Travel day to Tierra del Fuego

30 Aug Walkabout in Buenos Aires on Florida St, the pedestrian street. It was very different from the last time I was here. Argentina has had a financial meltdown over the last 18 months and the exchange rate for the Argentine Peso has gone from 3 to 1 USD to over 8 to 1 USD. As a tourist I was hoping for some deals, but instead the country is seeing two digit inflation as it is the victim of a global economy. It seemed like every 20 feet or so, there was a guy trying to "cambio" or change money for our USD. This was not the case when I was last in Buenos Aires. There were a lot of vacant store fronts (including Harrod's) on Florida St and every store had 'discuentes hoy" or no cuotas for 15 months, which means that payments are made over 15 months without interest. This was to move appliances and TVs. It appears that Argentina is suffering from a population that is fiscally over extended like the folks in the US. The advantage for the people in the US is that there are a lot more people to support the financial collapse that we've been slow to recover from. We left the hotel and headed to the national airport. We will be flying through Buenos Aires AEP for all the trips in country and then will have to switch to the International airport EZE, for our flight to Bogota. It was a little over 3 hours to fly to Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego. The landing was one of the roughest I've been through in a long time. The last time it snowed was over a week ago and they got 20 cm in town, and more on the mountains. It is ski season, so the taxi driver said that it was good for their business. The high today was 40 degrees in town, so it wasn't too cold for us thin bloods. Tomorrow there's a 50% chance of rain at sea level and about the same high temperature. The taxi driver said that it can get really cold, but most of winter the temperature hovers around freezing and doesn't get too cold. Our room is clean and basic. Because it's ski season and the weekend, there were a lot of hotels sold out. We skipped the high end places and just went for comfortable. We will explore the area for three days before moving north to warmer Iguazu Falls. PS We did see Manu Ginoboli in the Buenos Aire airport!