Aneya: The Money Problem

It's less of a problem and more of a godsend, really, it just depends how you look at it. I'm used to converting my dollars into Euros and getting less than half back, or even worse, converting dollars to Pounds and getting....well, basically nothing.

But not so here in Chile! When I converted my money at the airport I had brought with me a sizable amount of cash. The wad of dollars in my purse was nothing compared to what I got back. Stacks and stacks of 1,000 pesos, 5,000 pesos, 10,000 pesos, plus change galore. Had the man made a mistake? If so, I wasn't going to correct him. I took my wad of cash and thought of all the completos I could buy. I was rich!

But really, the money conversion here is a pain, a calculation I'm still getting used to. (People who know me know my math skills are already lacking and Lauren, sadly, is no better.) Basically, it goes something like this:

1,000 pesos: 2 dollars

5,000 pesos: 10 dollars

10,00 pesos: 20 dollars

100,00 pesos: 200 dollars

Then there's all the change. One coin could be 50 pesos or it could 100 pesos or it could be 500. Then there's this other coin that's so tiny and plastic it looks like Monopoly money. This is the 1 cent coin, less than a penny, if you can imagine that. The first day here I was completely confused and had to have Daniela tell me what was what. Several times.

I'm getting the hang of it now, and I've realized that everything here is remarkably cheap. On our second day, we had a three course meal that cost 7 dollars! A 1.5 liter bottle of water? 50 cents. An hour online at an internet cafe? About a dollar. Our cell phones cost us 40 dollars each, but that includes 20 hours of free minutes and texts, the charger, the actual phone and each one comes with a radio in it!

There are people selling things on blankets all over the streets. Fans, toys, random magic wooden sticks, earrings (my weakness! I haven't bought any yet, but by the looks of it, i'll only be spending 50 cents, so why the hell not!) The fact that everything is so cheap is both a burden and a blessing. It creates a false sense of security, knowing my one 10,000 peso note can buy us dinner for weeks and weeks on end. We took a day trip to Isla Negra and the whole thing (bus trip and food) cost us 10 bucks. The only bad thing about this is that you feel like you can just buy anything your heart desires, when in reality, you need to be careful.

Lauren and I had dinner one night in a nice neighborhood and the meal was about 20 bucks, which is a helluva lot here. We had a few beers, I had a sandwich, she had a salad. In any other place, that would have cost us 10 dollars. At the most. What a rip off!

So, the moral of the story is: just because everything is super cheap, doesn't mean we need to go crazy. I've gotta keep telling myself that, or i'll be the one selling socks on the street!