Nov. 30: being robbed (twice) sucks

Robert Taylor traveled through South America from Nov. 24- Dec. 29. While there, he kept a journal. Each blog entry is an entry from that journal, posted daily (excluding weekends and a few other days), as it was written while he traveled.

We were in Buenos Aires for less than two hours until we were robbed twice.

The first time was as soon as we left the bus terminal. Since the area around bus stops in big cities aren't normally safe, we decided we would get a hostel away from the station. When we walked to the street, this lady asked us if we needed a taxi. We said yes, thinking she was the driver. She hailed us a cab, which didn't seam to make much sense. A taxi quickly came and we started loading our bags. I set my backpack down in front of my feet while I put my big bag in the truck.

Throughout the trip, I have been keeping ahold of my bags the way I've been taught to keep a hold of my weapon in the Army. I always that that the cadre trying to steal our weapons was annoying, but more than once, I've found myself appreciative of the lesson learned.

As we were loading the bags, I noticed another set of hands that seemed to come out of nowhere. I grabbed the bag at my feet and checked the trunk for mine and Tara's big bags. I thought Tara had put her backpack in the middle, where we sit, so I thought everything was OK, though something didn't feel right.

When we got to the hostel, we discovered Tara's backpack was missing. She had handed it to the lady who apparently handed it to someone else who quickly disappeared.

I felt bad about it because I knew something didn't feel right and I stood right there and let it happen, even after I made it a point to account for all the bags.

Luckily, there wasn't too much that was important in the bag, just our food, travel guide, Tara's glasses and her journal were among the items lost.

Fortunately, Tara had her passport, money and other important items in her handbag across her shoulder. However, our recently purchased bus tickets out of the city were in the bag.

We decided to go back to the bus station to see if we could just have the tickets reprinted. Since we were there, decided to look around the area, with the idea that whoever took the bag would have rummaged through it, found nothing and then ditched the bag.

We found random piles of what looked to be backpack belongings. We could tell that her bag wasn't the first to be stolen and dumped in the area.

Tara's thought was the stolen bags are dumped, then sold. This made me think of finding her bag, only to have to buy it back. Still just on the other side of the bus stop, we came across what could only be described as what one might imagine to find across the street of a bus station in a large third-world country. We discussed how staying away from the bus stop was a good idea.

We came across stores, mostly restaurants filled by locals. Then we came across a market, which it mostly was. There were also many "shops" set up with an assortment of personal items and a couple of bags on the side of blankets set up on the ground. It wasn't hard to figure out how their system works.

We left the area to go take care of our tickets at the bus station just on the other side of the road. But it wasn't that simple, there was a fence on both sides of the road. I stopped and scanned the fence line and looking for an opening. Seeing none, we turned around to go the other way. This was probably a good decision since 20 seconds later, this guy approached me and in broken English said he wanted to show me something the way we just came. After ignoring him for a moment, he went away.

You could see guys walking up to their buddies holding bags and smiling and it was clear they didn't just get back from anywhere.

A minute later, this guy approached Tara and told her the area was unsafe for un-locals. We continued walking towards the station, then we stopped to get vegetables because Tara wanted to make stir-fry for lunch. After she purchased the vegetables, we were 3/4 of the way across the street, just steps from the bus station, and from the conner of eye, I saw Tara stop.

When I turned around, this guy had grabbed her from behind and was struggling to get her bag off of her body. Knowing what was in the bag, and worried about Tara, I tried to position myself between Tara and the guy. As I moved to close the gap between them and me, the guy took off running as I reached for the bag with one hand and him with the other. He left without the bag and Tara was unharmed, no doubt shaken up.

At the bus station, we learned we would have to pay a small fee for our tickets to be reprinted and that we would need a police report as well.

The police report cost $10 pesos. It was like getting robbed by the system after getting robbed on the street. The report was little more than the cop writing down what Tara told him, stamped twice and handed back to her without making a copy first.

If all that wasn't bad enough, the taxi driver ripped us off by going to the long way to our hostel as Tara told him about being robbed twice so far.

It cost$12 pesos to get from the station to the hostel the first time, $10 to get back to the station, and $22 to get back to the hostel again.