Anomalies of Argentina, Part 2

What a funny country. Somewhere stuck with one foot in the past and a delusion of the future. No wonder they have the highest number of psychiatrists per capita in the world. They seem to suffer from fatalism, and its contagious.

Being a huge metropolitan city of 15M, public transit (and subways) are the backbone of transportation. While taxis are very cheap (2$ for a 15 minute ride), transit is even cheaper at 0.10$ and abundant for us as we are downtown.

With rampant inflation and deflating currency, the government wisely decided years ago to remove cash payment and replace with a transit pay-as-you-go card called a SUBE. That way they could increase prices on a monthly basis and it would be seamless.

But finding a place that will sell you the card? Turns out, thats the problem. For locals, its no big deal since they keep the cards forever. But tourists? Good luck.

I had heard echos of this problem online, particularly exasperated by the pandemic. But Argentina had also shut down borders to foreigners imposing 2 week quarantines. So tourism is just getting started again (but we haven’t seen many gringos here). The government kindly created a website with all the locations where you can buy the SUBE. I tried 15 in 3 days, including 3 subway stations. By the third day it had become a running gag and I laughed off every additional “no mas”.

I went back “home” and scoured the facebook and reddit threads for a clue. Someone had posted last Friday of getting a card at the Tourism Office. Hmm, interesting idea. The Tourism Office was also located near the main train station so I figured we would have multiple options. I google the address(es), make a mental map, prepare my DH for our mission (it was his first day not working), order a 2$ taxi, and off we go.

First address, its the embassy of Dominican Republic. Second address, its the corporate headquarters of the Ministry and the security guard took pity on us and explained with much “verguenza” that the Ministry has not provided tourism service for years. He suggested we try the Buenos Aires tourism kiosk a few blocks down. We find it, but its a tourism bus sales office. The lady takes pity on us (a recurring theme) and sends us down the street to the “big egg” and there was a proper tourism office there. We get there, and the lady shakes her heads at us and sends us down the street to the train station wishing us much luck and saying we should just pay a stranger at the turnstile and hand over cash to use their card. Que locura!

We get to the train station, debating if we should go to the train departures or the connecting subway station. We choose the train station, and see two European guys shuffling at ticket booths, giddy as school children. We watch attentively as we see them getting a blue SUBE card. Gold! We then do a two-step dance between one booth to buy the cards, and another booth to charge money on the cards. We celebrate by going down the escalator to take our first subway ride to Palermo.

Palermo is a beautiful neighborhood just barely outside of the city with gorgeous parks, restaurants, a racetrack and the Cathedral of Polo. We enjoyed some beer, watched a horse race, figured out how to get tickets for the Polo World Cup on Sunday, took a look around, and then went home where I crashed for a nap for 2 hours, both of us slightly sunburnt.

Today, more of the same, but we need to pick up our laundry (2$) and some groceries (10$).