International Finance

We had our second tango lesson with Pablo yesterday. We went out to lunch and back to the bank again later. Going to the bank didn´t take as long this time. We practiced our dancing later and went to a milonga in the evening. Lina invited her guests to have dinner with family and friends after the milonga. We had an excellent meal, a lot of great wine and an evening of interesting conversation.

We´ve learned a little bit about international finance on this trip. Before leaving we made sure we knew the PIN for our credit card. It´s also a good idea to check what extra charges the credit card company will impose for the exchange rate and what network they are on. We also notified the credit card company that we would be traveling. It wouldn´t be nice to have a card turned off this far from home.

We bought a little amount of pesos before we left for Argentina. We wanted enough for the taxi from the airport and anything that might come up before we could get to a bank. We were glad that we didn´t get a lot because the exchange rate is more favorable here. Credit cards are commonly used but it is good to have some cash.

So, we had some dollars that we wanted to exchange for Argentine pesos. Monday was a national holiday here so we had to wait until Tuesday for the bank to open. We don´t have a car here so we are getting around by shoe leather. The first bank we went to didn´t exchange money. They sent us down the street to another bank. At this bank there were several lines. We couldn´t tell which one we needed to be in. I stood in line and Doris went to see if it was the correct line. It wasn´t. We moved to the right line and when our turn came around we talked to a nice young lady who didn´t speak English. Since our Spanish is very poor, this presented a little challenge. We found out that we needed our passports to exchange money. We had photocopies of our passports, but that wouldn´t do. We walked back to the hotel to collect our passports and returned to the bank. While I got back into line again Doris went to try the ATM. The first credit card she tried didn´t have any indication which network to use. There were several options. Some obviously wouldn´t work for us like one named Uruguay. The first network she chose didn´t work. The instructions were in Spanish and seemed to lead her around in a circle that either came back to the start or spit her card back out at her with no money. She pulled out her backup credit card. It did say which network to use, so that one worked.

While Doris was going through this, I got through the line to speak to the nice young lady again. She entered some information from my passport into her computer and sent me to an even longer line. Doris soon joined me after winning at least a partial victory in her skirmish with the ATM. We finally got through the line, got our pesos, and were able to go get some lunch. Things would go so much easier if we could remember some of the Conversational Spanish class that we took.