USA to Argentina: Money, cash, card strategies.

Just got back from 12 days in Argentina. Before the trip I was confused about the best payment method to use while there. Sharing what I learned in case others find it useful.

Plan A: Transfer US dollars to yourself via western union. Western union gave an exchange rate of 1470 Arg pesos per 1 us dollar. The fee to withdraw as Arg pesos is ~1% and that is by far the lowest cost I found. Many restaurants/vendors gave a 10%, some even 20% discount for paying in cash pesos so it was worth the small hassle to do the transfer and pickup. Risk: Western union locations seem to run out of money regularly. I couldn't find a rhyme or reason to it, it just depends on the location and the day, I guess.

Plan B: bring clean, crisp $100 bills with you and exchange those in a cambio/cueva. Downside of this approach is they gave me ~1370 pesos per us dollar. Essentially an 9% cost.

Plan C: credit card Many posts online said “just pay with a credit card” and that totally works, but many restaurants/vendors add a fee of 10% for using a card. So you don't get the cash discount AND you pay that fee in some cases. But, it's convenient. And a good backup if you can't get cash.

Note on El Chalten (in Patagonia) specifically: Its a small town and the western union there is permanently closed. Recommend you get pesos in Buenos Aires before going to El Chalten. Every business we visited accepted credit cards and many businesses will accept USD, but it wasn't clear to me what kind of exchange rate they would give.