A few months ago I decided to leave my comfort zone of Buenos Aires and travel north to Salta. Let me start it off by telling you a little about myself. If you know me well, you may know that I am a control freak for safety. I have difficulty crossing the road because I have a horrible fear that a car's gonna get me, but my greatest safety concern is pick pocketing or mugging. On several occasions I have snuck behind my friends and tried "robbing" them often leaving everyone pissed and annoyed at my attempts. For my 9 months that I have lived in Buenos Aires I had never had any brush with robbery. I hug my purse to me like a child and glare at everyone walking by, not ideal for making friends. Well, at the beginning of our 1.5 week journey something interesting happened, I went to the bathroom. In the two minutes (there was a line) that I was in the bathroom I was literally left with only the clothes on my back. I had asked my friend Emily to watch my belongings which included my purse filled to the top with electronics, glasses, my passport, credit cards and my backpack the size of a toddler filled with clothes and shoes.
Our friend Chris was waiting for us by the bus. He had put one backpack filled with clothes on his left side and another filled with his computer, passport, ipod, camera and other personal trinkets on his right side. On his left side, someone asked him where the information center was, and in that moment as Chris talked to the devilish stranger, his little backpack was swiped. Instinct told him to run after the question asker and abandon his other large bag that surely would have disappeared as well. Instead, Chris had his wits about him and ran inside to drop his back off with Emily and hurried off to chase the guy he talked to. So now our friend is watching three large backpacks and two purses. In the chaos of everything another group of artful dodgers decided to take advantage of the situation. One man started asking my friend questions very very slowly. "Whatttt happened? What did he get stolen? Whattt???" As Emily tried to explain the situation to her new friend she then observed the backpacks she was guarding. She looked around and saw that my backpack...my stuffed backpack, had disappeared. I walked out of the bathroom to find my friend crying and apologizing profusely, "I am so so sorry, I have no idea where your backpack is." In those few minutes I was filled in on what happened and extremely grateful that my purse filled with everything precious to me wasn't snagged either. We even quipped that it was a good thing she didn't see someone sneak off with my backpack or she would have chased after them and everything else would have disappeared along with it.
The three of us had to make a split decision, we could get on our bus that was leaving in 5 minutes and continue with our trip as planned or we could seek out the police and report our robbery. We watched our bus drive away and looked for the police station. The police couldn't have been kinder or more patient with us. We were all torn up about what had happened, particularly Chris. We filed out report and exchanged numbers with the cops. We never did hear back from them. The next part was tackling the bus company.
In my experience in Argentina, customer service isn't something that is valued. The customer is not right, people don't bend over backwards to be accommodating. It's something that pisses me off but also something you learn to deal with. The day my backpack was stolen, I felt truly sorry for the lady that had to deal with me. I blacked out in my fury, I barely recognized myself. But alas the lady at the ticket window had little sympathy about our story, even when we had the cops testify for us. It wasn't the company's fault that we missed the bus and they were not responsible for refunding our tickets. After about an hour on the phone with the customer service hot line we were able to get 30% of our ticket refunded but the bus company didn't have a bus leaving for another two days. So we booked a return trip with them (which we ended up changing and paying way too much for) and decided to buy tickets from a new company rather than go home and mope about what had happened for two days.
Despite our rough departure, our trip to Salta was remarkable. It was the first time that I felt like I was in a Latin American County. Buenos Aires can be deceivingly cosmopolitan sometimes that you forget that it's not a good representative of the rest of the country. The people were so much more simple in the way they dressed, the houses they lived in and the food they ate. We ate so many fried empanadas, tamales and humitas. All delicious, but different from the diversity I craved in my diet.
Salta is beautiful! There are so many little towns that have retained their original charm. We went hiking, wine tasting, white water rafting. The coolest thing were the salt flats where you could take pictures and it had a really neat optical illusion effect. We went out to little towns that just got electricity within the last 5 years. Hostels meant staying in people's homes and the townspeople couldn't have been kinder or more hospitable.
Visiting Salta was the perfect way to end my life in Argentina. I was able to see beyond Buenos Aires yet it ignited a desire to get to know the rest of the country as well as the whole of Latin America. Till next time.
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