Buenos Aires or Buenos Robbery???

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Three out of eight travelers in my Spanish class have been robbed here in Buenos Aires. All in the last three weeks. One had her big backpack slashed at the bus station the day she arrived, one had his day pack taken from beside his chair in a cafe and one (as in me) had their room broken into and all electronic gear liberated. My friend who´s day pack got thiefed was distracted by one of the robbers being very loud and in his face at the cafe table. Within seconds of the thief scampering out the door my friend realized the pack was gone, rush out the door, started yelling and passer-byes pointed to a slow moving taxi. My friend opened the taxi door and the thieves got out and started running. Both were apprehended. He got his day pack, with laptop back.

The local teachers at the school tell the same kinds of stories. Bottom line is be careful and don´t bring anything you can´t stand to loose. That´s been my mantra for a long time so when my laptop went walka-walka I lost an inexpensive new laptop but no data. The folks at my hostel (Art Factory) were nice enough but didn´t seem to take any real steps to correct the door lock situation that may (or may not) have facilitated the robbery. The police came and I did get a police report without to much hastle.

I´ve not heard of anyone being confronted in person or violently robbed. But on the street you commonly see locals with their day packs on their front. Take some basic precautions, don´t carry a lot of cash. Lock you valuables up in the hostel. It is easy to blend in if you dress like the locals. Almost everyone wears subdued clothes - black or grey or light solid colors, no Hawaiian shirts or mumus... It is a great city this but... you may leave with a lot less than you arrived with, despite the shopping sprees. Hey, I´ve always wanted to leave home with just a credit card and this is pretty close to it!

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Comments

[Nathan Borson]

Doh!
Bill, Greetings from Alaska! Thanks for posting your adventures; we are following along with great interest. I'm sorry to hear your laptop was stolen; I hope that doesn't hamper the blogging you were going to do. Nothing very exciting to report on the home front. The big winter storm we're in the middle of turned out to be just rain (so far) in Gustavus. Cheers, Nate and Chip

[Szabinski]

Si, es verdad...
Hi Bill! Nice to see you on here too...perhaps meeting up down the road won´t be so much by-chance now that we can check in every so often. But I wanted to comment about your post. We agree! On Friday, we went down to Retiro and were warned in advance not to leave our bikes alone, even if securely locked up. So Mark locked them to a tree and sat by them while I went inside. Within fifteen minutes, four teenage boys were trying to take his stuff...one trying to rip his clothes, another grabbing at his day pack, another physically getting in his face, etc. So he just screamed like crazy and held onto his bag. A few people tried to help, but they came back. The second time they came back, Mark grabbed the bag and just got in the biggest ones face and kept screaming at him...trying to scare them I guess you could say. This sort of worked, the biggest kid took off. And then the cops came and really smacked them around. I guess this is common, to use distractions like this to pickpocket and steal. Whew...good luck out there. Nothing stolen here. We were sad we couldn´t thank the cops more though, with our baby baby spanish.