Day 1, Arrival in Buenos Aires (BA) – December 15th
Arrival at EZE airport (this is the international airport in BA, there is another airport for domestic flights, Jorge Newbery Airport or AEP)
Exchanging Currency
Unless you are in a hurry, skip the exchange booth in the luggage area (the rate is not that good)
Exchange cash at Banco de la Nacion, open 24 hours, just after the luggage area (there is also a cash window for the bank on the inside of the luggage areas but it is not always open.
First, we could not exchange any cash from Canadian (or American) dollars into Argentinean pesos at any bank at home (GTA) so we needed to get cash as soon as we arrived. Apparently the currency is not widely changed. Secondly, the rate at the National Bank is better then you are likely to get at an exchange or on your credit card.
A word of warning, everyone seems to be exchanging money at the National Bank! As a result there is a big line up and the process is really slow. I do believe that there is a second National Bank just on the outside of the building where the taxis are lined up. I’d suggest you check there first and if it is open – go for it – there will be less of a line up as no one seems to know it is there.
Getting Into The City
There are two main options for getting into the city. The first option is by a bus company which you will see as you are leaving the luggage area – Manuel Tienda Leon. The second is by taxi.
We opted for a taxi as we did not want to drag our luggage from the main drop off area of the bus in the city to our hotel. After all we had been flying for about 13 hours and I hadn’t slept a wink.
The bus service is a fee per person and if you are travelling two or more people you may find the taxi is not that much more per person or even less anyway.
We opted for the taxi service stand which is in the middle of the hall on the way out of the airport (it’s a pretty small airport). The name of the taxi service we took is called Taxi Ezeiza – blue and white booth. We had read in advance that you have to be careful of what taxis to take so I was pretty much paranoid about taking one of the ones that were not in the actual airport with a stand.
The cost for us to get to the city centre was just under a 100 pesos. We had read that it should be about 70 so it was a little more than we had anticipated. You have to pay by cash for the taxi.
The trip to the hotel was pretty quick, less than half an hour but there was very little traffic save an accident on the highway on the way which caused a short delay.
Read Other Posts In This Series:
Part I
Part II
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Part VIII
Part iX
Part X
Part XI
Part XII
Part XIII
Part XIV
Part XV
Part XVI
Part XVII
