Safety In Buenos Aires

Still Life In Buenos Aires wrote some excellent common sense safety tips on how to be less of a target to crime.

But I felt there were a few more precautions that needed to be added to the list:

1. Do not hang your bag on the back of a chair, beside you on the other chair or even on top of the table. Between your feet is best.

2. Do not leave your camera safety handle dangling out of your pocket. "Hello, expensive camera on my person! Please mug me!"

3. Do not walk through any plaza - park at night. Especially Plaza San Martín. Most likely you will get mugged.

4. Do not be cocky and place a bet of 100 pesos with those dodgy street "find the queen" dealers or what ever they are called. They are professionals and you are an idiot. Please just give the money directly to me instead, I need a haircut and colour, with someone who knows how to cut hair or better yet, buy the crib with bars, we keep putting off as my baby "Harriet Houdini" is escaping at night and trying to get up to no good.

5. Do not go for a massage past midnight and not expect the "ladies" to get you to strip nekkid, then take your clothes away and empty the contents of your pockets, while you stand there shivering, nekkid and defenseless, wondering if the "ladies" are ever going to return your clothes to you.

Last but not least:
6. Do not be so overcome by the sheer excitement of a protest that your common sense just leaves the your brain entirely and you take your lovely laptop out for a walk on the street to record it all. This is not smart. Not smart at all.

These are all true stories. De verdad!

If any of you do these things, and I hear about it and I will hear about it, I will take you over my knee and give you a good spanking. Then charge you 300 pesos for it, to be sure that you did indeed learn your lesson!

Oh yeah, one more thing. Is it really necessary to carry around your big fat bible of a travel guide, which ever your worship may be: Lonely Planet, Foder´s, Rough Guide? Are your ugly shoes; Birkenstocks with socks, Crocs. sport sandals, or Great White Hunter ensemble complete with safari hat not enough to indicate you are a tourist just waiting to be taken advantage of?