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Changing left over currency that nobody wants
When I left Venezuela eight months ago, I found myself in the middle of a very large problem. I had lots of Bolivares left over, which I'd saved from various months of pay and I had nowhere to buy dollars instead. Well, that's not strictly true. I could have got them changed into dollars but at a very poor rate. At that time the Bolivar was very weak and the black market ruled the country (it still does, of course). It was 7 Bolivares to the dollar, when it had been 3.5 Bolivares only a few weeks beforehand.
True, the Bolivar is perhaps one of the currencies that fluctuates the most in South America, but this was ridiculous. I couldn't buy my dollars legally as there's a control on the amount of dollars that any one person can take out of the country and so the airport wasn't an option for me. Therefore, I decided to keep hold of the currency as it will be worth far more like this in the long run.
Still, it was very annoying to know that I had just over a month's worth of rent for Buenos Aires sat in my back pocket (figuratively speaking) and could do nothing with it. So, once a little more settled into my Argentine life, I went looking for a solution and I found one. Let me share with you the knowledge.
Most ordinary banks or change bureaus looked at me with very confused faces when I asked if I could change my Bolivares into pesos. What is a Bolivar anyway? I saw written across their faces. Why would we want to buy such a currency? However, Banco Piano (on Parana, in between Sarmiento and ‘Tte Gral. J Peron. What's more, this bank worked very quickly and painlessly. I had to give them my address (which could have been either my address in BA or London.) and I had to show them my passport, but nothing more. Very normal, easy and after about 10 minutes, I came out of the bank with one month's rent and some coffee money as a treat to myself in pesos.
Therefore, if you have left over cash from Chile, Peru, Bolivar, Colombia, anywhere, and you unfortunately got stuck with it and had lost all hope for ever being able to use that money again, there's light at the end of the tunnel! Get yourself on down to Banco Piano between the hours of 11.00am and 1.00pm (Tuesday to Friday) to avoid most of the hoards and you should be in and out, leaving a quick transaction in your wake.
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Tracey Chandler, originally from London, now lives and works in South America (at present, Buenos Aires) as the Assistant Director of the non-profit organisation, South American Explorers, teacher of English and as a freelance writer. She writes for Buenos Aires Time Out, The Argentimes, Ola's World and Suite101. She is the Editor in chief of a bilingual, monthly publication in Buenos Aires called "El Desconocido" and spends her free time looking into new projects and learning more about her new home.
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