South America Blog
About this blog
Wayne Bernhardson is the author of Moon Handbooks to Buenos Aires, Chile, Argentina, and Patagonia. Here he shares his vast knowledge of South America and its people.
Recent Posts
- The Papal Cumbia
- The Uruguayan Sacraments: Tango & Mate
- Taxing the Tourist: Argentina's AFIP Aims Low
- Fortress Falklands: A Book Review
- Pope Argentinus I, The Musical: Ragtime Meets Tango
- Credit Where Credit Is Undue?
- ¿Adios Hugo?
- When "No" Is A Positive
- Chile and Its "Crazies"
- The Oscars: A Post Mortem, So to Speak
- Sacrificing the Atacama? A Chilean View of Dakar
- Chilean Oscar Faceoff? "No" v. "Kon-Tiki"
- Friday Digest: Southern Cone Nuggets
- Dancing in the Mud? The Andean Aftermath
- Floods & Mud: Summer Storms Hit the Andes
Geldwechsel in Osorno
Today in Puerto Varas, I met a Swiss tourist who had lost his travelers’ checks and will have to wait until next week to have them replaced. In reality, I was surprised to find anyone carrying travelers’ checks these days as, in Chile and especially in Argentina, cashing them can be a bureaucracy-filled nightmare. It almost invariably requires visiting a bank or, alternatively, an exchange house, and they often take unconscionably large commissions - up to five percent and sometimes even more. Their hours are often inconvenient. more >>
Sweeping out the Ashes in Chaitén
In May of 2008, as many readers know, the ashfall eruption of Chile’s Volcán Chaiten and subsequent flooding caused the evacuation of its namesake town and disrupted traffic along the Carretera Austral, the discontinuous southern highway linked to the “mainland” by ferry. According to the Santiago daily La Nación, the government has narrowed the choice for a re-sited Chaitén to Santa Bárbara (about 10 km northwest of the current site) and Bahía Pumalín (farther north, with a sheltered harbor but no infrastructure whatsoever at the moment). more >>
The Argentines Are Coming
For most of the 1990s, with an overvalued peso at par with the US dollar, Argentines traveled abroad just as, over the past decade, US residents bought houses they couldn't afford. One of their favorite choices was nearby Chile, whose undervalued peso made it a bargain for visitors from across the Andes. Within Chile, one of their top destinations was the Pacific Ocean beach resort of Viña del Mar, where their money went farther than it did in their own Atlantic coast city of Mar del Plata. more >>
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