Curiosities

One of the most interesting things about travel has got to be the wee curiosities – things that are different from back home. Maybe that’s a stupid statement haha. If everything was the same would we bother travelling? Anyways, I decided to share some observations and things that surprised me

Argentinians seem super into hotdogs. It appears to be a very popular fast food option. I wasn’t expecting that.

There seems to be a lot of awareness-raising going on about assault, and particularly sexual assault and gender-related assault. There’s signage all over the place about identifying and reporting it, things like “your opinion about my body isn’t wanted,” or “she’s not crazy, assault exists,” and all of the subway cards have a number for reporting anything you see.

Obviously, the economic situation here is not great. The largest bank note is now worth less than NZ$5 – when it was introduced five years ago it was worth over NZ$100. It’s also a largely cash-based society. With the low value of bank notes, ATMs run out of money (as I discovered on my first day), and walking down the street in the mornings, banks have long lines coming out of them. ATMs also have a low limit on them – about NZ$75 per withdrawal. Overall, money is tricky to come by!!

Also money related, there’s the official exchange rate, and then there’s the “dólar blue” which is essentially a black market for foreign currency. Officially (as of right now – it changes quite quickly!!), NZ$1 is worth about 110 pesos. With the dólar blue though, I can get 210 pesos for my NZ$1.

Most (like 90%) of the streets here are one-way streets. I have to say, this makes both driving and crossing the road quite a bit easier.

The Falkland Islands (aka las Malvinas) are a very sore topic, and you can see it everywhere: on most buses, in multiple monuments, in the street art, government buildings…

There are a lot of florist stands! Like, every few blocks, there’s someone selling flowers.

Finally (I’m running out of space), the speed with which World Cup champion related street art has appeared is impressive!!

Oh! And maybe I can cure the diabetes with some random herbs???