Never, ever use a card in Argentina. I know a way for you to get double your money while you're here in Argentina. Here's how much an normal tourist would get for $100 and here's how much you can get if you follow our advice. Hey, I'm Emily and I've been traveling for four years with my partner, Danny, my cat, Graham, and my dog, Sabrina. We have gone from the northernmost part in Alaska all the way down here to Argentina. When we found out, Argentina has some wild money practices. The Argentinian peso has such insecurity with inflation. The locals started buying US dollars to keep their wages safe. But once the government found out how much money is being bought, they started making a limit for how many dollars the Argentinians can buy every month. As soon as they started doing that, a black market emerged. I'll go more into this later, but for now let's just find out how to get the best price for your dollar in Argentina. Before you get on a plane across the border or book your bus ticket, make sure to get on to Wi-Fi and download the Western Union app. So on the Western Union app, you'll have to make an account with your email and either your credit card, which has a high fee, which I don't recommend, your debit card, which has a lower fee, or your banking information, which has the lowest fee but could take up to four days. Your first transfer is free, but after when you use a debit card like we did, the fees associated will be $10 for $500 and $20 for a thousand. Once you're in Argentina, you have to find yourself a Western Union location. Connect to Wi-Fi and head on to the Western Union app. In the Western Union app, click Menu and then find locations. Then you have to enter the city that you're in, comma, Argentina. Usually their post office, kiosks, or Western Union offices. Google Maps might also work if you have Wi-Fi, service, or download the offline map. Make sure to bring your passport and a copy of your passport to the offices every time you make a transaction. You're basically just sending money from you in the US to you in Argentina. Some issues that may occur is they only have a certain amount of pesos or only small bills like hundreds. It's best to get thousands and five hundreds. We combat these issues by going to the office before making the transaction. The first time we asked if we could use our Wi-Fi and also how much money they have in their counter. We made the transfer at the office so that we know that we have the exact amount of pesos that they have. But for your first transfer, make sure to take out at least $500 since it won't have a fee attached to it. Okay, let's make the transfer. Click the menu button again, then send money, enter the amount you want to send, cash pick up, and the method of payment. This is where you can see what the rate is each day. It will advance to a receiver screen where you enter your name as it is on your passport. Then you'll choose your card or bank account. It'll ask again for the CVV, hit next, and you can review what you'll be sending. We didn't record this part because it has a information on it. After making sure it looks correct, check the terms and conditions box, and hit send. The first time you'll ask you for an address, and I just picked a hotel on Google Maps, so I'm actually saying there. They may ask you for a copy of your passport, and you'll have to sign a receipt. The second transfer, the app asked for my passport photo, then it had to be verified, which took about five to ten minutes to process, after I initiated the transfer. If you don't have a car, you may want to carry a money belt, because the biggest bill is really only equivalent to about $3 in US, so you're going to have a whole stack of papers when you're leaving the Western Union, which can look crazy, and you don't really want to draw attention to yourself. At least a backpack. At least bring a backpack to the Western Union. The only place in Argentina that doesn't work as well is El Calafate. It's remote, it has less locals than tourists, and everything there is expensive. Don't bank on taking out money, they're bring pesos with you, or you may end up standing in this three-hour line at the post office. So it's a pretty simple process. I know it feels really weird to be carrying around all this money, and always paying in cash, but everyone does it. It is so much better to be given the appropriate amount for your money. Instead of an unrealistic government sanctioned rate. The reason why the black market is called blue is this is the rate you receive when you trade in a $100 bill with a blue stripe on it. Many people call this rate the blue dollar. All of these blogs and vlogs will tell you to bring a thousandth of dollars for your trip into Argentina, which is not only dangerous, but you're not going to get the same rate that we get at Western Union. Buying your pesos with your dollars at a money exchange in a quava or on the street is only going to get you around 270 pesos for your dollar. Whereas this week, on Western Union, we received 310 pesos for our dollar. And we did all of this without coding the walls of the van in dollar bills. Either way is still better than using a bank ATM, which will only give you around 140 pesos for your dollar. We did bring a bit of cash in Argentina because we knew the situation here, and it has been really beneficial. If the Western Union is closed or didn't have enough cash for that day, we could still pay at the grocery store or at the ski mountain in cash. I've also seen that you can get your money exchanged at hostels or hotels as well, but of course all of these rates are only around 260 pesos for your dollar. And if you bring down 20s instead of 100s, even still going to get a worse rate, sometimes you would only get 220 pesos for our dollar. We had no idea that this is a completely different rate for bigger bills as well. When citizens in Argentina were sanctioned by their governments, it buy only a couple hundred dollars a month. They headed to the black market to buy dollars for twice as much as they're worth, and we're buying those pesos. The government has tried so many tactics to try and keep their inflation down, and forcing the peso to stay with the dollar instead of its true value is their current plan. Knowing all of this, I wouldn't say Argentina is crazy cheap. The grocery store and the gas are very inexpensive, but if you try them by anything imported, the price skyrockets. And experiences like camping, skiing, eating out are all the same as anywhere else in South America. Don't let the cash run the inflation discourage you. This is an amazing country with very friendly people and great food. I hope this helps more travelers make their way down here to Argentina. If you have any questions or like this video, let me know in the comments. If you would love some more travel tips, make sure to subscribe and ring the bell so that you can see more of us on your feed. Thank you so much for watching, and we'll see you guys next time.