GoNOMAD Book Excerpt:

The World's Cheapest Destinations: Argentina

By Tim Leffel

Imagine if the price of everything in Paris suddenly dropped by two thirds, but the quality of the food didn’t change. That’s the tantalizing offer that Argentina now represents. When the currency was devalued in 2002, the price of nearly everything fell off a cliff in dollar or euro terms and has just inched up a bit each year.

It can’t last forever, so get there soon if the idea of eating tasty slabs of grilled beef for a few dollars and washing it down with excellent red wine for a few dollars more appeals to you.

Anyone who has spent time in Buenos Aires ranks it as one of the world’s great cities. It’s got interesting architecture, nice parks, great nightlife, good shopping, cultural performances, and the tango.

On top of the fabulous restaurants stocked with good wine you find on every block. This is perhaps the most European city outside of Europe, so it can feel like having the best of that dearly priced region for a much smaller hit on the budget.

The rest of Argentina is quite different, however, and this is a big country. It extends from the Andean regions up near Bolivia, down past the highest peak in the Americas, down through cowboy country plains, to Patagonia and the tip of South America in Tierra del Fuego. Lie on the beach in their summer, go skiing in their winter, and explore lakes and waterfalls in between.

As one of the planet’s great “new world” wine regions, this is a great place to tour wineries, and in Cafayate you can even safely hit a group of them by foot or bicycle. If you want to act like a cowboy for a while, you’ll have no problem finding a ranch where you can rope cattle and ride a horse—for a fraction of what it would cost for the whole dude ranch experience in the U.S.

While being a backpacker here is not really cheaper than it would be in Ecuador or Peru, the value is perhaps the best on the continent. In general, you’re getting something that used to cost much more at a sale price, rather than getting something for what it has always cost. As a result, many travelers find that food, lodging, and transportation are all of a higher quality (and more organized) than comparable offerings elsewhere.

If you are on a mid-range or upper-range budget, however, dive in! You will eat incredible meals on what would be a fast-food budget at home, stay at unique hotels with great amenities for the price of budget roadside motel at home, at drink bottles of wine at restaurants for less than a glass of malbec costs at the closest wine bar to your house. If you can afford to bump up your budget for a few weeks somewhere, this is the place where you’ll get the greatest return.

Accommodation:

In general, you can get a dorm bed for $5 to $10 in Buenos Aires, and a decent budget hotel room for two will run $14 to $25. Prices ease up when the crowds do and rates are more negotiable at these times. In the rest of the country, it is less expensive—figure on $4 to $8 for a dorm bed and $9 to $20 for a basic double with bath. Some of these are quite nice, however, so you usually won’t have to settle for a grotty cell. A single room will average about 1/3 less than a double. As usual, rooms with a shared bath are cheaper than those with their own bath. Most include breakfast, but very few budget hotels have air-conditioning.

Campgrounds are nicer and more organized here than in most countries, so this is an option to consider if you are traveling with a tent or a camping vehicle.

In the $25 to $90 range, rooms in Argentina can be a real treat. At this level, it’s not uncommon to get a hearty buffet breakfast, a swimming pool, nice room amenities, gracious service, and turndown service. Often you’ll be in a historic building with plenty of character and perhaps a balcony outside your door. These properties are often more desirable than the higher-priced deluxe hotels in a region: the latter are usually big and bland places catering to business travelers.

Rural estancias have become big business for ranch owners. Similar to the haciendas of Mexico or the ranch estates of Wyoming, these retreats are popular with travelers looking to escape into the quiet and simple countryside. There are an estimated 1,000+ of these places on offer, so there’s no shortage of choices.

Alas, the value in Buenos Aires especially is no secret anymore, so the very top-end hotels are going to hit your wallet just as badly here as they do anywhere else. Demand is high and rising from not only wealthy North Americans and Europeans, but also wealthy Brazilians and Chileans who are taking advantage of the opportunity to see Argentina on the cheap. You can spend over $300 a night in Buenos Aires, Bariloche, or Mendoza if you want. It will be fabulous, but not a world-class bargain like you see at this level in Bangkok or Cairo—there’s not enough competition.

Food & Drink:

If there is one place in the world to act like you’re rich and eat to your heart’s content (though not your heart’s health), this is it. Assuming you’re a meat-eater that is. The words “Argentine beef” will make many a steak lover start salivating and here it’s all on offer for ridiculously cheap prices. It wasn’t always so, of course. In the 1990’s it would cost a pretty penny to eat at a good Buenos Aires restaurant—not all that much cheaper than home. But since the currency was devalued, tourists have been returning home with tales of fantastic meals they couldn’t finish, bottles of wine that filled the table, and a tab at the end of the night that came to $10 or $15 per person. “And this was a nice place—candlelight and cloth napkins!”

If your bill is over $25 per person, you’re probably at one of the nicest spots in town or your ordered one of the best bottles of wine on the menu.

The restaurant scene in Buenos Aires is downright overwhelming, with the ubiquitous beef restaurants now joined by plenty of trendy vegetarian options. The Italian ancestry of many residents shows up in the wealth of good pizza and pasta restaurants, from casual 50-cents-a-slice pizza places to intimate fine dining Italian restaurants. Of course there’s also a lot of ethnic food and if you look hard enough you’ll find much of the world’s cuisines represented. In other words, a first-world selection at super-discounted prices.

In the Patagonian region you find more lamb on offer, along with fresh water seafood. In the Andean region of the northwest, the food can get much spicier.

At a basic blue-collar set meal place, you can get a big sausage sandwich with drink or a simple set meal for around a dollar. Most “meal of the day” places range from $2 to $6, however, and go up from there depending on how fancy the tablecloths and waiter uniforms are. The main course on the majority of menus will fall in the $2 to $6 range, even for a huge slab of steak or a giant bowl of pasta that could feed two. Some Middle Eastern restaurants are all-you-can-eat deals.

House wine is often cheaper than a soda or bottled water, though there’s a reason 90 percent of what’s produced is for domestic use only. The cheap stuff is okay for a meal of steak with chorizo, but it’s not going to blow you away with its complexity or subtlety. If you move up the scale a little and spend $5 to $15 on a bottle in a restaurant, you’ll be getting an equivalent quality to what you would see for $40 to $60 in a restaurant at home. A big selection is available for take-out in supermarkets and wine stores and with lots of wineries to tour in Mendoza and Cafayate, it’s easy to experiment and find out which ones you like best.

With good wine so plentiful, beer and liquor are not as popular here. Beer is easy to find though, and is served by the liter bottle, half-liter bottle, or on draft. At a bar, it usually comes with a salty snack. The Quilmes brand gets high marks from travelers and Isenbeck is made by Warsteiner. You can’t beat the price: less than 50 cents a liter in the stores and often under a buck in a bar.

The non-alcoholic drink most associated with Argentina is the herbal yerba mate tea. You don’t see it much in restaurants, but people drink it a lot at home and on the move for their daily pick-me-up. You can usually drink the tap water without worry.

Transportation:

Argentina is the 8th-largest country in the world, so getting around by bus can be taxing if you plan to cover a large area. This is a place where splurging for some internal flights can make a lot of sense. Foreigners pay more than locals do. Figure on $70 to $250 for a one-way flight, depending on distance. Regardless of route, however, Buenos Aires seems to be the hub; you’ll backtrack through there if going between two other cities.

When you open up a guidebook to the “getting around” section and see the bus times, it’s not a pleasant site. Here are some of the times from Buenos Aires: Bariloche-22 hours; Mendoza-15 hours; Iguazu Falls-18 hours. On the plus side, if you have to ride so long, at least you’re going to be comfortable. The best buses have seats that recline almost fully, with lots of legroom. For long hauls, tickets will cost $1.50 to $2 per hour.
There are a few places to travel by boat, including the lake district around Bariloche and the crossing to Uruguay, which costs $13 to $30 for Colonia and around $55 for Montevideo.

Getting around within a city is invariably easy on the wallet. A subway ride in Buenos Aires is 75 cents and a taxi will usually be $1.50 to $5. Most local buses are less than a buck anywhere, up to a few dollars for one taking you from town to a ski resort. In some towns you can rent a bike for about $5 a day.

What Else?

• If you want to go skiing in July, you can do it here—it’s winter in the southern hemisphere. Lift tickets are less than a third of what they cost in the U.S., on top of cheaper accommodation all around.
• The highest mountain in the Americas, Aconcagua at 6960 meters, attracts plenty of mountaineers, both serious and casual. There are less lofty Andean peaks as well, so climbing opportunities are ample.
• What to buy: leather goods for one-third the price of home, woolen clothing, gold jewelry, fashionable clothes, wine, chocolate, mate paraphernalia, panchos, antiques, Andean handicrafts.
• What you can get for a buck or less: two empanadas, two slices of pizza, a cheap bottle of wine, a subway across town, a few quality chocolates, a beer or two in a bar, two hours of internet access, four loaves of bread.

Tim Leffel is author of The World’s Cheapest Destinations, as well as Make Your Travel Dollars Worth a Fortune: The Contrarian Traveler’s Guide to Getting More for Less -- available in August 2006.

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