Buenos Aires (BsAs)

The next spot with Sol and Travis is Buenos Aires! All 4 of us had the same flight from El Calafate to Buenos Aires. We landed at 11PM Wednesday, which had us wandering around looking for food at midnight. Fortunately BsAs is a city that (like New York) never sleeps. After a little bit of wandering past convenience stores and bars that weren’t serving we found a spot to grab some sandwiches just on the other side of our block! A quick bite and bed was all we could do.

The next day we split up from Sol and Travis so that we could go run an errand. We need visas to enter Bolivia, and got a great tip that the Bolivian consulate in Buenos Aires is the place to do this, as it can be done on the same day. Jess did a ton of research about the forms that need to be filled out, and submitted online, so we felt prepared, but wanted to get the process done as soon as possible, in case there were any hiccups.

Getting to the consulate via Subway was the first challenge. Fortunately, the subway system in BsAs is very modern and super easy to use. We’ve got Google maps for the city downloaded, so it’s available offline, and Eric has Google Fi, so we have data to get public transit directions while on the go.

Once there, it was easy enough to get through the first line where they triage people into the correct rooms. We were directed to go through a door, which led to a very tiny vestibule, with a flickering light, and a sign on the door opposite that said “Please close the door”. Terrifying room, but once you pass through there’s a simple office. We waited in another line for our form to be reviewed and then learned that the last step was to go to a bank and deposit 6870 pesos each into the consulate’s bank account. No problem, right?

Wrong. We spent over an hour in the bank, taking out money repeatedly because the ATM limited each transaction to 4000 pesos, running up against our daily limit for withdrawals, thinking we’d have to come back the next day, getting change and then counting and re-counting large stacks of 100 peso notes to get the exact right amounts. At one point we were asked to move from the lobby into a private room, and Eric joked that they must think we’re trying to get the place robbed waving cash around like that.

Finally, it was done – a quick trip the following day back to the Bolivian Consulate to prove we had deposited the money, and the visas were ours! We’re free to start exploring!