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After doing a little more research, it appears that the minted coin to population ratio is not abnormally low in Argentina, so why the coin shortage?

(I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that I’ll be looking into this more in the future!)

This bears repeating as I wasn’t sure I made it clear on my last post on the subject: “Why is the coin shortage such a big issue?” Because YOU CANNOT RIDE THE BUS WITHOUT COINS. Literally. Period. There is no way to use a bill to ride the bus. They will boot you off if you don’t have change.

As a result, we are often faced with a dilemma when we are with Ian because we either have too many people for a single cab ride (since only four can ride in a cab) or we don’t have enough change for all five of us to ride the bus!! (That would be 4.50 pesos total for all five of us to travel the equivalent of one zone.)

You probably wonder why they don’t institute some sort of bus pass system that would bypass change altogether (such as the money cards they have for the subway in Baires)? Well, here in Good Air, there are about a billion separate city bus lines that are privately owned (I believe they receive some sort of government subsidy), so instituting a centralized pass system is rather complicated–but I believe they are supposed to be working on it.

Yes, that means that our Gollum-like coin hoarding has begun in earnest, as we croon over our coins, “my precious!”

Here are two images from our arrival.

The first image is the “we are so exhausted why the hell do you want to take our picture” that Ian forced upon us. On a positive note, this pic does do a good job of illustrating the amount of bleeping luggage that we had!

(May I make a plug for Eagle Creek luggage? We could strap two 50 pound bags together and the girls were able to drag 100 pounds of luggage around the airport. The luggage is amazing, if you are taking a long trip, we would highly recommend it.)

The second is a picture of the van (that I refuse to name accurately as a shuttle bus) that was needed to carry us all with our bags!! (Did I mention that we brought Ian’s Turkish drum?)

There is a shortage of coins in Baires, which can make life a bit difficult here since you can only use coins in the bus fare machines, and, coins are obviously needed for making change in general.

Even at the pharmacy, if you pay for something with 100 pesos that costs say 90.10 pesos, they will spot you the ten centavos and give you 10 pesos back rather than make exact change because they want to avoid giving out 90 centavos in coins. (Cab drivers have done the same thing. We had a 6.50 peso cab ride last night and Tom gave him 10 pesos. The cab driver gave Tom back 4 pesos rather than break a bill and give him 3.50 pesos in exact change.)

Everyone in the city avoids using their coins and stores hate to give change out.

In doing a minuscule amount of reading, it seems the government needs to mint more coins, but they haven’t, so the shortage continues.

We feel like native Porteños in that we are mimicking this behavior on our own quest to acquire and hoard our own coins! (It’s like quarters for the laundromat when you were in college.)

Tom and I have decided that whenever we want to spend a protracted amount of time in a foreign country, we should send Ian as our advance man.

My brother has made our arrival in Argentina a breeze. He greeted us at the airport, whisked us into a gigantic van, well, really a shuttle bus, that could accommodate the five of us and all of our bags!! (They are very strict on the 4 people per taxi rule in Buenos Aires, something that Ian says is new, so we couldn’t do the minivan.)

Ian then took the girls on a bus/subway/playground adventure while Tom and I unpacked. Afterward, we had a city bus sojourn, courtesy of Ian, to a yummy steak restaurant (of course) where Tom, literally, just had a giant steak for dinner. Not even a token nod to the vegetables.

Which leads us to the obvious conclusion that no one should move overseas without an Ian.

The juxtaposition of experience after a long flight is always overwhelming. When I think back on today, many memories float across my consciousness:

• The Southerners at the Hot-lanta airport declaring, “Aahm goin’ to Argentina to hunt duuhhvs.”

• The Argentina city bus pulling away with the girls still hanging on in the open doorway while Tom and I stand, alarmed, behind them on the street.

• Not being able to sleep on the plane.

• Passing out in a bed with the roar of Buenos Aires as background noise.

• The deserted Portland Airport–we were there at both 7:00 am and 11:00 am and it was a ghost town–zero wait in security.

• A humongous city teeming with people where you can get gelato at midnight with your kids and no one bats an eye!

You start off very excited and optimistic…you are going to a far away land on a new adventure, just like how you feel when you are going to have a baby.

You obsess over every detail when you get on the plane, just like you do at the beginning of a pregnancy (you know, the baby is the size of a pea, a garbanzo bean, a kidney bean, etc.). On the plane, you check out your video display, how many rows to the exits, you situate your blankets and sleep masks (the girls especially), and you read the airline magazine to figure out food, movies, etc.

Then you hit the middle of the trip, which is much like the middle of a pregnancy…it seems to last forever. During both, you get uncomfortable, your feet swell, you can’t sleep, and food doesn’t sit quite right.

At the end, although you might be a bit nervous, you don’t care and just want the whole thing to be over. You are tired, crabby, and don’t want to deal with any of the associated paperwork (immigration and/or getting your baby’s social security number).

We are here…we have been birthed from the plane to Buenos Aires. More later!

Our last morning in Portland!

We woke up early and took our eight 50 pound bags to the airport at 7 am to check them. It was pretty cool, we could scan our passports in the automated check-in kiosks–that was new to me.

Next, we left the airport and went to Elmer’s Pancake House for our last American breakfast. I have to say, their cinnamon French toast was awesome. (Think cinnamon roll sliced, dipped in batter, and fried like French toast…mmm hmmm.)

Then, it was back to the airport hotel for a quick nap!! Man, I was tired. Okay…I still am.

Anyway, Tom the nervous-traveler-I-have-to-be-at-the-airport-super-early is rousting us all to head back to the aeropuerto so I must go.

Next post from Buenos Aires!

As we come to the end of the planning/preparation phase, the nerves are really starting to kick in.

When there isn’t stuff to obsess over in terms of packing, storing, calling, notifying, etc., then the knowledge of what we’re embarking upon is hard to avoid.

We will be getting into a big metal box tomorrow and 24 hours later, we will be in Buenos Aires. We will be living out of 8 bags that weigh less than 50 pounds each. We won’t own a house. We won’t own any cars.

Weird!

1. Start throwing things out the second you consider leaving the country–it is never too soon!

2. Don’t sell the kids’ beds early on Craigslist so that they have to sleep on camping mats on the floor for a month–they get really mad at you!!

3. Definitely build a gap between the time you move out of your house/apartment and the time that you leave the country. (Heretofore called the “GAP.”) We had a 9 day GAP, every hour of which it seems we have filled with the business of prepping for the trip. If we had left the day or two after moving out, I don’t know that we would have made it, and, we certainly would have been a complete, stressed-out mess.

4. Keep your bathroom scale out of storage so that you can weigh your luggage to make sure each piece comes in under the weight limit established by the airlines.

5. When you pack your crap into boxes to move to storage, use lots of white newsprint packing paper–buy about five more boxes of it than you think you will need!

6. Own cars with an eye toward who might buy them when you are selling down the road. We learned that in a recession, the only people with cash to buy cars are senior citizens, so make sure your car works for them!

7. Send your kids to the grandparents, uncles, cousins, aunts, and/or friends during the GAP (under the guise of, “this is your last chance to see the little tykes…”). You are much more productive when you are kid-free. If you can’t ship the wee ones off to a trusted friend or family member, double the length of time that you believe you may need to establish as the GAP!!!

Tom and I have 12 or 13 years of muddled Quicken that we sat down to sort through tonight.

After review, we decided to simply create a new Quicken file and start over, from scratch, with everything. It is like being born again, financially anyway, sometime in September of this year. (We dropped into the financial world like Mork…does that date me?)

It is truly delightful to have our accounts be exact–no weird patches and adjustments, like those that we made over the years to account for mistakes, changing relationships (when we kept expenses separated before we got married, for instance), software upgrades and the transition between downloadable statements and hand entering everything.

We are starting with a clean slate–it’s lovely. Perhaps we won’t dread updating Quicken now. (A woman can hope!)