Posted on under Argentina

 

We had the privilege this month to welcome some brand new expats to Buenos Aires. We decided to visit an historical restaurant together in the Centro (downtown) area of the city, Café Tortoni, and to take you along! This café is rated one of the most beautiful cafés in the world. So won’t you come and join us? Click here for Café Tortoni
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Back to Normal

We are finally back to civilization. We have Internet. The extended loss of Internet is the first major challenge we have had here in Buenos Aires in almost four years. But when we hit a challenge I wondered for a while if it would ever be fixed! But I now have cable–with a different company–and everything is normal again. Since the citizenship project is complete, I want to show you a little more of day-to-day life in this city before moving on to report on a different area. If you enjoy life in a large city you would love Buenos Aires. Anything you want is here. You can go to the horse races, to tango, to opera, to the playhouse. We considered covering some of those things, but they are more in the class of sightseeing whereas our focus is on everyday life in any area. But we do want you to know that they are here.

Economy in Argentina

Argentina appears to draw ever closer to a crisis, albeit slowly. When will it come? I don’t think anyone knows. Some are speculating it could be any time or it could be two years. We have noticed that things usually don’t happen as soon as you think they will when it comes to politics and/or the economy, so we certainly would not try to set a time frame. In fact, maybe there will be no crisis. But the signs are to the contrary. But right now you would never guess that a problem looms. Sidewalks are crowded, people are shopping, restaurants in my neighborhood are full. One Argentine told me that, because of the inflation, people are spending money as soon as they get it and that’s why they are shopping. We don’t know, but the inflation rate is obviously rising.

The official inflation rate the last I heard was about 10%. Notice the carefully chosen word “official.” It is also reported that it is against the law to report any rate different from the official rate so, of course, being law-abiding as I am, I will stick with the official rate of 10%. I have, however, heard speculative figures of 20% to 30% from Argentines.

On the positive side, it is getting very economical to someone with US dollar income to live in Argentina. Of course we are a bit worried about the dollar itself in the next few years, but we enjoy the good things while they last. Across the river in Uruguay the story is different in that the dollar has been falling against the Uruguay peso for a long time. It is getting more expensive to live there if income is in the U.S. dollar–but not out of reach for most people we think.

Several of you have written us recently because you heard that Argentina is rioting. I wondered about that myself since we got more than one report from subscribers. Everything in my area looked normal. I had also been to Tribunales recently, where there are a lot of government administrative offices. Historically, protests and riots generally focus around the government offices. But I didn’t see a single riot. I didn’t even see anyone who looked displeased!

So I asked around. The only disturbance was a protest at Congresso (where the Congress convenes) because of some law some politicians were trying to pass. So for those of you who got that message about Argentina, rest assured that there are no unusual problems in Argentina. Several months ago there was a problem in Bariloche and another location of what might be called “rioters” looting a store but that was not ongoing. Maybe someone was picking up on that. Otherwise everything is fine here. I think the Argentines have plenty of reason to riot, but so far they are not.

If you come to Argentina, sooner or later you will need to walk either around or through some kind of demonstration. It is part of life here and normally doesn’t interfere with any of us who are living or vacationing here, except occasionally traffic has to detour. In fact, I like that no uniformed thugs are beating up demonstrators, and sometimes I admire the people for complaining.

Health Independence

As you know, part of our focus is on independence from the medical industrial complex. If we are going to be independent, we must strengthen our immune systems and, in many cases, make some serious lifestyle changes. If we are on prescription drugs, we are not healthy. Prescription drugs don’t fix anything, they mask symptoms and, in the long term, weaken us further because ALL drugs have side effects–and we end up needing drugs to mask even more symptoms. However, we certainly may need to stay on pharmaceuticals until we can rebuild our health. This writer, having herself recovered from various maladies at age 62, including cancer, arthritis and asthma, believes that, with very few exceptions, we can be healthy at almost any age by changing to a genuinely healthy lifestyle.

But before we can do that, we have to have knowledge. Health does not come from eating the seven basic food groups as we have been told. I know that most of our subscribers are well informed and aware of that! Also, one of the first things most children meet up with in life that begins the downward health spiral is dealt with by Dr. Russell Blaylock, board-certified brain specialist and researcher. This week we include a speech by Dr. Blaylock.

Dr. Blaylock deals quite a lot with nutritional supplementation. My own return to health was not through either medical procedures, pharmaceuticals or vitamin supplements. Just remember that we can include all of the nutrition that Dr. Blaylock mentions through improving our nutrition. And yet the supplements that he recommends could be good to have on hand.

There are two sides to genuine health. One side is to provide our bodies with the building blocks that they need to replace dying cells and keep the immune system strong. The other side of the coin is to avoid toxins and things that do harm as much as we can in this increasingly toxic world. But our encouraging word today is that, for almost 100% of us, good health is within reach. We just need to reach for it and we hope Dr. Blaylock’s knowledge will help. This speech was made at a conference of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness in July 2003. Therefore, since it was to doctors, it is a bit technical. But it will give proactive people a good picture of the reason we need to build strong immune systems and medical independence. Notice that he says if we are exposed to biologically infecting agents, nutrition is the factor that makes the difference.

I hope that you will join me in working toward perfect health and fitness.

We hope you enjoy our trip to Cafe Tortoni. See you next week . . .

Arlean