Argentina

What a Messi! 

We arrived in Buenos Aires the morning after Argentina's World Cup victory.  The road from the airport was already lined with fans, camped out in tents, anticipating the team’s return from Qatar a day later. It was hard to believe that people would camp out on the shoulder of a highway in 90 degree heat and humidity to watch a bus go by, but the next day, we began to understand what football means in Argentina.

In anticipation of the team’s return, the government called a national holiday and 5 million people poured onto the highways linking the airport to the Presidential Palace. We ventured out onto one five-lane-wide straightaway to dance, beat drums, eat, and sing soccer songs. 

The crowd of “10 Messi” jerseys periodically parted to let trucks go through, and the trucks honked and waved sky blue and white flags out their windows. When we asked, fellow revelers told us the team’s bus would arrive “any minute now”.  Eventually we learned that the concept of the bus, rather than the actual bus, was enough to maintain a full day of sun-soaked revelry. 

It’s not just a game, and it’s not just Argentina. Academics have posited that fan psychology is a vestige of earlier times when humans lived in small tribes.  The warriors sent to fight and protect our tribes not only shared our genetic material, but also determined the destiny of it.  Survival of our families was, literally, at stake. 

Watching our team win may trigger a similar emotional response to how our our ancestors experienced tribal wars. In fact, diehard fans experience hormonal changes during and after games that mimic those of the players themselves.  Remarkably, this holds true whether it’s cricket in India, baseball in Boston, or soccer in Argentina. 

These days, the genetic distance between fans and players is greater than ever. I look nothing like Steph Curry. The Bangladeshi villagers I met in 2010 (link) who have painted their houses with the Argentine flag look nothing like Messi. It doesn’t seem to matter. Team sports tap into a primal hunger to consolidate a sense of belonging to a tribe, and even better, a tribe that will enjoy globally recognized dominance.

In the end, with the roads to the Presidential Palace impassable, Messi never rode on any of the highways near where we were.  Instead, the team took a helicopter over a sea of blue and white -- adoring fans below, basking in a shared identity and completely unaware that their warriors were flying by overhead. 

What’s on the Menu? 

Big chunks of Argentine history are summarized on a Buenos Aires restaurant menu. 

Reading the extensive section entitled “Pasta Casera” I see that half the dishes – like half the country – are of Italian descent. Down the right hand side, the prices are handwritten on stickers which are affixed on top of older stickers. Perhaps they once read $5 when the Argentine Peso was pegged to the U.S. Dollar, but now the top sticker on the stack reads 1500 ARS (roughly $5 USD) per dish. 

In their efforts to pay for universal healthcare, universal education, and universal housing, the Argentine Treasury simply prints currency to pay their bills, resulting in one of the highest rates of inflation in the world. 

When we first arrived in Buenos Aires we changed money at 300 ARS per dollar. Four weeks later, we were changing at 368 ARS per dollar. We were experiencing an annual inflation rate over 270%, and its implications were mind-boggling. 

Show Me The Money

Argentines cope with inflation by treating cash like a hot potato.  They spend what they have immediately and buy U.S. Dollars if they can afford to. Hold a savings account in pesos and you’re guaranteed to get burned.  

One Argentine claimed that Argentina has more $100 USD bills in circulation than any other country, including the US. It seemed a little far-fetched, but almost plausible; people often keep their life savings in US dollars under their mattresses (literally), and make all major purchases (including real estate!) in $100 USD notes. 

Even getting those US bills is its own drama. 

Currency exchange at the market rate is not legal, so it goes down a bit like a TV drug deal.  I send a few WhatsApp messages to a guy who only has a first name, who shows up at our AirBnb in a car with tinted windows. I enter the car with five $100 USD bills and the driver hands me a brown paper bag filled with pesos. The largest Argentine bill (1000 ARS) was worth about $3 USD when we arrived; unfortunately, this guy only deals in 500 ARS notes.  Counting a stack that thick on the spot feels nonsensical, so I emerge from the car blinking in disbelief at what’s just happened. 

Eventually, we get accustomed to doing everything in cash, paying for groceries, rental cars, and domestic flights with wads of comical proportions. 

Hyperinflation also prevents the use of credit cards as banks can’t afford to wait 30 days to get paid. Not having credit cards means it’s hard to shop online, or reserve anything – hotels, cars, or summer camps – ahead of time or at a distance.  The only payment option is cash, on arrival.  Without any reservation system, the boys’ summer camp had no real reason to set dates or prices ahead of time. When we called them a few months before arriving, we were surprised to learn they hadn’t finalized any of their plans. Everything seemed to fall together a week or two before the start date -– nerve wracking for a planner like me, but totally consistent with the improvisational rhythms of everyday life. 

I wonder how much the informality of the culture is a result of the country’s monetary policy -- or, perhaps, vice versa?

First Impressions in Patagonia

After a week in Buenos Aires, we moved to an Andean community just outside of El Bolsón, a town with local flourishes of patchouli, gluten-free vegan fare, and dreadlocks.  Some friends of friends from college had visited during their junior year abroad and never left.   Over our month house-sitting their place, we began to understand why -- but it wasn’t love at first sight. 

It was Christmas Eve when we found ourselves driving up the steep dirt road to the house for the first time. We’d decided to stay here for a month knowing remarkably little about the place, and I’d been anxious about our arrival for months.  Situated well beyond the “Street View” feature of Google maps, the whole neighborhood seemed unknowable, and yet, we were totally committed to living there. 

As we ascended the unmarked country roads in pursuit of a map pin, our two wheel drive Chevy Joy spun out on the steep uphills and kicked up an impressive plume of chalky dust and a smell of burnt rubber. The boys’ noses and hands were glued to the windows, and Abby had a discernable look of “What have we done?!” on her face.  As the road wound on, getting steeper as we climbed, I reminded myself that the first trip up the hill would feel the longest.  “It will get easier from here,” I said out loud, hoping it was true.

Our hosts had started building their house by hand over 10 years ago.  The round timber framing matches the trees on the property, and the compressed hay walls echo the hip-high grasses surrounding the house. It felt as though the house had emerged from the soil, and might some day recede back into it. It was beautiful both in concept and reality, even if not entirely comfortable to our city-slicker sensibilities.  For some reason – whether exhaustion or preference –  our hosts had stopped short of making cabinetry, closets, furniture, or interior doors. The handmade doors were a trick to close, and even harder to lock. The washing machine occasionally walked away from the wall, spewing gray water across the room.  There was no cell service, WiFi, central heating or cooling.  In managing my expectations I realized it was helpful to reframe our new home as “glamping”. 

But what the house lacked in modern amenities, it made up for in color, charm,  flora and fauna. The walls were scrawled with drawings and activist poetry, the most memorable of which challenged notions of private property in a child’s handwriting. 

The microbiome, too, was flourishing. The house came with live sourdough and yogurt cultures, and a kombucha that was so active it threatened to get up and walk away. The eco-friendly gray water system also seemed to host a microbial community that was more easily smelled than seen. Outside, a pair of black faced ibis honked into the night, flying over dog-sized rabbits dashing across the land. 

While my first impressions ran the full gamut, Rio and Luca wasted no time getting settled.  After dinner that first evening we found them  dashing through the fields with our hosts’ kids, learning the local ropes: from the raspberries to the strawberries to the secret fort hidden in a burned forest.  

At 10pm, as the sun began to set, we had to pry them away from their new friends. They were already in heaven. 

“¿A que te dedicas?”

In place of the standard “What do you do?” (where “work” is implied),  our hosts and neighbors often asked us “What are you dedicated to?” I was struck by the divergent answers I would give to the prompt of “work” vs “dedication” and the relative flimsiness of the former compared with the latter.  

What would happen if we all started asking this question?

Our host noted her dedication to the study of local medicinal plants, classical dance, and her kids. Her partner hand crafted indigenous flutes from local wood, but stopped after his workshop burned down last year. Now he’s taking a course in creative writing. 

It’s easy to observe that they are also dedicated to having a minimal environmental impact. She casually washes plastic bags and stuffs them into 2 liter plastic bottles that she uses for all kinds of things including furniture, driveway pavement, and insulation. It’s not a topic of conversation, it’s just how plastic is processed where there is no recycling or trash service. In Oakland we fill our street side cans weekly, often piled high with cardboard from Amazon.  Here, the entirety of the waste they produce could fit in a single Amazon box per month, if that. 

No one in this neighborhood of multi-hectare lots seems to make or spend much money, but they do seem to take the question of dedication quite seriously. How they spend their time reflects this beautifully.  

There’s an integrity and simplicity that feels elusive at home in California. 

Heaven is where you don’t want to be somewhere else

Perhaps most striking and most delightful was the fact that none of our new neighbors or friends  seemed to want to be anywhere else. This is very different from our experience in Mexico, where so many people shared the dream of getting to the United States. Or even at Google where there’s a desire to be promoted to the next level, or at least see what offer Meta or Amazon might put on the table. 

Here, the dream was often to stay put. Our neighbors kept their girls at home over the summer break where they made bows and arrows from scratch, filled sketchbooks with drawings and swam in the irrigation tank. 

After one such swim, Rio asked our neighbor if she could meet up in half an hour to play in the yard.  

“We don’t have watches, so we will swim until we want to come back. We’ll see you when we see you!” 

For this 9 year old, there was nowhere else she wanted to be.  Why let Rio’s desire to structure her time distract from the pleasure of being here now?  

Wise little kid.  

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