There are two currency conversations in Argentina; the official rate and the blue dollar rate. As of today, the official rate is 1 USD to just under 10 ARS, while the blue dollar rate is 1 USD to about 15 ARS. The reason for the double standard is foreign money is very difficult to obtain and inflation has been 30% for the last several years. Individuals are simply willing to offer more than banks.

You can get pesos at the bank, or you can use a number of exchange services. Additionally, walking along some of the main city centre streets, you’ll hear people yelling out, “cambio”, which means they are looking to exchange money. They take you to a back alley to perform the transaction. In many of these cases, the pesos are counterfeit, so I’m thankful I was able to exchange money at a favorable rate with the husband of a niece of a friend of a friend.

It’s not possible to exchange pesos into another currency, so you need to spend all your cash before leaving Argentina.  Balancing this with the fact that nearly everything is paid in cash can be tricky.  My recommendation to anyone visiting Argentina is to exchange about 100 USD into ARS before arriving, and then use a transfer service to exchange the rest of your USD using the blue rate.

Rather than track the double exchange rate to determine the actual cost of things, I’ve decided to use the cost of a pizza to gauge value. After beef, pizza is the second most popular dish, and I love pizza, so why not?!

On my first day, I chewed down a delicious individual-sized pizza with ham and cheese.

  • How much does a cappuccino cost? 1/2 a pizza
  • Groceries for the next few days? 2 pizzas
  • A good steak dinner and bottle of wine? 3 1/2 pizzas

This makes math so much easier 🙂

I’ve also decided to separate my credit card and bank card from cash. This way, if I ever get mugged, I’ll toss over the cash and (hopefully) won’t lose the cards. Since my current wallet was designed for carrying both, I purchased a lightweight card holder, and a sophisticated and stylish money clip.