Malbec-Loving Foreign Tourists Turn to Crime: Argentina Credit

Eric Francos, a French doctor on a three-week vacation with his wife and two children, was huddled off to one side of a pedestrian thoroughfare clogged with shoppers in downtown Buenos Aires, taking $100 bills out of his money belt as illegal money-changers beckoned with calls of “dollars, euros, exchange.”

“I know the risks, but so far I’ve never had problems, I try to be careful,” Francos, who plans on touring vineyards in the province of Mendoza, which lies 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) west of the Argentine capital and is renowned for its Malbec wine, said last week as he stuffed pesos into his front pants pocket. “Changing dollars in the streets is worth it.”