If the adage for travelers is, “Those who convert don’t have fun,” Brazilians in Argentina have benefited from just the opposite. “People convert here to have fun,” says a happy doctor from Rio de Janeiro, Marcela Almeida, who after three days in Argentina is with her parents, her boyfriend and a few friends in the city of Mendoza, the capital.
She says that for Brazilians used to worrying about the real’s exchange rate when traveling to Europe or the United States, the logic is finally reversed in Argentina.
“In Buenos Aires, we went to Don Julio, one of the best restaurants in the world, and we paid the price you pay in any meat restaurant in Rio de Janeiro,” says Marcela.
For five days in the winegrowing region of Mendoza, the group has been conducting three wine tastings a day and says they will take about ten bottles per person to Brazil. “We only buy top wines,” says Marcela, in a sentence that is finally completed by her father, Luiz Gastão, 57 years old: “the Gran Reserva and the differentiated ones that we don’t find in Brazil”.
For the sixth time in the city, the businessman says prices on this visit are practically half what they are in Brazil and there are instances of even bigger bargains.
Traditionally, tourists in Mendoza already found labels with a good difference in value to those that came to Brazilian countries since it is the producing region where there are no taxes and import costs. However, the devaluation of the Argentine peso widened this range.
from bottle to bottle
The program that the Rio group is running, with visits to three wineries per day, has a fixed price that varies between $175 and $250. The amount must be paid in US currency and there is no avoiding the high costs. But Gastão explains that the advantage is paying for the hotel, wines and dinner in Argentine pesos.
He carries a wad of cash in his pocket with Argentine pesos, reais, and dollars just in case, and always doublechecks what prices are best at.
The Brazilian Luiz Gastão in a restaurant in Mendoza: in his pocket bills in reais, dollars and Argentine pesos
Image: Luciana Taddeo/UOL
The group uses a van service called “Winebulance,” a word that plays on the intersection of the words “wine” and “ambulance” in English. One of the points of the itinerary was Bodega Lagarde in Luján de Cuyo, near the city of Mendoza, where they ate a seventier menu with wine. At this winery, 90% of the visitors are Brazilian.
“In Rio de Janeiro, if you eat a sevencourse tasting menu in a good restaurant in the south zone, nothing over the top but an average wine, it would cost more or less R$ 250 per person. Here we expect to spend half the value,” they say.
The Brazilian tourist group in Mendoza: parallel exchange brings good exchange rates to the real
Image: Luciana Taddeo/UOL
parallel exchange
The most attractive prices for Brazilian tourists relate to the use of an informal quotation of the Argentine peso, called “blue”, which the majority of people interviewed by Nossa in Buenos Aires and Mendoza used. While the dollar is officially quoted at 140 pesos, this Tuesday (9) it more than doubled: 292 it reached more than 350 pesos during the country’s economic instability in July.
In order to get better deals than the official ones, without exposing themselves to the risk of informal moneychangers who frequent the tourist areas of Buenos Aires and Mendoza, tourists have recently “discovered” Western Union Pix transfers, with payout at agencies in Argentina (see am end of this article how it works). The couple Gercílio and Raissa Macedo used this system and managed to exchange each real for almost 55 pesos.
Gercílio and Raissa Macedo visit a winery in Argentina’s Mendoza region
Image: Lucianna Taddeo/UOL
Your journey started in Buenos Aires, passing through Mendoza where you will visit wineries, have one night in a winery in Valle de Uco and two nights in Las Leñas, still in Mendoza province. “The real thing is valued in relation to the weight, but things are a lot more expensive than they used to be, like clothes,” says Raissa, 30, who is an advertiser and influencer.
What pays off, says the couple from Teresina (PI), are the food and wine, a passion of the couple. “We already have almost three cases with six wines,” says the influencer. Number that is supposed to increase in the rest of the script: “We will take twenty labels, just for us,” says lawyer Gercílio, 37 years old.
As an example of the profitability, he cites the purchase of an El Enemigo Cabernet Franc 2015 for the equivalent of R$ 180. In Brazil, the same wine can cost three times as much. “We take category wines that are more expensive but compensate a lot compared to Brazil,” they explain.
Wine tourism is an attraction in Mendoza, at the foot of the Andes
Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto
“Brazilians buy quality wines like water,” says Carolina de Marcos, commercial director of Fincas Patagónicas, which owns the Tapiz and Zolo wineries. According to her, it’s common for them to take a crate or two with them to continue having fun transforming when they return.
swap reais
Banks and companies like Western Union legally offer the parallel exchange service from the Real to the Argentine Peso. The value of R$1 was equivalent to about 54 Argentine pesos this week more than double the official price in the country.
According to UOL Economia, in the case of Western Union, the socalled bluechip swap is used, which is intended for ongoing transactions in Argentina that is, reflecting a real value of American currency on the day the exchange rate is defined, and not a figure set by the government, like in the case of the official exchange rate.
You can exchange currency with Pix, send reais to Western Union and withdraw in pesos at any of the company’s stores in Argentina. The fees charged are: 3% of the transaction amount and 1% federal tax.