Asuncion used to be one of the cheapest city in the world, now than I’m here I’m noticing that this is not longer true or perhaps is just my perception because the dollar is so low now. Last year, this time of the year 1 dollar was around 6150gs, now is just 3800gs. Maybe is not the prices that are higher maybe is just "my" money is less worthy.

I didn’t see taxi rates rise (the are pretty much the same rates as last year, and much higher that the year before), or service rates, hiring house service is still cheap but not extremely cheap than before and it is harder to find because most people went to Spain to work as maids or other domestic work.

Eating out is starting to get expensive, lets say in a good restaurant around 40.000Gs. (10$) a plate of good filet mignon, its still a good price, a good "lomito" hamburguer costs 10.000 (2.5$) delicious not mc donalds style, real kind of big hamburgers…the amazing thing is that a small cappuccino coffee at "cafe do ponto" costs more than a huge Starbucks venti drink around 3.50$, that surprised me in a bad way coz when I went to pay for 4 SMALL cappuccinos I found out that the bill was 52.000gs, unbelievable!!!

Renting and real estate are expensive, rent is much more expensive than 2 years ago and even not really great lands or houses in the city are expensive to buy, countryside is still cheap at least for now.

Groceries are ok but not really cheap specially imported good. Clothing is very expensive, and brand name stuff unaffordable, literally unaffordable, let say 3 times more than the US, I haven’t bought anything, I brought all my stuff from the US and I’m not planning to buy anything but art , In fact many people go to Miami to buy stuff to resell in Asuncion…people with the dollar low now can afford more things and some want imported items so people take advantage of that situation to go to US and get exclusive things to resell and most people that do that are successful.

What I still find accessible is ART beautiful art, I went to an art gallery yesterday and was thrilled bye the variety and styles at convenient prices.

I don’t think that Asuncion is a cheap city anymore, there are cheap places and cheap things, good and bad quality but since most of our goods are imported things can get expensive, strangely the minimum wage is still around 1.300.000gs. and I don’t know how people manage to survive.

I don’t know if its just my impression or things are more expensive lately…please readers correct me!

I’m looking for your comments.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 1:26 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.