Here’s what you will need:

• A passport picture.
• Your passport, with enough pages in it to get a Visa. Mine had four remaining blank pages in it, which is not enough. The lady told me to go to the US embassy to get pages added.
• Travel plans- copy of your hotel reservation, copy of your plane ticket reservation. If you don’t have a return ticket, MAKE ONE UP - just make sure you have something that looks like a valid e-ticket summary from a website. They don’t particularly look closely at these documents.
• If you are getting a Business Visa, you will need a FAX from the business you are going to be working with when you are in Brazil stating the purpose of your trip, and what you will be doing. It is also important that the fax state that you are not working for that company while you are there.
• They told me for the fax that it must come from Brazil, but it turned out this wasn’t possible for me (their fax was down), so I just had the company fax me the letter, and I re-sent the fax from my own fax account in the US. They did not have a hard time with this.
• They did not ask for bank account information but they say on the website that you must provide this.
• When you enter the Consulate, go straight up to the window in the center. They speak English if that’s an issue for you (I tried Castellano for five minutes and finally the woman had mercy on me.) First, tell them what you want and show them all of your paperwork. The reason for this is that if you are missing something, you won’t waste the 10-15 minutes typing up your application on the computer only to find that you don’t have the necessary items.
• If you don’t have a picture they’ll give you directions to a Kiosko around the corner that will take it for 13 pesos.
• Once you’re sure you have what you need, go to the computers to the side of entrance, and type up your information. You’ll need mother’s/father’s names, address of your hotel or residence in Brazil, phone number where you can be reached, etc.
• Then get in the line to the far right for Tourist Visas.

Important things I learned during my FIVE trips to the Consulate:

• If you are going for a conference DO NOT tell them this - simply say you are going as a tourist. According to the Brazilian consulate in the US, attending a conferences is OK under a tourist visa, but according to the Brazilian consulate in Argentina, this is a business activity and you need a business visa. So, if you want to avoid hassle, keep it touristy.
• Unless you have a DNI, DO NOT tell them you have residency in Argentina if they ask. You will then be forced to show your residencia, etc. This is especially true if you are getting a business visa, because then they will want proof of your company in Argentina, (ie do you work for an SRL - like an LLC in the US). If you simply put your US address on the application, they won’t ask any of these questions.
• You don’t need to bring any money, they will give you a receipt and directions to the Banco Itau where you can pay. You must bring this receipt when you come back to pick up the Visa.
• The Visa takes 3 days. I dropped mine off on a Tuesday and they told me to pick it up between 12-1 pm on Friday.

1. You can buy anything one at a time at a kiosko. I have a mouse with a dead battery. I go outside to the kiosko, and I buy one AA battery. Super convenient. It’s everything Costco isn’t.

2. Cheek kisses. 

3. Politicians can talk for 40 minutes, with 75 microphones, cellphones, and tape recorders jammed in their face, and TV stations run the whole thing. Sure politics is dysfunctional here, but it’s a different sort of problem. Argentina is not a ’sound byte’ culture in some respects, or at least Argentine TV news doesn’t tend to pressure political dialogue in the same way that US news coverage tends to.

4. Cafe culture. Beef.

5. That asados just happen all the time, you get invited, then random people show up. Like the guy who painted our house invited me out to hang out with his band while they played one night, mostly covers, at this house that is essentially uninhabited except for when they practice. So while they were playing, their eighty year old neighbor comes in and takes the microphone and starts singing a tango ballad from the 50’s.

6. Friendliness from strangers when you are clearly a foreigner. First, one day when I was here in January just visiting, I needed to get some clothes washed. I didn’t speak any spanish at that point and looked up what to say in my phrasebook, walked next door to the Lavadero and basically butchered my sentence. There was this customer there, an older woman, who spoke english and helped translate for me. The next day I was about 10 blocks away at a restaurant and the same woman was there. So she comes up and starts helping me order.

Second, and not from a stranger, but still, we posted on an online forum here that we needed help mounting our TV on the wall. A friend of a friend basically saw the post, helped translate and find a local store that had the part we needed, and found someone who could do the work. 

7. Bus drivers who open doors for you when you’re not at a stop. And open doors when the bus is still going 20 kph, and let you kindof half navy-seal it out the door, then keep going. OK, i have mixed feelings about this one, but on days when I feel like i’m in the rhythm of the city and enjoying the bus, I like it. 

8. That Porteños think its funny that Americans eat while walking. Now that I think about it, I used to always eat while walking in Seattle, but there are all kinds of barriers here to prevent this combination of activities. Like coffee is practically not purchasable ‘to go’. If you buy a pancho or choripan from a street vendor, generally people just stand around right there and eat it.

9. That the neighborhood parilla comes over to our office, rings the bell, and to tell us when ‘hay disco’. El disco is this big disk cooked on the parillada with either beef or chicken - somewhat like a half roast beef/half stew. 

10. The fact that people are willing to protest at the drop of a hat. I’ll take that over the numbness and emasculation of the US public any day.

But last weekend we went to the park and I just had to try it again, but i didn’t bring any of the accoutrements necessary to partake. So i bought a ‘mate listo’ (ready mate) - it includes a plastic bombilla, a plastic cup, a styrofoam thermos and the yerba mate itself. One thing that is clear is that the quality of mate really varies depending on the source as with any other tea or herb product. The taste was incredibly bitter, like smoking a cigarette that you found under the passenger seat of your pickup, then making a stew with the used filter and gargling the broth.

Americans are vaguely familar with the Faulkland Islands war, but not as familar with the impact on Argentine history, nor with the fact that the Islas Malvinas, as they’re called in Castellano, have their status as Argentine territory written into the Constitution. Further, that the war, triggered by the occupation of South Georgia by Argentina in March of 1982, was a huge boost to Margaret Thatcher. Of course i learned this mostly from Wikipedia, and from this really nice guy I met on craigslist who came to buy some of our furniture in Seattle. He was a walking encyclopedia on the whole war.

I found this Elvis Costello song today and though I think i’ve heard it before I never realized the subject was the war, and the fact that the BBC calls it the most lyrically deft and intelligent protest songs ever written.

But the longer answer is more complicated. The move is both the byproduct of a series of small choices to live differently, and one of those choices. An experiment in living independently, not beholden to expectations, be it from friends, family, career. A chance to learn about ourselves, etc. Chance for our kids to learn a different language.

But why not Europe? France or Spain? Czechoslovakia - Prague? Why South America, and if South America, why not Santiago, since Chile has the most stable and fastest growing economy? But i think if you look at it from the perspective of:

• The dollar is still (relatively) strong - rules out Western Europe, Australia/NZ
• Real Estate is a good investment - rules out Prague, Romania
• The language and culture are (reasonably) penetrable - nix Turkey, most of Asia
• The country is (relatively) safe - gone are Brazil, Mexico, Peru.
• Require an interesting, cosmopolitan city, which would bump BA ahead of Santiago

Very quickly Argentina is at the top of any short list. Just look at the cost of living for these European cities.

UPDATED to show the proper route.