Artista Mostaza (Mustard Artist)

Day 1, Saturday, December 21, 1996

We arrived on time in São Paulo and had no problem with the connecting flight to Buenos Aires. Upon arrival, we went through the routine business of clearing immigration, exchanging money, and booking for transit bus to the city center. The exchange rate was 1 dollar to 0.998 pesos. The cambio (exchange office) had a sign on the window that says the peso is the only official currency in Argentina. Right outside the hall, Léon Bus took both pesos and dollars at one to one. There isn't a place I have been to where dollars aren't welcome, but only in Argentina are the dollars equivalent to and interchangeable with the local currency.

Waiting for the bus to town I quizzed Ed on travel security. What do you say at the cambio if you want to exchange three thousand dollars? You don't say anything. You write it down. What do you do if you think someone's following you? You point him out to acknowledge that you know he's there. I also told Ed of a little story I remembered from Rob Sangster's Traveler's Tool Kit:

"In Lima, during a very early morning walk to catch a bus to Nazca, Peru, a middle-aged woman approached and pointed to my daypack. I looked over my shoulder and saw a patch of nasty-looking yellow goo on the side of the pack. She produced some toilet paper and offered to help me clean it off. Not wanting to miss the bus, I decided to wait and clean off at the station. I thanked her and kept going. A block or two farther on, a stocky man caught up with me and pointed. He, too, offered toilet paper. This apparently coincidental profusion of toilet paper registered even on my sluggish early-morning mind. I stepped away from him, just as several young men emerged from the shadows and converged on me. ... "

Right after getting on the bus, Ed discovered that he had lost his eye glasses. He remembered putting on his sun glasses, and slipped his regular glasses in the shirt pocket. He went looking for them without luck. The good news was that someone did find the glasses later on; the bad news was the glasses had been stepped on. One lens was scratched and the frame was bent a little. Have no fear. Ed had a spare pair. This reminded of another eyeglasses incident. I was in Lappland 100 km into the Arctic Circle with a group foreign students. We rode motorized rubble boats to cross the river into Sweden. The water was rough, and one splash of water knocked the glasses right off the face of Dietmar, a German guy with whom I later traveled to Sweden on much larger ships. I, on the other hand, was totally wet. For the rest of the day, while my jeans were drying on the radiator in the hostel, I had to lounge around in pajamas. For the rest of the trip, Dietmar couldn't see things very well. With this lesson learned, my principle for packing is: pack light but pack two of everything essential. Two pairs of pants. Two pairs of glasses.

Just the ride into town shattered my preconceptions of South America. I knew little about the continent to start with, so those preconceptions must have been particularly inaccurate. This is certainly not some poor Third World country. Buenos Aires is a very cosmopolitan city with loads of European style buildings juxtaposed with newer but far less attractive ones. Ed liked the city instantly. He said he wouldn't mind living here at all. "Beautiful yet unpretentious" were his exact words. I thought I wouldn't mind living here either. Maybe work for a while if I ever learn enough Spanish.

The Léon city bus stopped at its office near Plaza San Martín. Buenos Aires is organized roughly into barrios or neighborhoods. In the city center, Avenida 9 de Julio and Avenida de Mayo are the north-south and east-west main avenues. Plaza San Martín is in the northeast quadrant of these two avenues. To the north of the Microcentro is the neighborhood of Recoleta and to the south San Telmo. Off the bus we checked out an LP mid-range hotel nearby - Hotel Central Córdoba. We later realized that the location of the hotel couldn't have been more central, with the main pedestrian shopping district on Avenida Florida and Avenida Lavelle immediately to the south, the railway station to the north, Ezeiza transit bus at arm's length, and Aeroparque a bus ride away.

So far we have gotten away with just English. Unlike Europe where I can assume that everyone, or at least everyone on the tourist trail, speaks English, I came to South America with the more respectful assumption that people don't speak English, and that we have to use our very limited Spanish and sign language to get around. A pleasant lady greeted us at the front desk. I asked, "Habla Inglés?" She shook her head with a smile, "No."

I tried my well-rehearsed line, "Hablo un poco español."

She smiled and nodded.

"Dos persona, dos noches, un cuarto, ..." With each phrase I paused a little, and she nodded and smiled with encouragement, and indicated that she understood me perfectly.

We got the price. We asked to see the room, "Puedo verla?" - a phrase that I had just looked up five minutes ago. We went to see the room. It's a bit small, but acceptable. We came down. I managed to communicate to her that we also need the room in two weeks for another two nights. Ed wanted to know if we can get a discount. I looked up the phrase book, asked "descuento para cuatro noches?" She smiled and shook her head. We didn't insist. Enough Spanish for the day.

Ed later told me that he was very surprised at how easily I communicated to her all in Spanish, and that I even had the word for "discount"! I was rather encouraged by the success. It was almost fun trying Spanish. People don't assume that you speak Spanish. Those who know a little English are always happy to try. I vividly remember that it was anything but fun in those early days when I tried my very limited English on New Yorkers. It's a lot less intimidating trying a foreign language when the locals are free of the presumption that everybody should speak their language. Ed attempted a lot more Spanish later on. It seemed that he had a better ear for Spanish and could understand more and much faster of what people said, and I could say thing clearer and make people understand us better. We complemented each other and managed quite well.

After we settled down in the hotel room, we set out to explore the city. We started off at Plaza Liberator General San Martín, a nice city park with a number of sun bathers. My body had adapted to the sudden warm weather without any discomfort, and the mind understood that it's summer here without any difficulty. We walked around the park and then onto the square, where there is a statue of San Martín on an elevated platform with steps in the front and in the back. We walked up the front and stopped on the right to read some inscriptions. We could guess many of the words and understand a large portion of text. There were some teenagers gathered on the steps in the back, playing music, eating, and having fun. We walked down the steps around them.

"On your back!" a couple said to us in a raised voice from a few steps behind us on the platform. I looked at Ed's back. There was a blob of mustard around his waist right under his backpack. Ed reached back and landed his hand right in the blob. My first thought was, "Those damn kids played a prank on us." The alarm bells in my head were going off like Notre Dame on Christmas. "Red alert! All hands to battle stations." Whatever their motives for the prank, my instinct was to leave the scene of trouble and hostility immediately. "Keep moving! Keep moving!" I urged Ed in a tense tone. We talked maybe another ten or fifteen yards. Having made sure that there was no one near us now, I stopped. By now, it began to dawn on me that those kids were blameless. We had been the target of the mustard artists. I took out some tissue paper in my pocket and tried to wipe the stuff off Ed's back, all the while looking around again and again to make sure no one was near us. It was hard to get the mustard off, and it smudged a little. It didn't smell too bad. It smelled like, well, mustard. The couple on the platform now had tissue paper in hand. I replied in a firm tone, "No necessito! Gracias!" Wow, that came out rather smoothly. They didn't insist on helping and disappeared.

In retrospect, they did look a bit unusual to me. We saw them in the park earlier. I noticed them because they looked at each other funny, and they glanced at us funny. I couldn't put my finger on any of it, so I didn't give it much thought. It's like someone lying to you. His face is straight and his tone genuine, but somehow the light in his eyes raises your suspicion. The moment you have evidence of the lie, you remember your earlier gut feelings, and all become clear.

Ed later told me that he thought it was weird that I urged him to move. He's got mustard on him, and I am telling him to keeping moving as if someone's going to shoot us. He thought the couple looked like very nice people. It only occurred to him that it's a scam when they offered the tissue paper. Then the story I had told him earlier kicked in.

Ed wanted to get those guys and hit them in the face. I was rather giddy that we had beaten them at their own game. I couldn't believe that they did it in the textbook way. Why didn't they just wear a T-shirt that says "Guild of Mustard Artists of Buenos Aires." I can imagine that it's not easy to pick pockets. You'd feel it. Under the ruse of helping you clean, they can feel around your body, confuse you, distract you, and get away with your wallet and valuables. We kept walking upon discovering the mustard, and I looked around with every wipe when helping Ed clean. They were observing all of this. They got the message. We were not easy marks. Ed said that after this incident, he was much more aware and vigilant. People say, don't look like a tourist; blend in. Well, maybe if you are from New York, you can try that in D.C. Otherwise, it's very hard to blend in. Tourists stand out. Besides, street corners are places where we need to check the map the most. I gave up on trying not to look like a tourist. It's far more important not to look like a dumb tourist. Always be aware of the surroundings. When we check our guide book or map around a street corner, we don't huddle together. One person looks at the map, the other person looks around. Then we switch if necessary. When we take pictures, one takes a picture after the other.

We walked a bit farther away from the statue to take a picture of it. A nice looking gentleman walked by and offered to take one for the both of us. I thanked him, but hell NO. Especially not after the mustard artist incident. In general, it's okay to ask a stranger to take pictures for you. The risk of that person just happening to be a crook and taking off with your camera is low, orders of magnitude lower than the risk of his taking lousy pictures. It's safer to ask the people who just asked you to take pictures, but make sure that they have better cameras. Accept the nice gesture of the stranger who offers to hold on to your camera, only if you think you can run faster than he and catch him with a 30-foot head start in his favor. A polite "no" never offends anyone.

We walked towards Avenida 9 de Julio. By the time we got there, Ed noticed that I had mustard streaking down on my pants too. By now it had dried into a brownish shade of yellow and was impossible to wipe off. I washed my kaikis that night trying different kinds of soap and even toothpaste. Ed's shampoo seemed to be the most effective, reducing the stains to a barely visible light yellow shade. But for the rest of the day, I walked around town looking as if I had an accident in the bathroom.