restaurants or from street vendors carts. I’ve always favored the street vendors above all, because it is this food that most surely represents what local people eat.

Upon arrival in Buenos Aires we made our way to the weekly antique market in San Telmo and, hungry from a whole night of flying, made a beeline to the first street vendors we saw. Empanadas we’re served warm from a basket and other young bohemians we’re walking along the market streets offering sandwiches and even cakes. We tried the empanadas and a pan relleno, and, well, um, meh.

Turns out, San Telmo’s market really is catering to tourists (so much for my theory on street food). Porteños (Buenos Aires locals) don’t really believe in eating standing up, they take time to sit down and have a meal.

Even elsewhere in Argentina, there were almost no street vendors to be seen. Once more, home grown Argentine fast food is almost completely absent as well. I spotted a couple of McDonald’s and perhaps a few other representatives of the global juggernaut of fast-food corporations that homogenize the world over and are the opposite of what many adventurers are looking for. Upon closer inspection, many bakeries and several deli’s offered food to-go and plenty of restaurants have comidas para llevar (take-away meals) but it you have to look for it. Fast-food and take-away food just aren’t a big part of the Argentine culture.

This should be music to any foodies ears, except, they’d be making some pretty big assumptions. Is there automatically something wrong with quickly prepared meals? Ask the Thai, who barely need their own kitchen for the staggering abundance of amazing food served from carts. Mmm, pad thai. Mmm, chili mangos. Tell that to Mexicans. Much of the Mexican food served in sit-down restaurants outside of Mexico, from tacos to churros, is more authentically served from carts in-country. Tell that to the Chinese who whip up dozens of dishes from menus pages and pages long all in just minutes, and to the Chinese who frequently spend about as much time eating it as the chefs took to prepare it. Time is hardly an accurate qualifier for food.

It certainly is interesting how successfully Argentina has resisted an invasion of world-brands and U.S. American fast-food culture, but I can’t really say it’s made their food any better. Argentine food consists of loads and loads of their famous beef, served in hundreds of parrilla’s (barbecues) around the nation. Here, fine cuts of meat are cooked to death, and asking for your food rare might get you a dry medium. It’s good quality meat, but hard to see what all the rage is about. There are plenty of pleasant pastas, with the same small vocabulary of sauces available at nearly every restaurant (sauces are separate and sometimes included such creative choices as tomato juice). Pizzas are damn good, but, um, that’s mostly it. They’re not big fans of spices, and don’t have much variety in the way of sauces. We had some delicious meals and plenty of boring ones. We ate in nice places, with tourists, moderate places recommended by locals, and dives that we found on our own; food was, well, just fine and not particularly cheap (about the same as in the U.S. or Europe).

It is a very pleasant change not to even have to avoid all the fast-food chains or lament how their own food culture is being destroyed by globalization. All the more odd there seemed relatively little food culture to protect.

The ice-cream, though? Amazing. Probably the best in the world. Really. But that requires a whole post of its own.

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01.02.12

It had a pi key!

Posted in Society at 18:32 by RjZ

Thirty years ago, Commodore announced the world’s most popular computer, the Commodore64. I had a VIC20 at the time and the Commodore64 was as huge an upgrade as any gadget upgrade today. The screen had twice the resolution, and more colors; you could program your own sounds, and, with unbelievably laborious effort, one byte at a time, create animated sprites which would be the building blocks of your own, homemade video games.

Kids had game consoles, like the original Atari, or later, Nintendo, and they were fun. The C64 had plenty of games too, and my thumbs were pretty sore after hours of Loderunner, but I learned to type by repeatedly entering in programs in BASIC. I still type commands like RUN or LIST as fast as if they’re single letters on a keyboard. I wasn’t a particularly good programmer, but there was something amazing about getting the little beige box to do things for you. I programmed it to play little tunes on its built in synthesizer and eventually to play tic-tac-toe. I remember sometimes getting so swallowed up in a programming problem I would be thinking about adding features or how do to something new when I was supposed to be doing homework; and this thing was supposed to help me in school!

Still, I was a low-level geek at the time. My own programming masterpiece , a skiing game where a little skier could be moved left and right to avoid trees rushing up toward him from the bottom of the screen, received a little play at school. Other kids were scanning assembly code from cracked commercial games like they were reading the matrix. I think all those kids must be rich now, long retired, traveling the world with their gorgeous wives and donating large sums of money to cure malaria.

But now, there will be a new personal computer, the Raspberry PC, which, like the old C64 requires you to attach it to your own television (and worse, you’ll need an extra old mouse and keyboard). The Commodore was cheap, but this new PC will be available for a mere $25. Like the C64, all you’ll see when you turn it on is a lonely little prompt, probably a flashing colon. That lonely prompt is an invitation; a challenge, waiting for you to turn the lump of bits inside into your own masterpiece.

I want today’s kids to create their own programs, from scratch. Programs that don’t really do much at all. Programs that say “Hello, world.” or print their names in flowing patterns looped down the screen. Some of kids will take this tiny computer and do amazing things with it, maybe making their own robots, or who new devices. I can’t wait to see it.


Except, when I started writing this, I was afraid all we’d never see it. Kids today, and adults too, have so much opportunity to be entertained, they find little time to create. And the remaining creative ones have such a big hurdle to get over. How can they impressed by my little skiing program, after playing Wii sports for a half an hour? How are they going to feel being stared down by that menacing prompt, and the initial, unimpressive results, with an XBOX or PS3 in the other room?

Of course, distraction and demotivation will, sadly, be true for many, but I know, from the literally millions of apps at the Apple and Google application stores, from the music sharing sites, deviant art and flickr, that, thankfully, creativity is not dead. Given the tools, some of us will go on to make amazing things. At only $25, many more kids will be able be able make their own digital magic, even if they are only simple text adventures, or maybe their own version of asteroids.
Too bad. though, the Raspberry PC won’t have a pi key like the Commodore.

That was cool.

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12.29.11

Replace with black

Posted in 2¢ at 14:11 by RjZ

Go have a look at this article about Catholic charities pulling out of Illinois because they feel their religious freedom is being trampled. Before you go, do this one thing for me, would you? Replace “same-sex” with “black” (and, to make the point more clearly, replace “gay” with “negro”) and read on.

That this is really a civil-rights issue and not one of religious freedom becomes painfully obvious in this light and makes such arguments thin and perhaps a bit embarrassing. Should Catholic bishops (and everyone else) be entitled to religious freedom? Of course, but civil-rights, the rights of citizens in our democracy, must always trump religious freedom. It is through this simple test that we’re not entitled, for example, to permit ritual sacrifice of virgins, in the name of religious freedom. It is with this logic that we were finally able to shake off the shackles of religious tolerance for slavery, even when religion was incapable of doing so alone.

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12.26.11

Netflix for hotels

Posted in Travel at 14:37 by RjZ

When I started traveling to countries far enough away to require a passport, I found places to sleep because they were in an international youth hostel directory. Later, branching out to destinations beyond a widespread network of hostels, I tried guidebooks, and even frequently noticed that touts aren’t such a bad idea. All that was before the internet.

Booking a hotel in advance goes against my grain. It seems so limiting to have signed up to be at a given place on a given day when you’re not even sure what it’s going to take to get there, let alone what you’ll be forced to miss by moving on too soon. Not to mention that the online pictures and reviews may wind up having little to do with the room that you finally sleep in.

Back in the day, I would arrive in a city and walk from budget hotel to budget hotel checking out the bathroom and ceiling fan situation in prospective rooms until I found something that seemed like a fair bargain. If the city was too big to walk, most budget destinations would have cheap enough transport to get you to another room even if the first few weren’t acceptable. Today, much has changed. The world’s standard of living has increased enough that tuc tucs and rickshaws aren’t nearly as common any more (hey–we’re only talking 20 years here–things change fast) and inexpensive air travel has brought plane loads of people and their wallets to places who now know what tourists can afford and price things accordingly.

The internet has made even guidebooks a bit superfluous. Back then selecting a hotel from a list of budget choices in the book meant hoping that the reviewer had a similar idea about what is important to you and what isn’t. Today, crowd-sourced websites offer to sort reviews of hotels, not from a single travel writer, but from dozens and dozens of random people; some of whom describe the reception as unfriendly, and the party-scene as totally not happening, while others think the same hotel was spotless and in a perfect location (I’ll take that one!). Hopefully, budget hotels will be well represented on the internet as they cater to a young clientele who are never too far away from Facebook. Now, planning a trip can be done with a web browser and a credit card.

Early on, I was selecting from hotels I could easily get to after arriving and seeing, in person, whether the room was to my liking or not. I was able to book when I arrived, and be free as a bird until then. Of course, getting to a range of hotels takes up a whole bunch of time, requires you to arrive early, often means taking whatever is left. Booking ahead, meanwhile opens you up to unpleasant surprises and requires you to select from only those hotels actually listed on the internet. How can you decide which strategy is best?

Simple enough: if your destination is so remote that internet is hard to find a coke bottle falling from the sky is thought to be a gift from the gods, then the two hotels you find on the internet may well be your only choice, more likely than not, there will be some alternatives who just don’t have access to the internet to promote their lodgings. It’s a judgment call, but winding up in a five-star hotel when a charming backpacker’s hotel was next door can be frustrating. If, on the other hand, where you’re headed is well-wired, there is a good chance that searching online is a good representation of your search in real-life; but you can do it before your trip and don’t have to waste a day of your trip just looking for a place to sleep.

Just for example, I don’t think I could have plied my old strategy in Buenos Aires. Not every hotel was listed on line, but it’s a big city and not so cheap to travel around. I think it’s worth it to select from those available at hostelworld.com. Deep in Patagonia on the other hand, where internet may be widely available but incredibly slow, there’s a good chance that some new hotels have already popped up without even a web-page, and they may be just the bargain you’re looking for. In the long run, though, the internet will be everywhere (I hope) and the old method will make less and less sense.

Learning to read crowd-sourced reviews is key. Clean, good location, quiet, fun; are all very subjective terms. An inexperienced traveler might think a hostel is disgusting, while an itinerant hippie knows it’s par for the course. Well-heeled guests with a rented car are happy with a hotel conveniently next to a freeway, while those on foot don’t care if there is even parking.

Here’s a business idea (you heard it here first). Why isn’t there a Netflix Recommendation Engine for hotels? Sure there are tons of sites that will book a hotel for you. What we really need is one that will compare your ratings of hotels you’ve already stayed in with the ratings other guests have given similar hotels and then offer you hotels you might like based on your preferences. You liked your stay in the “Happy Traveler,” you might also like the “Barry’s Backpacker.” Such algorithms are actually very challenging to develop and, as big as the travel industry is, there isn’t as much data available to guess what you’d like as there is from movies people have seen, but, here’s hoping some smart folks steal my idea. Maybe I could get a royalty?

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12.23.11

How to tango: La Catedral, Buenos Aires

Posted in Travel at 10:36 by RjZ

The Subte (Buenos Aires subway) runs only till about 11 at night. Unexpected in a city where people only start going out to dinner at 9:30 and places aren’t full until 11 when people are still rolling in while tourists like me are finishing dessert (or more likely, long back at the hostel, getting to sleep.

That meant it was going to be a challenge to get to La Catedral and back, especially since most every local has discouraged us from taking taxis; suggesting instead, a remis, or private hired car. When we arrived at the Buenos Aires international airport, Ezeiza, a perfect stranger agreed we really shouldn’t take a taxi. He wasn’t taking one either and while, perhaps most taxi drivers are good, honest folk, it only takes one bad apple. He pointed at our cameras.

Of course, our clever is solution is to take the public bus instead.

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La Catedral isn’t a church. It’s a milonga, a dance hall for tango, inside a non-descript converted warehouse. Totally bohemian, the hall is dimly lit with hanging colored lights and the walls are decorated with a hodge podge of junk scavenged from countless antique shops all over the city. Tango classes start at 8:00 but they’re only in Spanish, so we didn’t rush. We arrived a bit after 11 and classes were still going on. Dancers were twirling and gliding around the dance floor to lovely old tango music, stopped every now and again by a couple of teachers offering guidance or showing a few new steps.

The classes are free and obviously fun. I gleaned quite a few tidbits about what it actually is to tango just by watching the lessons and comparing the new folks with the more competent appearing ones.

The dance floor is large and surrounded by tables and chairs (of varying comfort: some with broken backs, some with seats sat through) where dancers and spectators enjoy meeting friends, a few drinks, or a bite of pizza. Other rooms off of the main hall have couches (in about as dismal state of repair as the chairs) and quieter areas to strategize who will be the next dance partner. One whole end of the hall is a bar with a giant red heart hanging above it and the other has a cluttered, elevated stage for performances.

We heard, and even asked at the door to confirm, that there might be a show tonight as well. The clock kept turning though, and by 1:00 some fellow tourists told us on their way out that they’d asked and there wouldn’t actually be a show.

But, even without dancing a step (would that I knew how) La Catedral and the dancing is so charming that we just stat there and marveled. In between songs, person placed two chairs in front of the stage and left. A little while later a couple of microphone stands came out. Something must be going down, we smiled at each other…but when?

The dancers continued, taking breaks to wipe off sweat and catch a breath only when the dj would throw on a classic rock song, or a seventies disco hit. If it ain’t tango, they weren’t having any of it.

Finally, a little after 2 am, two large thin platform planks, maybe just compressed paper or fiber board, nothing special, were pushed together in the middle of the dance hall and some musicians came to sit in the chairs. A guitarist and harmonica player played live tango; the guitarist’s fingers shredding the fretboard and the harmonica player astonishing everyone that he wasn’t actually playing the more traditional accordion.

They were joined by two drummers dressed a bit like Argentine gauchos and banging on every part of their drums from skins to sides, from ropes to rims. After a number or two, the drummers made their way to the makeshift platforms to dance: not tango, but a gymnastic tapping and pounding of their boots replacing their drums with rapidly moving feet. They stomped with heels, tapped with toes and jumped on the edges of the boots. In another number, each of them took up two-weighted bolas known as ñanducera and swung them like some traditional Argentine ravers. The balls whipped around at blinding speed and rapped against the dance platform to the rhythm of the tango music being played behind them.

It was nearly 3:00 when they’d finished, or at least decided to take a break. The dj started up the music again and the dancers returned to the floor. No one seemed ready to go anywhere. More drinks were ordered, more dancers twirled. La Catedral wasn’t full, and was by no means empty another forty minutes later when we decided, even if there was to be another performance later, we’d better get going.

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Remember that bus plan? They run all night; but as Buenos Aires is mostly one way streets the return path isn’t the same as the way out. After waiting another half our for our bus, we realized we’d missed our stop when the driver came to his final stop somewhere at a downtown bus station. It wasn’t the best part of town, but finding the right bus to go back seemed a dubious plan so we flagged down a taxi and told him our address.

The ride was scary, but not because the driver tried to steal anything from us, or even charge too much. Instead, he nodded off regularly during the short ride right past our hostel. I had to wake him up to point out he’d passed our place a block ago. It was almost 5 am.

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There are many ways to experience tango in Buenos Aires. You can see performers on shopping streets or in front of souvenir shops in Boca. You can check out the athletic (and expensive–$50+ for tickets) shows. But tango in Buenos Aires is not only amazing, it’s vividly alive. In downtown St. Telmo neighborhood, amateurs of all ages come to dance. Charming, well dressed older couples are joined by young women and men in jeans and tennis shoes. One young man in baggy shorts and running shoes floated around the square with his forehead pressed against his partner’s and his hand wrapped around her waste pulling her towards him. He wasn’t particularly good compared to many others there but I still thought he’d probably win any dance contest he ever tried out for in the U.S.

La Catedral may be the best way to experience tango in Buenos Aires. It’s beautiful, fun, but above all alive. Here tango is for real. Maybe the dancers aren’t as good as the pros, (they seemed pretty damn good to me) but this is what it looks like when people really care about their doing, and above all are not there for anyone else but themselves. This is how honest, real tango looks and it looks like it’s not going anywhere.

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12.22.11

Conservative yoga

Posted in Society at 13:34 by RjZ

The Democrats, U.S.A.’s liberal party, have been handed an election year gift. It seems that after bi-partisan efforts by both political parties in the Senate, an overwhelming majority managed to agree to “kick the can down the road” and ensure that U.S. Americans get to keep a pay-roll tax break and unemployment benefits for at least another two months. In order to accomplish this, the Democrats made a huge concession and there will even be a vote on a pipeline to bring natural gas from Canada to the United States; even though this is a rider on a bill; has nothing to do with what’s being voted on, and is almost as bad as all those earmarks we always hear about.

Meanwhile, even after no indication of such resistence from Speaker of the House, John Boehner, the conservative party in the house of representatives refused to vote on the measure. The senate had already gone home for the holidays but conservatives we’re demanding they return and go into conference, to find some compromise which won’t require yet another vote in two months.

OK, it’s a fair point; two months wasn’t much of a compromise, but hey, they got something done at least. This alternative says ‘we don’t want to just kick the can down the road; we’d rather do nothing at all!. I guess the Republicans haven’t heard that U.S. citizens are fed up with bickering?

Liberals are notorious for their guilt. When elected officials on the liberal side of the aisle do something ridiculous; folks run away, embarrassed. Heck, Obama’s weakening support stems from the fact that he hasn’t done enough to please liberals; compare that with conservative’s view of him as an outright socialist.

Conservatives are different. They stick by their team, often making up crazy excuses like how wrong it would be to vote for something just to have to vote on it two months later, even though not voting means that absolutely nothing get’s done and taxes get raised!

So, let’s watch the fun…will the conservatives rally behind house Republicans or will the recognize that this was a ridiculous bit of posturing after they’d already won the battle? Will they figure out someway to support even Mr. Boehner, who’s job it was to signal to the Senate how his Republican representatives might vote so that compromise is even possible? What contortions are they likely to go through just to toe the line? I’ve heard conservatives complain about yoga, saying it’s anti-Christian. What do you think these new poses will be called as the likes of Rush Limbaugh bends over backwards to support the conservatives in the House of Representatives?

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12.20.11

Argentine entry fee: it’s Homeland Security’s fault

Posted in Travel at 18:44 by RjZ

Take that United States! Suppose you’re Argentine, living in Ushuaia, and you’d like to take your family to Disneyland. May I suggest Disneyland Paris? Because, and most Argentines are well aware of this, it’s going to be a great big hassle.

What our typical Argentine family is going to have to do is book a trip to Buenos Aires and make a visit to the U.S. embassy to apply for a visa. No big deal, you’re thinking, I mean, you’ve got to fly through Buenos Aires either way. Unfortunately, I hope they have extended family to stay with in the Argentine capital, because each family member must meet with the authorities in person, so it’s going to be few days before you get it all done. Our familia could fly on from there, but since there’s no guarantee that everything will work out the first time, most Argentines are forced to schedule their flight for a different trip to the capital, just to make sure all the ducks crossed and the T’s are in a row.

Once they’ve paid 2400 pesos for a family of four, everyone will get a passport stamp and it’s off to Disneyland. If they’d like to check out Disneyworld next time; they’ll have to go through the process all over again. Most Argentines are aware how expense 2400 is…that’s about 560 USD, which is cheap compared to the flights from Ushuaia. (Not to mention hotels and meals during the embassy visit). So, you can see why I’d suggest maybe Disneyland Paris would be good enough. I mean, it’s French Disneyland which isn’t really the same, but you know, it’s close, except it’s in French, and it’s probably cold in Paris during austral summer holidays. Oh well.

Argentines don’t have to pay 600 pesos per person for a visa to France. And, as a result, the French don’t have to pay to enter Argentina. But we U.S. Americans do. And we started it. (We and Canada and the U.K.) Argentina resisted this reciprocity fee thing for some time but since 2009 they now charge U.S travelers exactly what the U.S. charges them. It’s still a deal. You can pay right there in the airport when you enter. You can pay cash, pesos, or use your credit card and your visa is good for ten years (or the life of your passport), all of which is a heck of a lot easier than what the Argentines must go through to get a U.S. visa. Funny thing, U.S. citizens don’t need a visa at all to travel to Argentina. This is purely a fee, levied in response to visa charges on Argentines (and it’s a popular solution many South American governments have chosen).

The U.S. already had high fees ever since 9/11 and increased them still higher in January 2008. The department of Homeland Security (I hate that name) claims “because of new security-related costs, new information technology systems, and inflation, the $100 Machine-Readable Visa fee is lower than the actual cost of processing non-immigrant visas.” Clearly, the Argentine government is acting fairly, charging us what their citizens are charged, but they may not be acting wisely.

If only a few thousand people decide not to travel to Argentina (but rather to go someplace cheaper) the costs to the travel industry could add up fast. 300,000 tourists means over $40million for the Argentine government but with each tourist spending much, much more during their trip, only a 1000 people changing their minds about that trip to Argentina could be costly. Would it effect your choices? Peru doesn’t yet have such fees. Would you go to Peru before Argentina to save $140 bucks?

A note to trekkers and backpackers on longer trips. You’ll be charged this somewhere in South America for sure, but you can avoid Argentina’s simply by arriving overland! The fee is levied at Ezeiza airport in Buenos Aires, but not at overland entry points

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