Planning on traveling to Argentina/Chile this fall. Given the current financial situation with inflation and interest rates, how easy is it to get around the country with a credit card? Will be gone for three weeks, so I don't particularly want to take a handful of dollars with me--burdensome, worry about theft, ability to exchange, etc. Rarely take traveler's checks anymore, but might this be a good option for this country. Mixed feelings on ATMs. Exchange $ at hotels? Banks? Thoughts? Comments?

Not easy, especially in Argentina. Many places are cash only, especially restaurants and smaller stores. We found a few places that indicated they'd take credit cards, but they didn't - either because their credit card machine was down or because they'd changed their policy or had a minimum amount they'd accept. It's easy to exchange dollars for a good rate at the national bank in the Buenos Aires airport. We took a money belt and just carried cash. It worked out fine. Definitely do not carry lots of cash in a wallet or purse. ATMs frequently run out of cash, not so much in large cities, but if you're going to smaller towns (for example, in Patagonia), you can't rely on getting cash from ATMs - and even if you can, the charges are quite high to use the ATMs. I can't speak to traveler's checks; we didn't use them. Good luck!

We Have insisted Argentina several times since 2008 the last time in 2016.we have always had issues with payments/getting cash whenever we have been. One year th people servicing ATMs we on strike, another time our cards just wouldn’t work in many ATMs. Machines do seem to run out of cash regularly. In essence, you cannot really rely on anything to work as it should.

Many businesses always seemed to insist on cash rather than cards. Some would say that there POS machines were not working - although on those occasions I would say I had n cash - the machines would teh miraculously start working!

The "blue dollar" fx system by contrast always seemed to function much more efficiently than the mainstream banking system but I imagine that is no longer in exisitence, at least to the same extent but the "normal" cambio offices will still be open and their rates were only marginally worse.

In 2016 we were glad we took USD cash but even then, it took forever to queue at banks to exchange.

I feel for the people of Argentina as the government does not seem to be delivering on the economic reforms curbing rampant inflation, currency depreciation etc. There must be fears of another major currency crisis?

Basically, I think I would try to pay where I could for hotels, maybe even prepaying online, pay in upmarket restaurants where possible by card etc. But I think there is little alternative to take wads of cash, just don’t keep them all in the same place and change as and when needed.