Xave and I were so excited to get to Buenos Aires, especially after our long overnight bus ride from Foz du Iguazú. From the Bus Terminal we jumped on a short train ride and were soon walking towards our hostel at 1pm in the afternoon, across one of the busiest and main roads in the city. Xave was particularly excited and was skipping along the road yelling Buenos (meaning ‘good’ in Spanish and also an abbreviation of ‘good morning/afternoon’) to show how happy he was. Unfortunately things were suddenly about to change.
Less than 100 metres away from our hostel, we felt a liquid splatter over us, mainly on Xave; in his hair and all over his backpack. It was a light browny colour and smelt strongly of mustard. Looking around, we couldn’t see where it had come from. My first thought was that someone had thrown it from one of the house windows above. Two ladies in their late 40s/early 50s, who had been walking behind us started pointing up to the sky and signalling that it had been birds that had done this to us. We knew instantly that this was not the case because unless the bird had severe diarrhoea and had only been eating mustard for the last month, the quantity and smell of it didn’t make sense. The ladies were both dressed in nice bright clothes, had big designer sunglasses and large gold necklaces and earrings dangling off them. One of them pulled out a water bottle and the other tissues (how convenient) and offered to help us clean it off.
At this stage we didn’t realise how close we actually were to our hostel and initially we were just going to keep walking. But when I saw how much of it was on Xave’s bag and is his hair I suggested maybe we should make an effort to clean up a bit. The ladies helped us put our backpacks on the footpath against the wall and started fussing over us, wiping it off our clothes and from our hair. I’m embarrassed to say here that I was completely oblivious as to what was going on and was more concerned about the disgusting smelly liquid in my hair than the fact that they were actually pulling our hair over our face to block our view. Thankfully Xave was a lot more switched on than I was, realised that something was wrong. He suddenly pushed the ladies away and noticed that two men in their late 30s had picked up our small day packs (the ones with all the important stuff in them), one bag each and had started walking away with them.
To this day I have no idea how we got so lucky because the men already had our bags in their hands and could have easily just ran off down the escalator, a metre away from them, that led to the underground train station. When Xave turned around he yelled out “OI” very loudly which startled them and they froze. My guess is that they weren’t expecting to get caught and as it wasn’t part of the plan they were momentarily stunned. In two strides Xave, had walked over to them, yelling “get the f**k away from our bags” and snatched the bags out of their hands. Mumbling in English, something about just moving them to a better position, they hurried off quickly. The two ladies standing with us, water and tissues still out, started pointing to their eyes and then looking around. A common gesture in South America that means watch yourself and look out for pickpocketers. They then hurried off in the same direction as the men.
After double checking we hadn’t lost anything, Xave who was furious ordered me to stay with the big backpacks while he ran after the two guys. As he rounded a corner he saw them pop out of a shop in time to meet up with the two ladies who had been helping us clean ourselves. He started running after them yelling “thieves, thieves” in case there was a policeman around that could help. Despite seeing lots of them at the bus terminal and around the train station, it seemed like our luck had run out because there wasn’t a single one in sight. Still fuming Xave walked back to me and we continued on to our hostel, no longer skipping or yelling out “buenos”.
Thankfully nothing was stolen and the silver lining is that it was good wake up call for us. After being in South America for two months without anything happening, we had become complacent and let our guard down. After this experience, we were very much more alert and aware of our surroundings which is a good thing. Funnily enough, we met up with some friends a couple of days later who had had the exact same experience as we had, on the same day, but with different people. Their robbers didn’t get away with their valuables either because our friends had heard of this trick before and stopped it a lot earlier than we had by walking away and refusing the help.
So a word of advice; if you notice something unusual happening it may be a distraction technique to rob you. Distractions come in hundreds of possibilities from this mustard trick to people handing you poems to read, throwing babies at you to catch or old ladies falling down in front of you. I’m not saying don’t help an old lady if she does fall down near you, but just be aware that it could be a distraction and while you are helping her someone else is grabbing things from your pocket or running off with your bags. Usually the best thing to do is keep walking, refuse being handed anything or make a big scene as you pick the lady up so as to draw attention to yourself from other passers-by, which is not want a thief wants.
Every Country 