The Andes are still there...gleaming. But we are seeing them from a different angle. We have come north to Salta province.

An airline strike left us stranded at the airport in San Rafael. There were no hotel rooms left in the city either; we had to go on. We considered driving, but it is a 12-hour drive from San Rafael to Salta. After hours of telephoning and negotiating, we were finally able to find a small plane to take our group onwards. None of us had to be anywhere special, so we took the whole thing in high spirits.

Of course, spirits have played a big role in this trip. We live on a diet of cheap beef and cheap wine. Both are as good as any we've ever had and leave us with the impression that we are having a good time, even when things go wrong.

Everything is cheap in Argentina. Yesterday, we had lunch on the verandah of a restaurant in the little town of Angustaca. A party of 12 ate steaks and pork cutlets, French fries and salad - lavaged down with coke and bottled water. The bill came to $27 for the whole group. First, we thought the waitress had made a mistake; we demanded a recount. The math was checked, but failed to raise the total.

We were flabbergasted at the price and charmed by the location. It is an oasis in a spectacular desert of strange rock formations and meandering streams. There, we looked at a wine estate bigger than an American county. It was 50,000 hectares, or about 150,000 acres. Nobody knows for sure. Most of the land is out in the hills...dry, dry hills...hills as parched as Death Valley. The rest is a fertile bottomland that looks a bit like the best parts of Italy - with Lombardy poplars bordering streams of water
- and a vineyard that produces as much as half-a-million litres of wine. This property is for sale for less than, say, the typical house in San Diego County.

The buildings were put up more than a century ago. The winery itself was built in 1870. As near as we could tell, no maintenance has been done since. Chunks of adobe are falling out of the walls. You can see the bright desert sun up through holes in the roof. If Sergio Leone were to make any more spaghetti westerns, he could choose no better site. We half expected to see a man with a poncho and a cigar.

"Everyone thinks about Patagonia," said our Argentine real estate expert. "Ted Turner and Lucian Benetton made it famous. But Salta is really a better buy. It's more interesting. More varied. You get more for your money."

Salta is startlingly beautiful. It is Arizona...New Mexico...Montana...and nearly Tennessee. It has varied rainfall, extremely varied altitude, and is practically empty. There are vineyards, cattle ranches, fruit orchards, high mountains, and even jungle. It has spaces so wide open and desolate you think you are on the moon. Unlike the American west, Argentina's wide-open spaces tend to be owned by private individuals rather than the federal government. And since there is so much of it, you get a lot for you money.

Argentina has seen its share of trouble. At the turn of the 20th century it was considered one of the richest countries in the world - ranked number six in the world. Many thought it would soon be number one. Good English families, already feeling the pinch of a waning empire, hoped to marry their daughters off to an Argentine with a polo field. "As rich as an Argentine," was a popular expression.

You can see the residue of this period still. In Buenos Aires, many of the buildings put up at the end of the last century or the beginning of this one are as attractive as any in Paris. Out in the countryside, rich planters built mini-palaces.

But anything that can be wrought by the hand of man can be twisted and misshapen, too. In the 1930s, a wave of populism passed over the world like a solar flare. The normal patterns of a civilized society were disrupted by world improvers with a socialist bent. In France, Leon Blum stirred the masses to larceny. In America, Franklin Roosevelt packed the New Deal with democratic claptrap. In Italy and Germany, opportunists put socialism in jackboots and made it more popular than adultery. And in Argentina, Juan Peron started his own Populist Party - the Peronistas.

All of them did damage to their economies and their societies. Italy and Germany were so thoroughly beaten down they had no choice but to recover. But the Peronistas plagued Argentina until the 1970s.

Their successors - military dictators and elected bumblers - have misruled ever since, including a few backed by the Peronistas, who remain an important force in Argentine politics.

Two low points of the post-Peronista period were the Falklands war with England in 1982, and the inflation of the late 80s.

"By that time," said our local expert, "Argentines had grown a little cynical about politics. I know it was a big deal in the rest of the world, but we hardly noticed. We were watching an important soccer tournament at about the same time."

And the inflation?

"It was amazing," continued our source. "Prices rose about 1,000% a year. I got married in '88. I remember it well. We were given a price for our wedding in the morning and in the afternoon it was much higher. Then it got worse...not inflation, but the economy. After the peso was tied to the dollar, our exports were so expensive; everyone was going out of business. The middle class was practically wiped out."

War...inflation...financial destruction...Argentina has seen it all. Its people are hip to trouble...resilient and resourceful. When you buy a property in the country, you will find the price quoted in U.S. dollars, but calibrated to a cynical Argentine market. Here, people do not expect property to go up 20% every year. They do not anticipate that next year will always be better than the last or that some sucker with money in his pocket will always come along just when you need a loan.

Argentines have little faith in their own currency, but much faith in ours.

This is likely to change. Stay tuned, dear reader.

Bill Bonner, back in Argentina with more random opinions, thoughts, and experiences...
 
*** "Looking at property is a little like looking at women," said an Argentine realtor, "sometimes they look a lot better from a distance."

We have spent the last few days looking at various things. Our bet is that the world is turning. In the last century, the United States became a big winner; Argentina turned itself into a big loser. Here we refer only to money, which is, after all, our beat. Americans got rich in the 20th century; Argentines got poor. You can hire a good farm-worker for a full day and pay him only $10. In America, the rate is at least five times higher.

But the world didn't stop turning at the end of the 20th century. The sun still rises in the morning and sets in the evening - here in Salta province as in San Diego or Wichita. The Argentines are smart. They are educated. They are immigrants from Europe. They have banks and the Internet. They have a country that is big, beautiful and rich. Why should they remain poor forever? Or, why should Americans remain rich?

Are the best opportunities in a country that is rich, or one that might get rich? If you want to invest in a factory, you might be better off in China or Malaysia. If you want to buy land, you might be better off in Argentina. We don't know that that is the case, but we're here to find out.

*** What we've found so far is that Argentina has an immense amount of land, spectacular climate and scenery, and it seems reasonably cheap. We looked at another farm of 20,000 acres this morning, about an hour from the town of Salta, which has a population of 800,000. The land is rich and well-watered. It has timber - including an ancient cedar bigger than any we have ever seen - thousands of cattle, huge reservoirs, 3,000 pigs, pheasants, thousands of acres of alfalfa, and an impressive new 5-bedroom house. It's priced at $3 million.

"Not much more than those little houses down on the Chesapeake bay," said an old friend. "In Galesville, you can't touch anything on the water for less than about $1.2 million. And these are tiny little houses on tiny little lots. When we were growing up, the only person in Galesville who had any money at all was the undertaker. Now, they're all millionaires. But that whole area around Washington has gone crazy.

"But that's why were down here. I don't know what is going to happen, but it makes sense to me to sell some of what I have up there and put a little money down here."

Bill Bonner is the President of Agora Publishing.  For more on Bill Bonner, visit The Daily Reckoning.