Argentina – land of the flying ice cream

ARGENTINA
Buenos Aires

I’m assuming you’ve heard this story by now – we told EVERYONE we met this story, friends, taxi drivers, the lady selling fruit on the street. But if you haven’t heard it, or you didn’t see it on the news (because yes, it made headlines) this is the story of how Hayley and I were robbed, not once but twice in our first week in South America. I hope you won’t leave feeling bitter about Argentina – despite the effed up things that happened, we still fell in love Argentina (especially the people… the most beautiful race in the world? I think so…)

Robbery #1

The first robbery occurred on our very first day in South America. Well, technically, it was our second day but considering we arrived late in the afternoon and fell asleep at 6pm the day before, we counted this day as our first. We had moved to a new hostel, the most wonderful hostel in the world, The Clan. Unfortunately we couldn’t check in until 1pm, so we decided to leave our big backpacks there and go to the Brazilian embassy in the meantime, to get our visas.

This was unsuccessful however so we returned to our hostel. On the walk back (please, everyone remember this was our FIRST day and that was why we were such gullible fools) we felt something wet hit us on our backs. We turned around and there was something like chewed up ice-cream cone all over our hair, necks, clothes and backpacks. Behind us were two young local girls, about 20 years old. They looked normal, were well-dressed (well, as well-dressed as Argentinean girls can be… the fashion there is hideous!) and they were about 5ft tall. Hardly dangerous looking human beings! Anyway, one of them had this mushy stuff on her face as well and they were both pointing upwards towards a balcony and basically insinuating (we couldn’t understand a word they were saying as it was in rapid Spanish but we got the gist) that someone up there had just chucked this stuff on us. They beckoned us to come underneath the balcony where they were pulling out tissues from their pockets. They started wiping at our hair, our shirts, all the while distracting us by speaking in Spanish, even though we clearly couldn´t understand them. One of them went round behind me and started ‘cleaning’ my backpack which copped the most amount of mush. I feel so stupid now thinking about it but it was really confusing what was going on, especially with the other one talking and touching my hair. Anyway, the little c-bombs then gave us a kiss on the cheek, we thanked them profusely for all their ‘help’ and we walked away. We were so flabbergasted over what happened that we walked too far, past our hostel so we turned around and saw the girls again. We didn’t think anything at the time (having not realised what happened) but they ducked their heads when we walked back past them and sped up their walk.

The next morning I woke up to discover my passport, my credit cards, my flight tickets, my bus tickets, every single form of I.D. I owned, all stolen out of my backpack. We figured out pretty quickly what must have happened and I burst into tears and didn’t stop crying for the rest of the day. I went to the tourist police where they didn’t speak a word of English. I had to wait three hours while they got a translator in. She translated my sob story for the police, only for them to go, “oh yes, the ice-cream scam, we know all about that!” Apparently it’s common!

We had many things to organise so luckily I’m travelling with Miss Organisation 2009. Hayley cancelled all my credit cards, rang the Australian embassy and generally got proactive while I wept in the corner, feeling like I’d never be able to trust anyone again. We went to the Australian embassy where a heavily pigmented but very kind woman issued me a temporary passport. I had the ugliest passport photo alive taken and off we went.

The Clan

We were so lucky that our hostel was amazing otherwise I think we would’ve just curled up into little balls and never left our room. By dinner time that night, everyone knew about what had happened to us and made it their mission for Hayley and me to forget all about it. We got onto the vino (our first in two months… Asia was lacking in the wine department) and we all went out dancing at a club called Crobar. In traditional Argentinean fashion (although we hadn’t realised it yet), dinner wasn’t until 10pm so we didn’t go out until about 2am and got home at 6am the next morning. This behaviour pretty much continued all week. Our days were spent organising my life, our nights spent drinking and being boisterous with our hostel friends.

Robbery #2

 

Our friends Kelly and Anna were going to Mendoza, a little wine village on the other side of Argentina. We decided last minute to join them, thinking we would like a nice little break from all the going-ons in BA. Twenty-four hours later, we were in Mendoza. Kelly got food poisoning after some dodgy ham sandwiches on the bus so we put her to bed and Hayley, Anna and I set off to explore Mendoza. We read about this big beautiful tourist park that had a zoo and, after reassurances from our overweight, car-salesmen-style hostel manager that the park was “very safe”, we set out for it. We had taken three photos when suddenly a man stepped out of the bushes in front of us. He had a gun. Pointing it at us, he instructed that we hand over our bags, cameras, everything. Not believing our luck, we did. He got US$50 and a brand new camera off Anna and he took Hayley’s entire bag which had her camera, phone and all our other nick-nacky things that he would have no use for but which we loved. Like our Spanish phrasebook, our paw-paw, our flashlight etc. We tearfully asked him if we could please have our memory cards out of our cameras back. He obliged, sweating bullets and shaking like a gum tree. I think he was more scared then we were. Then, once we were all set, he actually thanked us (he had manners, at least) and ran away. Hayley and I were about to have a nervous breakdown when a police car drove past us, less than three minutes after this all happened. We got in the car and they drove us all around the park, looking for the guy. It was ridiculous, we drove about two streets away and we were in the slums… how on earth could that be considered safe? Why would a tourist park back onto a place where Mendoza’s most desperate people live? It doesn’t make sense to me. Anyway they couldn’t find him so we drove back to the police station, filled in yet another police report and then were driven home by a lovely policeman who stopped at a grocery shop on the way because we were hungry. We seriously couldn’t believe it happened twice to us… in one week!! We are seriously the most unlucky travelers in history.
The next day we had journalists knocking on our hostel, begging us to be interviewed. We said no at first… we didn’t want to be on Argentinean TV! But they made us feel guilty saying it would help Argentina if more awareness was brought to the subject. So we were interviewed (I was elected the main speaker) and we were on the Mendoza news that day. We missed it, as we were out at the vineyards but our hostel manager (who featured in the news clip as well, explaining how he TOLD us it was dangerous, he WARNED us… what a wanker!) told us we looked good. Later I got an email from a boy I met in Buenos Aires, saying he had just saw me on BA news!! It made national news! We were famous!

Mendoza

So that was our first day in Mendoza. Again, we decided to drown our sorrows by going on a vineyard tour and getting lovely and drunk. Our group of about seven all hired bikes and we rode around all day in blistering heat to the various vineyards Mendoza had to offer. It wasn’t quite the picturesque-Tuscany-in-the-springtime bike ride we had imagined… we basically were riding down the main street of some dusty old town, with big monster trucks roaring past us every five minutes. But the vineyards themselves were beautiful. We even did an olive farm tour which was delish!

Back to BA

We headed back to Buenos Aires, feeling a little bit worse than when we left. We were paranoid messes walking down the street by then. It was so frustrating. All our friends were going out by themselves, with handbags flailing about and cameras clicking on every corner. Hayley and I redefined the word ‘minimalist’ and still cringed every time an elderly woman with a walking stick and poodle walked past us. It sucked. We were looking forward to getting to Uruguay, where we would be meeting up with our friends from home, Nikola and Ty. Safety in numbers, we chanted to ourselves. Safety in numbers.