That’s right – as of March 24, 2016, US visitors to Argentina no longer have to pay the reciprocity fee. No word yet on whether or not those who paid it for future travel will get it refunded (don’t hold your breath).

Argentina is hoping for the US to grant their citizens unrestricted travel without the need for a visa too, but that is a little ways off. At the moment, the US has agreed to waive the interview requirement for those Argentines under 16 or over 65. Not much, but it’s a start!

Canadians and Australians still must pay their respective reciprocity fees. Maybe it’s time for Justin Trudeau to visit Argentina too!

Here’s the text from the embassy’s website:

In order to strengthen the relationship between Argentina and the United States of America, the Argentine Government has resolved to suspend the collection of the reciprocity fee from US passport holders who visit our country for less than 90 days, for tourist or business purposes.

Buenos Aires, March 24 2016

UPDATE: The US and Argentina are also working on removing the tourist visa requirement for Argentine passport holders in a “reasonable amount of time.”

The post Argentina Ends US Reciprocity Fee Payment appeared first on Discover Buenos Aires.

For bookings made as of March 22, 2016, American Airlines is making three negative changes to their award charts for southern South America.

First, American is eliminating MileSAAver Off Peak Awards. These were 20,000 one-way coach awards for travel to and from Argentina during non-peak times. My family used these many times – booking roundtrip flights for 4 people for only 160,000 miles! It was an incredible deal, and apparently too generous for American to continue. They will now only offer MileSAAver awards at 30,000 miles one-way. That means for our family of four, flights will now cost 240,000 miles roundtrip.

Not content with that, American is also increasing the cost of one-way business class saver awards from 50,000 miles to 57,500 miles. They are also drastically increasing one-way first class saver awards from 62,500 miles to 85,000 miles! That’s a 36% increase.

Not to be outdone, Delta also decided to increase the number of miles needed to travel from the US to Argentina. One-way business class fares will go from 62,500 miles one-way to 75,000 miles. This applies to all travel from October 1, 2016 on and also applies to their partners Aeromexico and Aerolineas Argentinas. Luckily, economy fares stay the same at 30,000 miles one-way.

So, any good news here?

Tons of business class award space!

The only potential positive is that you have until March 22 to book travel on American Airlines at the old prices. You can also make free date changes to those award tickets and keep the old pricing. So, if you have any potential travel plans, I’d recommend booking now.

The other positive is that American Airlines has opened up an incredible amount of business class and first class award saver space (see chart). While they were usually quite stingy with award space, their award calendar now shows a ton of space with many seats available.

We decided to take advantage of this and just changed our flight back to the US from coach to business for 50,000 points each. What’s the point of earning miles and points if you can’t spend them, right? And with these devaluations, there’s no point in hoarding them as they just decrease in value over time.

Where to sit with kids?

It will be interesting having a 2-year old and a 5-year old in business class, but they’re seasoned travelers at this point. The toughest decision was figuring out how to pick our seats since American has a 1-2-1 herringbone seat configuration on their 777-200. While we originally had the middle seats, the partition between the two means it would be difficult to reach across to the other side to help. I decided to change the seats to one middle and one window, so we’re just across the aisle from each other. I’ll let you know how that goes!

– You can get more info on the rest of American Airlines award changes at the View from the Wing blog.

The post Negative Miles and Points Changes for Argentina appeared first on Discover Buenos Aires.

Lots of household items, furniture, appliances, electronics, baby items and much more are for sale at http://enventa.discoverbuenosaires.com

Check it out! We’re adding more things daily…

(And yes, we are leaving Argentina. More on that in a future post.)

The post Moving Sale! appeared first on Discover Buenos Aires.

Netflix has announced that they will begin cracking down on those who use proxies or “unblockers” to access content outside of their geographic region.

Of course, many expats use these tricks to get the version of Netflix from their home country. I love being able to have US Netflix titles in Argentina rather than the Argentine content. It’s also nice to switch to other countries to get content that is not licensed for your area.

Netflix announced these coming crackdowns in a blog post that lamented that they could not offer the same content across all regions “given the historic practice of licensing content by geographic territories.” They also stated that they keep pushing towards that goal, but I would not expect any changes there for many years.

Netflix has been pretty lax on blocking these unblockers in the past. They had the technology to do more, but chose not to – because it was not in their best interest. Now it seems that the media owners have finally forced their hand.

We’ll have to see if the unblockers and proxies can come up with new technological solutions to get around these new blocks.

Let’s hope Netflix does not start to eliminate the sharing of account passwords!

The post The End of US Netflix in Argentina appeared first on Discover Buenos Aires.

That’s right, with Macri’s new government recently eliminating restrictions on buying dollars and devaluing the peso, the gap between the blue dollar rate and the official rate has dropped to only about 5-10% from a high of almost 60%. You can once again use your foreign debit card or credit card in Argentina without having to worry about losing a lot of money.

So, what do you need to know about using the ATM in Argentina?

First, get ready for a whopping ARS $79.80 (U$S 6) fee per transaction regardless of the amount you withdraw. To help offset this, we recommend using a debit card that refunds your ATM fees (like Charles Schwab Bank) or, if you have a Citibank debit card, using a Citibank ATM with no fee.

Because of this hefty fee, it makes sense to withdraw as much money as possible at one time. Unfortunately, the maximum amount you can withdraw per ATM transaction is ARS $2400 (some people report $2500, but in our tests Supervielle and Galicia are both $2400). You may make multiple transactions (up to the daily withdrawal limit imposed by your bank), but you’ll pay the U$S 6 fee each time.

The exchange rate you get at the ATM is based on the previous day’s rate as calculated by Visa. You can find this rate on the Visa Exchange Rate Calculator website. For my withdrawal today, I got a rate of $12.90. If I would have had to pay the ATM fee, the effective rate drops to $12.49.

Also, make sure your bank does not charge additional debit card fees for foreign currency transactions or using another bank’s ATM. Bank of America has some crazy fees – U$S 5 – U$S 10 for using a non-Bank of America ATM plus a 3% international transaction fee. Paying these additional fees is going to lower your exchange rate as well.

So, how much did I lose by using the ATM versus exchanging dollars at the blue rate?

Since cuevas were offering a blue rate of $13.90 today, I lost about 8%. (U$S 13.39 on my ARS $2400 withdrawal.)

How does this compare to using Xoom?

If I had used Xoom to transfer the same amount of money (U$S 186), I would have gotten a rate of $12.53. Xoom beats the ATM if you have to pay the transaction fee ($12.53 v $12.49). Xoom also works better for larger amounts of money, paying up to $12.80 today for bigger sums and not requiring you to make multiple transactions.

So, what’s the best thing to do?

If you have have dollars, exchanging on the blue market is still the way to go. In my example from today, I would have made 8% more on my money. While I still have USD, I’ll keep exchanging on the blue market, but it’s nice to know that I can use the ATM again in an emergency.

If you don’t have USD and need larger sums of money, Xoom is the way to go. If you transfer the maximum U$S 2999, you’ll get a rate of $12.80. It would take seventeen separate ATM transactions over a couple of days to get this same amount of pesos.

Of course, the blue market fluctuates daily so we’ll have to see if it differs more than the five to ten percent it has been. One just never knows in this country…

UPDATE
Here are some recent transactions to compare the ATM to the blue rate:

1/15/16: ATM, $13.23 / Blue, $14.10 / 6.37% difference
1/29/16, ATM, $13.76 / Blue, $14.05 / 2.09% difference

2/22/16: Traveling outside of Buenos Aires (Mar del Plata) I was only able to withdraw $1,000 pesos at a time and had to pay a $91.20 peso fee. Thankfully Schwab refunds that!

The post Guide to Using the ATM in Argentina – And Should You? appeared first on Discover Buenos Aires.

Said no one ever. Luckily, I did not even know what a globe squash (zapallito) was before moving to Argentina. I’m sure this is something my mother would have tried to force me to eat had they been in our local supermarket.

Anyhow, hot on the heels of yesterday’s Fruit Seasons in Buenos Aires, I present you with the next installment – Vegetable Seasons in Buenos Aires. Yay.

Now you can plan out when you will torture your kids with getting them to eat their veggies.

[download the vegetable chart for yourself]

And yes, I know tomatoes are technically fruits, but people always forget that.

The post Vegetable Seasons in Buenos Aires appeared first on Discover Buenos Aires.

Back in the US, you do not think twice about going into the supermarket and buying strawberries whenever you want – fresh, frozen, organic – they’re always there.

In Buenos Aires, you quickly realize that fruit selection is seasonal. One day your local verduleria is stocked with strawberries, the next day they’re gone. After living here for seven years, I had a general idea of when they would come and go, but nothing concrete.

Well, no longer! Now, thanks to hours of effort, you have the Fruit Season Guide for Buenos Aires!

You’re welcome.

[download the fruit chart for yourself]

And yes, tomatoes and avocados are fruits.

The post Fruit Seasons in Buenos Aires appeared first on Discover Buenos Aires.

It’s pretty simple actually:

• For those age 16 and older, you can legally enter the country with up to $10,000 United States dollars
• For those under 16, you can legally enter the country with up to $5,000 United States dollars

For amounts from $10,000 and up, you need to declare the money upon entry to the county, though I’ve never once heard of anyone doing that. You can read the rules and regulations on the AFIP website.

The post How Much Money Can You Bring to Argentina? appeared first on Discover Buenos Aires.

It’s already set all kinds of records and it hasn’t even happened yet. Both Mayweather and Pacquiao will earn the largest payout in the history of sports. Mayweather was originally estimated to be making $120 million and Pacquiao $80 million, but those numbers have been revised upward to $180 million and $100 million.

To earn this kind of money, ticket prices were at a record high – seats started at $1,500 before prices were raised and the match sold out. Closed circuit TV sessions were priced at a record high of $150 a seat and also quickly sold out. Pay-per-view at home is also at a record high – $99.99, breaking the previous record of $74.99.

Well, get ready to laugh at our neighbors to the North for the insane amounts of money they’ll be spending. Jajaja! No $100 pay-per-view for us! In Argentina, we get to watch the boxing match absolutely free on Public TV (Canal 7) or on the Golden channel on DirecTV. (No word on what was actually paid for rights to the fight in Argentina, but it should help the Kirchneristas boost their appeal ahead of the elections.)

It’s not clear if the fight will air on the TV Pública website like the World Cup did, but if so, I hope they’re blocking access for anyone outside of Argentina. If not, that site is definitely going down. This might be the first time that people actually want a VPN to make it look like they’re inside the country.

So, thanks, Cristina… ¡Boxeo para todos!

Oh yeah… If you’re trying to figure out what to do with the $100 you just saved, you might want to consider donating to a domestic abuse shelter. Seems Mayweather is not a very nice guy with a long history of domestic abuse problems and very little repentance. Seems a shame that he’s making that much money.

The post Watch Mayweather vs Pacquiao for Free appeared first on Discover Buenos Aires.

Ok, so we get things a bit slower here in Argentina…

Yesterday, Google Maps released a mass transit update for Argentina that now includes subway directions!

Yes, you can now use Google Maps to find out the best subway route to get to a specific destination. Unfortunately bus routes are not available, but give that another 5 years or so… (or use Omni Líneas on CualBondi)

Welcome to 2013!

The post Google Maps Launches Subway Directions for Buenos Aires appeared first on Discover Buenos Aires.