😱 Scams, Safety, and Samaritans 🇦🇷 Argentina Travel Stories | 🎙 The Nearshore Cafe Podcast

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Welcome everyone to the Nearshore Cafe Podcast. I'm Brian Samson, your host, and today's podcast is sponsored by Plug Technologies, plugg.tech. Plug is a great way to get software developers from Latin America for growing US companies. Today I want to talk to you about a personal experience that I had. It was actually my first hour in Latin America and I got mugged. But there's a happy ending. Let me tell you more about it. So this took place in January of 2012. I was a solo backpacker. I was living in San Francisco at the time. I was an entrepreneur, had some flexibility in my schedule, and decided that I wanted to go to Argentina, Chile, Peru, Uruguay. First stop was Argentina. So I was a solo backpacker entrepreneur with a business that wasn't making much money at the time. So it was a scrappy tourist experience, to say the least. A lot of buses and hostels and things like that. So my first hour or two, so I'll say that I did not sleep very well on this trip. I was tired and wired. So how I got to Argentina, flew from San Francisco where I was living to Lima. So that's probably about a 7, 8-hour flight, I'd imagine. So I got there Gosh, probably, probably around like midnight or something, you know, 10 p.m., something like that. And then our 2 layover and then a connecting flight from Lima to Buenos Aires. I want to say that's like 4 hours, 5 hours. So and then with time zone, that put me into Argentina at the airport, you know, maybe like 8 o'clock in the morning, 9 o'clock in the morning. Now, I'm a taller guy. Sleeping on the airplanes is not an easy thing for me to do. So in turn, I watch a lot of movies and TV. There was a show out there called Modern Family, you might know it. And it was, I had like all the seasons that I could watch. So I just binged. I binge-watched Modern Family into the wee hours of the night and, you know, past midnight and so forth where everyone else is sleeping. I got my headphones on and I'm watching Modern Family. So needless to say, it's probably 30+ hours that I'd been awake, you know, maybe 36 hours consecutively awake. Fried, wired, tired, jet lag, you know, by the time I landed in Argentina. If you've ever landed in Buenos Aires, you know that the airport is a good 2 hours away from the city center. So a taxi, you know, can get a little more expensive. Even in pesos, you know, taxis are still taxis and they can get expensive. And there's no direct train that I knew of, but they had plenty of buses and they had cheap buses too. So I think I found a bus for like 50 pesos, which at the time was like $3 or something like that. It was really inexpensive. And I said, sure, why not? Let me take this tourist bus. I know it takes me somewhere in Buenos Aires, and then from there I'll I'll walk to my hostel. So I'm on the tourist bus, you know, excited because this is my first time, you know, in real Latin America. I had been to, you know, Cancun and stuff before, but this is my first real Latin America experience. Hour and a half later, you know, we're getting into the heart of the city, and then eventually we get to this bus station. And as I got my bearings, it looked like maybe about a 2-mile, 2.5-mile walk, uh, to my hostel. So from, uh, you know, just north of downtown to my hostel would be in San Telmo, which is, uh, immediately south of the city center. And I'm carrying a big backpack, uh, like you'd expect a backpacker to have. You know, I've got all my clothes and stuff for this 2-week adventure, um, and, uh, I'm wearing jeans and a button-down shirt, um, not like a dress shirt, but, you know, just like a regular button-down flannel-type shirt, um, and then I've got a laptop bag, and the laptop bag had most of my important things, you know, like passport. Actually, I think I carried my passport in my in my pocket, but otherwise, like laptop, cash, phone charger, you know, all those things. So I start walking and gosh, it's probably about 9:30, 10 in the morning, maybe like a Tuesday morning, you know, that I'm arriving and it's, it's warm but not crazy. It's kind of nice. It's kind of a nice walk, you know, after being on 15 hours of flights and bus rides, it's nice to get some blood flowing in the legs. So I'm walking and I'm walking by Casa Rosado, which is the Pink Palace, major landmark in Buenos Aires. I'm walking on the cobblestone streets and I see these old beautiful buildings and churches and I'm like, wow, this is a really beautiful place. And I'm kind of following the map a little bit. It's not like— this is 2012, so the technology wasn't quite what it is today, like Google Maps, it's super easy to navigate. I think it was, you know, a much different version back then. So I'm kind of walking, you know, I know I'm going the right way. I'm probably about a mile away now from the hostel. And there's like a kind of a downtown area. There's some banks and so forth. I noticed the streets weren't super crowded. There were, you know, a handful of people on the streets. I'm not sure if maybe I ended up on a less busy street. And I'm walking and all of a sudden I get tapped on the shoulder and I'm trying to be like a cool, friendly American. You know, sometimes we take it personally when we're lumped together as, you know, rude, obnoxious Americans. So I wanted to be, you know, a cool, friendly guy. I get tapped on the shoulder and I look back and it's, you know, it looks like a teenager, you know, maybe 18, 19 years old. And he's tapping my shoulder. I look back and he's saying, the birds, the birds. And I'm like, so I like tilt my head up and trying to be a friendly amenable guy. And I look up at the sky and I point, oh yeah, yeah, birds, birds. He's like, no, no, no, no. And then he starts patting the back of my leg and patting my shoulder. And then he shows a paper towel and there's some like gooey substance. And I look at it. I'm like, oh, yikes. Oh, oh yeah, the birds like Bird poop. Oh, I got bird poop on my clothes. And he's— this is just a really nice, friendly person trying to help clean me up. What a nice guy. And I'm like, okay, you know, thank you, thank you. And I keep walking. Remember, I've been up for 36 hours in a row. I'm wired, tired, definitely not thinking sharpest. And he says, no, no, no, you know, in kind of like broken English, you know, backpack, you know, take it off. So I take both my backpacks off, or the laptop bag and the big bag, and I put them up against the wall. And he kind of pivots me, and I'm not looking at my bags anymore. Now not even thinking anything about it as he points up to the sky and the birds. And he's like wiping my pants and I'm like, "Oh, you're such a nice guy. Thank you, thank you." And I turn back to collect my things. Grab my big bag, put it right back on. And then I, feel my heart beat. My laptop bag. Oh my God. Oh my God. Wait, my laptop bag. Where is it? And I see that kid sprint off in the other direction. And I just start panicking. My heart's just racing. Oh my God, I got scammed, mugged, whatever. And then I look back and I saw somebody else running off in the other direction with my bag. It was easy to spot. It was actually like a yellow kind of travel laptop bag, canvas bag. And I started yelling, "Mi bolsa, mi bolsa!" My Spanish was pretty limited at the time. That's about all I could use in that situation. And I'm kind of like running, yelling. And this is where it's a happy ending. A good Samaritan who I'll forever be in gratitude towards, a good Samaritan chased this mugger down and grabbed my bag, retrieved my bag, and just brought it right back to me. And, uh, all he said was, be careful. And I didn't even have time to say more than thank you before he was off and probably on to his office job. And those two mugger guys, you know, never heard from them again, never saw them again. And as I caught my breath back and recovered, it made me thankful of the situation, this good Samaritan. There's good people out there. And I walked by a crowd of people who saw what happened. They're just like, hey, be careful, be careful. So what's the takeaway from this? Buenos Aires is a big city. There's like 14 million people in the greater surrounding Buenos Aires area. Petty theft happens just like any major city. You got to be careful. Be well rested, be sharp, have your, your guard up, you know, just like if you're in Chicago or New York or Los Angeles or San Francisco. But you know what? This is the only time now I've been back to Buenos Aires 9 times. That was the only time anything like that had ever happened since. The only time. So in maybe over 1,000 days of my life has been spent in that city, that's the only time that ever happened. And it was my first 2 hours. It was my welcome to Buenos Aires moment. So stuff happens. Be mindful, be aware, but also know that it's it's a rare thing too. And all that time I was there, that's the only time it ever happened. And the consequences were negligible because thankfully we had that Good Samaritan looking out for me. Well, that's the show today. And every once in a while we'll share different stories and experiences of time in Latin America. Again, I'm Brian Samson, your host. This show was sponsored by Plug Technologies, plugg.tech. Plug provides software developers from all over Latin America for growing US companies. Until next time, we'll see you soon. Thanks for listening.

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