Iguazú Falls Good value
Argentine beef and empanadas in Puerto Iguazú, at a fraction of Buenos Aires prices. Inside the park you are limited to a few overpriced cafés, so take water and something to eat.
Budget travel in Argentina
What a visitor's money does in Argentina: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.
Mid-range average across 5 guides · 5 is very cheap
Money
Argentine Peso (ARS) · Highly variable — check before travel
Argentina has had multiple exchange rates and long stretches where cash dollars beat cards substantially. Check what the current situation is before travelling, because it changes with the government. The Brazilian side is priced in reais and is a separate country for money purposes.
ATMs
Avoid: Argentine machines for large sums — the fixed fee is steep and caps are low
Use: Banco Nación, Santander, Galicia
Argentina has had multiple exchange rates and long stretches where cash beat cards substantially. Check the current situation before travelling, and take reais if you plan to cross to the Brazilian side.
Getting around
A short ride in Iguazú Falls: $3,000–7,000 across town — cheap
The black-and-yellow taxis are cheap and everywhere, and in the cities they are a perfectly good option.
City by city, cheapest first
Buenos Aires Good value
Parrilla steak is the institution — order bife de chorizo and ask for jugoso if you want it rare. Dinner starts at 21:30 at the earliest. Empanadas and dulce de leche everything.
Mendoza Good value
Long lunches at the bodegas, which is the whole industry here — seven courses with a pairing, in a dining room looking at the Andes, for a fraction of what the same thing costs in Europe. In town, an asado, and empanadas mendocinas, which are baked rather than fried.
Bariloche Mid-range
Chocolate, which the Swiss and Italian settlers brought and which the whole main street now sells. Patagonian lamb, trout from the lakes, and craft beer that started here before it started anywhere else in Argentina.
Ushuaia & Tierra del Fuego Expensive
Centolla — king crab — is what to eat here, and is landed in the channel rather than flown in. Fuegian lamb is roasted on a cross over an open fire and is the other thing. Both are expensive by Argentine standards and cheap by anybody else's.
The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.
The guides in Argentina
Iguazú FallsArgentinaTwo hundred and seventy waterfalls, and a walkway over the biggest
Buenos AiresArgentinaEuropean grandeur, tango, and extraordinary steak
BarilocheArgentinaAlpine Patagonia: chocolate shops, glacial lakes and a ski season in July
Ushuaia & Tierra del FuegoArgentinaThe southernmost city in the world, where the Andes finally run into the sea
MendozaArgentinaMalbec, and the highest mountain outside Asia standing behind the vineyards