Few people know what $US220,000 ($334,200) in cash looks like. Ana does.
She showed up with a backpack of her life savings to buy the land for her house in Patagonia in Argentina.
No deposit. No mortgage. Just one lump sum payment.
Decades of arduous penny-pinching came down to 22 bundles of crisp $100 bills. Stacked vertically, they stood no more than two hands high.
Sounds sketchy? Not at all, says the former kindergarten teacher. "There's almost no bank credit here. I saved for 20 years to buy that land. It would have been impossible otherwise."
Bank financing is rare in Argentina. Most people buy their properties outright with cash. It's little wonder — with interest rates pushed to stratospheric levels, Argentina's benchmark rate of 78 per cent is more than 20 times Australia's.
"It's always risky," 50-year-old Ana says, when I ask about the safety of such enormous cash transactions. Scams are not uncommon, nor are attempts to rob either the buyer or seller.
But when I ask if she hired security personnel for the exchange, she bursts out laughing.
"No, not at all! That's not the style here. Forget it," she says. "I organised it alone."
It's just one of the many bizarre features of an economy that hit 100 per cent inflation in February — the highest level in 32 years.
When prices lose all meaning
Among the most exhausting problems caused by galloping inflation is that nobody seems to know the price of anything anymore — a phenomenon economists refer to as "unanchored expectations".
"Prices are increasing so much every day that, in the end, you have no idea what each thing is worth," says Guido Mazzei, who manages short-term apartment rentals in downtown Buenos Aires.
The 39-year-old fires up quickly when talking about inflation.
"You never go shopping in only one place; you compare five or six supermarkets," he says.
"It's like a treasure hunt; one place for detergent, another for eggs … and in the end, you just pay because you don't know if it's expensive or cheap."
The task of setting prices is equally perplexing, says Rudy Rindlisbacher, owner of a steel framing business in Trenque Lauquen — a city of roughly 50,000 in Buenos Aires province.
Each month, the 57-year-old sits down with his son and adjusts his price lists based on the official price of the US dollar.
"It's very, very complicated … because there is no way to foresee how much a product will cost at the time of re-stocking," he says.
"The big companies can withhold products, only putting them on the shelves when they know [the cost of re-stocking]. But a small business like ours needs to sell regardless. We need to live."
Bidding for work is also a high-stakes gamble, says Eduardo Rad, a private driver from Mendoza in Argentina's north-west.
He also earns money by engraving key rings, pens, cigarette lighters and other small goods.
"Let's say I go to a business. They order 200 pens and I give them my price. But by the time I make my purchases and engrave the pens, maybe I've lost part or even all of my profit," the 59-year-old says.
"There are times when I haven't been able to do the job or, if I've done the job but not told the customer that I'm losing money because the costs were higher than what I'd charged."
A never-ending crisis
Before the Great Depression in 1930, Argentina stood among the world's 10 richest nations per capita. But since the 1950s, few countries have spent more years in recession. Today, more than four in 10 Argentines live in poverty.
Argentina's central bank keeps printing more pesos in the face of stubborn deficit spending, constant devaluation and global price shocks caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"And as any economist will tell you, that will lead in only one direction: the purgatory of high inflation," says Dr Benjamin Gedan, director of the Wilson Center's Argentina Project and Latin American Program.
Analysts remain divided about how to solve the problem, but most agree that lack of political will is a critical issue.
"It's important to understand the cultural aspect of this," says Adam Fabry, a lecturer in economics at the National University of Chilecito in Cordoba.
"Unfortunately Argentina has such a prolonged history of inflation that you now have generations and generations of Argentines thinking that 30 per cent inflation is the norm."
But Gedan believes triple-digit inflation marks a perilous milestone for the Latin American economy.
"It's true that Argentines in many ways have adapted to life with high inflation. But really, that's like 20-30 per cent inflation, which is already unimaginable for most serious economies," he says.
"So even in Argentina, 100 per cent inflation is deeply disturbing and destabilising."
Spending like it's the end times
Yet this nationwide confusion about what anything should cost has done nothing to dampen the Argentine enthusiasm for spending.
"You'll go to restaurants in Buenos Aires that are full, not because people are thriving financially but because they say, 'quema la plata', meaning 'burn the money'," Gedan says.
And so many Argentines spend like it's the end times, buying everything from towels to televisions in instalments.
"In Argentina, the world is back to front. Houses are bought in a single cash payment; small items are paid over one or two years in fixed monthly instalments," Guido says.
"That's part of the madness … because as long as the money is in pesos, the good is worth more than the money."
Rudy backs the strategy. "I have a 2018 Toyota HiLux, which I bought a year-and-a-half ago for 4.5 million pesos. Six months later, it was worth 7.5 million pesos. Now it's worth almost 12 million pesos," he says.
"The truth is that the only way to save money is to buy goods."
A black market for blue dollars
Underpinning Argentina's financial woes is an artificially pegged exchange rate. This means it's set by the government, rather than market demand. It has given rise to a parallel currency market where pesos and US dollars can be exchanged illegally at cuevas ("caves") or via arbolitos (literally "little trees", which refers to the green bills or "leaves" traded by currency vendors for roughly twice the official rate).
Money exchanged at this rate is known as dolar blue or the blue dollar. And Argentines — bludgeoned by decades of double-digit inflation — can't get their hands on enough of it.
Some experts believe Argentines hold more US currency than anywhere outside the US.
"This is not just rich Argentine companies [chasing dollars]. This is service sector people. This is taxi drivers and store owners. This is any Argentine who wants to have savings of any kind," Gedan says.
"They have people on motorbikes go to their apartments. They meet on the street. They have exchanges in the back of a laundromat. They get very creative in their desperation."
As if the Argentine economy wasn't already strange enough, the dolar blue boasts its own peculiarities. Higher-value notes such as 50s and 100s are worth more than 10s or 20s. Crisp notes are worth more than crumpled ones.
The same goes for notes with "la cara grande" or "the big face", meaning the newer US bills that have larger faces printed on one side. Big-face Benji — that is, the newer $100 bill sporting the larger version of Benjamin Franklin's face — commands the best rate.
Secret hiding places
Where do all these crisp big-face bills end up? Definitely not in the bank, says Vanesa Barrios, who runs a mountain excursion business with her husband in the foothills of the Andes mountain range near Mendoza.
"You'd have to take it out at the official exchange rate, which means it's devalued by half," she says.
"Who is going to put $1 in the bank so that when you have to take it out it will be worth half?"
All over the country, Argentines are stashing what little savings they can scrounge in mattresses, in apartment walls, and under the floorboards. Or, for those with the means, in security boxes located in a bank but where the money remains outside the banking system.
Argentines have a profound distrust of banks, owing in no small part to the government's decision to confiscate bank deposits amid the 2001 financial crisis.
Don't trust banks. Don't trust the government. And certainly don't trust people in your home, says Joaquin Gonzalez, a systems analysis student in Buenos Aires.
The 25-year-old has lived with double-digit inflation virtually his entire life. He says most young people can't afford security boxes. It's up to you to be inventive with your hiding place.
Fail, and you could end up paying dearly.
A few years back, Joaquin caught the family's cleaner of three years red-handed with the $10,000 he'd hidden in his punching bag.
"That's why we don't have anyone come to the house anymore," he says. "And as soon as we have the money, we're buying a robot vacuum cleaner."
The true meaning of uncertainty
At a time of rising living costs for countries the world over, few could claim as much experience with runaway inflation as Argentina. But even for battle-hardened Argentines, the constant sense of crisis wears thin.
For Rudy, the mere act of trying to fit enough pesos in his pockets to go about his day pains him. "So many pesos coming out of your pockets you can't even walk. Mountains of money worth nothing," he says, shaking his head.
(The largest denomination, the 1,000-peso note, is currently worth less than US$2.40 on the black market. The central bank confirmed in February that a 2,000-peso note is on the way.)
Rudy tells me that when he was 17, he was obsessed with the idea of moving to Australia. "An acquaintance had travelled there. He used to rave about it. Even now I imagine what I could have done with my life if I'd moved to Australia," he says mournfully.
"In Australia, I don't think you know the true meaning of the words 'uncertainty' and 'insecurity' … The reality is terrifying."
'More dangerous, more explosive'
In the meantime, the tide of Argentines scrambling to get out has swelled to unprecedented levels. Requests for Spanish or Italian citizenship reached a record high in 2021, while emigration to neighbouring Chile and Uruguay has also exploded.
"The majority of my friends and family are leaving the country, migrating elsewhere, looking for another way out," says Vanesa, from her house in Mendoza's foothills.
"We are also applying for Italian citizenship … All of us who have children want them to grow up in a better place."
Joaquin, too, says he is applying for Italian citizenship, while Ana, the former kindergarten teacher, has applied for Spanish citizenship.
But as those who can flee in ever-greater numbers, they leave behind an increasingly desperate — and divided — society.
"The people most harmed by inflation in any country are the poor. They don't have unions, they often work in the informal sector and they can't renegotiate their salaries, so whatever they're earning … is just evaporating," Gedan says.
With general elections set for October this year, "a social explosion is absolutely possible", he warns.
"There were expectations [of an explosion] in December … but because Argentina won the World Cup, there was this wonderful distraction. That euphoria is wearing off."
According to Fabry, election years usually herald higher inflation "because of all the promises made by political parties".
"The situation is potentially even more dangerous, more explosive … With the rich building higher and higher fences and income inequality rising, there's an inevitable point where everything erupts."
Yet despite the deepening crisis, the interminable confusion, and the gnawing, terrifying uncertainty, even those who are leaving say they're doing so reluctantly.
"The people in Argentina have something unique in their culture. Argentines are very friendly, very companionable, they help each other a lot. That's what makes Argentina very beautiful," Joaquin says.
"What many Argentines feel — and I include myself here — is that when you leave, you always miss the country. You always miss that warmth."
