Buenos Aires Days 5 and 6

Day 5

I went to La Boca’ Caminito area, famous for its blue-collar roughness and locals-only attitude. Ironically, this attitude has created quite the tourist attraction, and the residents and shop keepers eat it up like dog food. To be honest, I didn’t like La Boca at all. It was the most flagrantly touristy area I’ve been in in Argentina. Street hawkers aggressively tugging at your shirt trying to get you to sit down at their restaurant because if you do, they get a commission. Cheap souvenir shops everywhere selling tacky junk. The only thing I liked about it (and I liked it a lot) were all the tango dancers. They performed on the street and at every cafe. I loved watching them, but of course as soon as I would stop to look, a hawker would come up and grab me by the arm and start leading me to a table. So, I took some pictures of the colorful buildings and headed out to the Sunday San Telmo street market. This has to be the largest street market in B.A. It’s massive, covering so many city blocks, I lost count. Booths filled with antique jewelry, pins, books, and silverware, handicrafts, plus t-shirts, CDs, DVDs, and other gifty items. I walked and walked, watching the street performers dancing the tango, puppeteering, or playing in street bands (the best tango couple were slick and well-heeled and about 75 years old, and a woman, likely 80, played a contraption of various drums and whistles… most excellent).

Day 6

I visited MALBA, the other major modern art museum in Buenos Aires. It was a good collection, though not as extensive as the Museo Nacional de Belles Artes. I paid a whopping 22 pesos (about US$7) to enter. A deal by anyone’s standards.

Afterwards, I caught a cab to spend the afternoon in Palermo to sit on the square and sip a beverage while reading and writing. The cab driver stopped and I handed him a 100 peso note that I had extracted from the bank machine the night before. I turned to get into my bag to get my map and when I looked up, the cab driver was yelling at me saying in Spanish that the note I just gave him was counterfeit! I told him I had no other money (which I didn’t) and he began to scream at me and wave his fist in my face. All I could say was that it wasn’t possible that it was fake because I had taken it from a bank. He then screamed that he would take me to the police and I replied, “OK, yes, let’s go!” to which he stepped on the gas, then screeched to a halt then just about struck me in the face. He then pushed me out of his cab into the street.

I was terribly shaken and frightened and it pretty much ruined the rest of my day in Palermo. I don’t do well with screaming confrontation and do even worse with threats of physical violence. And being a woman alone in a foreign city, my vulnerability was heightened as was my reaction to the whole situation.

So here’s the story I found out later. Taxi drivers in B.A. are apparently very crooked and this con – switching out a 100 peso note for a fake note, is commonplace. Sigh. In fact, that evening after I got back to the hostel, I found out that within the last 24 hours, myself and three other people were ripped off. Me and another woman were scammed for $100 pesos each and the two other people had their bags, including their passports, stolen. I think B.A. is not a tourist-friendly destination?

After attempting to have a nice day in Palermo, I tried to go to a bank machine to extract some cash and my card was denied. I had almost no money to get a taxi back to the hostel and no clue about the public transportation system. It was a bad day. Fortunately, I happened to bump into a girl who spoke English and was living in B.A. for a study program. She was so great and helped me find my way to the subway (she was even nice enough to walk me there) and instructed me how to get back to my hostel. Sometimes, you have to rely on the help of strangers. All I have to say about it is, I feel so lucky to have found her. She saved my skin.

Before I hopped on the subway, I stopped at Locutorio (a shop that has internet access and phone booths) and I contacted my bank, who said that my account balance was too low for me to take cash out. I thought that was odd since I thought I had significantly more than zero in there, but I thought, “Well, maybe I’m burning through my money faster than I think?” I transferred most of the rest of my savings set aside for this trip into my checking account. This experience should have been a red flag but I brushed it off.