Swindled by a Pro in Buenos Aires

Just after I wrote the last post about how lovely Buenos Aires is, the city bit me back.

I was feeling like it was time to head out, so on Monday morning I booked a bus to Puerto Madryn to leave at 9pm. I wasn't feeling very good that day, I was all scatterbrained and antsy, so I thought that getting some fresh air and seeing some sights would be a good idea. I headed to the Plaza de Mayo, home of the city's cathedral and high court and some gorgeous early 20th century buildings. 

When I got there, I sat down in a grassy patch and an older bloke came by and asked if the grass was dry. He caught my accent and started talking to me in English. He said his name was Stephan. He told me he was a tour guide that did fly-fishing trips for rich Europeans and Americans in Chilean Patagonia. He said his wife was Australian which was how he learned to speak my language. I told him my travel plans (vague and thoroughly under-researched) which he told me to chuck out; instead he gave me an itinerary to see the best of central Argentina on a budget. 

He was very likeable, this bloke in what looked like his 60s with a brusque, grandfatherly attitude. He invited me to come and stay with his family near Valparaiso when I made it to Chile. Over an hour or so we talked politics, family and life on the road, and he bought us coffees. 

At one point, he mentioned that I should to go to the cambios on Florida street to get the best exchange rate. I had heard of them, these people that changed US Dollars on the street at a higher rate than the official bank rate. I had avoided them because I didn't feel like I could trust the black market, but Stephan assured me he knew a guy who had the best rate, who he used for all his clients, and wrote some long multiplication on a napkin to show how I could get 10% more pesos on the street than in the bank. I was sold.

I gave him $350 USD to change which was most of my backup dollars. It was all very cloak and dagger, him telling me to wrap it in a peso note and not make eye contact with the police, not to speak English too loudly in case someone roughed us up. He walked me to Florida Street then told me to wait in a specific cafe for a few minutes until he got back with the cash. 

And of course, he didn't.

It took me a while to realise he was wasn't coming back. I sat there for at least an hour in denial before I had to leave to get ready for the bus, looking like a jilted lover with a slowly vanishing iced tea. I thought maybe the police had taken him, as the cambios are an illegal market, but when I walked down Florida St there were police standing around letting them do their thing. He gave me an email to contact him later on when I got to Chile, but of course, the address didn't exist.

I am still kind of coming to terms with it. Part of me still wants to believe that maybe he came past and he didn't see me, maybe I wasn't in the right spot, maybe I actually had some counterfeit notes and he got beaten up. I really liked the bloke, and it was a shocking realisation that he was being a scummy bastard the whole time. Not only that, but I fell for it hook, line and sinker. Hindsight is 20/20 as always. I was trying to make myself open to new experiences and not shy away from people like I normally would, so I embraced the occasion without thinking enough about what I was doing. 

It's a shitty lesson to learn. This is the first time I have ever been well and truly scammed by someone, at home or on the road, and it's a decent chunk of cash to lose. After this I will definitely be very very careful about showing how much cash I have. But at the end of the day, the only thing to do is keep looking forwards. I got that bus in the evening, spent 20 hours on the road, and made some friends to drown my sorrows with in Puerto Madryn. Today is a new day, so is tomorrow, and there are so many better things to do that worry about some paper in the wind.

Who knows? Maybe those travel tips will be worth the money.