Impossible to find, and extraordinarily valuable centavo coins from the Republic of Argentina.

What a load of rubbish!

Now, these two things may have been taking place, but I can tell you from personal experience that the REAL Argentina financial crisis lies in the lack of coins in circulation in their economy.

It is one of the most ridiculous things that I have ever seen in my life. Our first day in Mendoza I saw signs on shop windows reading "No Hay Monedas", "There are no coins", and I figured that this phrase must have some sort of dual meaning in Argentina. Maybe a moneda wasn't a coin, but instead some sort of special delicious cake, like saying "We're all out of Krispy Cremes." But no, they really meant to say that they didn't have any coins.

Shop after shop after shop didn't have any coins and most of them seemed to be quite dumbfounded that I would come into a store with only bills and expect to be able to purchase some goods. On more than one occasion I was forced to leave a store because they were unable to make change for me.

Supposedly they are having trouble because since the currency has dropped to such low levels, the metal that some of the coins are made of is actually worth more than the coin itself. So people are taking bags of coins to Chile to be melted down and made into "I heart Chile" key chains or something. One guy told me that this may or may not be true, but it seems to be the story that is going around. Either way, it is a pretty serious issue and clearly needs to be dealt with as it is quite impossible to have commerce without money!

Now, the lack of coins itself may not seem like the greatest tragedy in the world...you can always take a few candies instead of your change, or pay with a credit card, leave a big tip, etc. But! Coins are required if you want to ride the bus! There are little machines on the buses and trolleys that only accept coins, and the driver will not let you ride with a bill, even if you are willing to forego your change. To add insult to injury, the machines don't give change anyhow, and you can't pay for several tickets at the same time. So, if you do manage to scrounge together 3 peso coins, you can't get two $1.30 fares because the first ticket eats your 2 pesos and then you're screwed.

So this is another reason that shops give for their lack of coins, because people are saving the ones that they have in order to be able to ride the bus. Clearly one would think that the government would step in and come up with some sort of short term solution until they can get more coins made. I know that I am in South America, but this is Argentina, not Surinam!

I read on the front cover of the newspaper that in Mendoza alone the bus companies made an additional 80,000 dollars last month on the extra change that they don't give back in their machines, but I didn't read anything about something needing to be done about the coin shortage.

At any rate, we really loved Mendoza, but it was a real pain in the ass to try and scrape together bus fares. The funniest was asking a shopkeeper if they could make change for you, the look on their face was exactly the same as if you had asked to kick their elderly grandmother down a flight of stairs. But at least they weren't lying, more than once they showed me their cash drawer with less than 20 coins that was supposed to be their change for the entire day.

We managed to find a way, although a couple times the clerk gave me the evil eye for buying items that were clearly priced to give me the maximum coinage!

And of course we didn't help the situation by taking with us the coins that you see pictured above...but hey, how else are we going to get from the airport into Buenos Aires when we visit? Apparently Argentina is a BYOC country, Bring Your Own Coins.