A Word of Warning About Fake Notes

So my second night in Buenos Aires didn’t go much better than the first, despite a great take-away dinner from a local café. Returning home pretty famished from all the walking, I found the cutest restaurant around the corner, serving up to 20 guests at a time from an upstairs kitchen, with a pulley-system delivering the tasty fare below.

I looked past the massive hunks of beef, and settled on a leaner ¼ chicken and salad, and waited with the locals for it to arrive (although I could have just asked them to send it home for no extra cost). Having eaten up heartily, I soon headed out for a drink and another mini-bite with a Serbian guy Milan, and Christian, and we wind up at a cool place that has a plethora of promo girls stopping by to hand out free Jagermeister and cigarettes. Not bad.

Feeling like it was going to be a good night, we grab a taxi to Crowbar and get a much better club which is unfortunately playing some pretty shoddy music that quickly wears thin. Still wanting to have a proper dance, we decided to push on to another club Bahrain but it is here that the night really gets unstuck.

Handing over a 100 peso note for entry, a swift response comes back with one word “Falso!”. Looking quite astounded, Christian says that it is impossible, that the money came from a bank’s ATM, but she is adamant, and quickly marks it with a big fat “F”. Not having encountered this before, I reach into my wallet to compare it with my own, and recover even more problems.

Lurking beneath a couple of 20s is a mini collection of forged currency – another 100 and a 50 peso note. In short, the rest of my weekend is looking back at me through deep-purple eyes that are five minutes away from being torn up.