Buenos Aires and getting mugged!
well, the last time i wrote i was enjoying a break from climbing and photography, in Mendoza with a German friend Frank Voellm, and his 1200cc BMW.
Now, I'm in Guatemala with no camera and nothing to do but climb mountains….!
I met Frank briefly on a ferry to Manila in the Philippines about 6 years ago and we stayed in touch through email and now mostly Facebook. He climbed Aconcagua a long time ago and after telling me so much about the climb, it was fitting and complete coincidence that we should meet in Mendoza the gateway to this high mountain.
Frank is an even bigger fan of Asado libre (all you can eat barbecue and buffet), and we had a few good days trying to out eat each other. Yes, Frank, I do eat more than you'd think ! ;)
Most travellers in Mendoza take wine tours by bicycle, rolling back to their hostels after half a dozen or so vineyard visits. Doing a tour on a 1200cc motorbike wasn't the conventional way to do it, but just as much fun, if only the free wine tasted a bit better. Frank is a bit of a connoisseur (compared to me at least), and wasn't that impressed, but we didn't want to splash out on the $20 a glass good wines either!
For the next two days we did a road tour to a National Park with Dinosaur fossils and unusual rock formations. After about 8 hours of driving we decided not to go in, we both like to protest the rip of prices charged to foreign tourists, its not like Argentina is a third world country, and it didn't seem to be that impressive anyway when we saw the visitors centre. At least we got a few pictures of the free dinosaur display. And like they say, getting there is half the fun!
Driving back, Frank let me off at a bus station to make my way to Buenos Aires, geographically the last city on this 7 month trip, and as it turned out the last one i would be photographing too.
Buenos Aires is an unusual mix of European, American and Latin styles. Depending on where you are in the city, it can look like London, Paris or even Washington D.C. Its very cosmopolitan and only when you hang around a while do you sense the Latin element coming from its huge population of 15 million people. And if you're really unlucky you might even get to meet a few of them! (No Hernan, I'm talking about my buddies in La Boca, not you!)
The first few days were very nice, I walked around the city, photographing as usual, I met a friend that I'd met and travelled with in Colombia and i had another barbecue of course! One of the areas i wanted to go to is Caminito in La Boca district. It has very colourful buildings and people are often dancing tango for tourists. It seemed like it would be very photogenic. The only problem is its in one of the most dodgy areas of the city. I already new this, but i was told as long as you stay in the tourist area and don't walk out to the residential streets, it was perfectly safe. Well, I've got news for you…Its not! I guess i hung around about 10 minutes too late. It was only 7pm but just after sunset (dusk - my favourite time to photograph) and almost no-one left on the streets. Except, that is, for me and the three people who were about to mug me. I had done everything I could have done, like keeping my camera in my backpack except for the few minutes i was photographing and looking around now and agani, but a big camera and tripod is not exactly easy to conceal and they must have been waiting for someone like me to take advantage of.
I did see them coming though, as i usually do, i glanced over my shoulder for a moment to see who is around me, and saw three shadows coming towards me! I knew exactly what was going to happen, so i ran with all my gear!, hopeless, of course, and no where to go anyway i couldn't break through the line they had formed around me. I didn't see any weapons and they didn't have time to make any demands but they did make a big effort to take everything i had. And instinctively i struggled as much as i could to stop them taking anything. With all my lenses, camera and backpack strapped around me they were having a hard time getting what they wanted and after a while they started getting really angry and shouting in my face and trying to pull the camera off my neck, my head was going up and down as one guy was yanking as hard as he could. It must have been quite a scene!
This could have gone on for a lot longer, but i thought i would probably end up worse off if i kept struggling so basically I gave up and let them take my camera. They also got another lens and my tripod. I was able to keep my backpack and my favourite (but not most expensive) lens. Thinking about it now, one of them must have used a knife to cut the lens case off my shoulder. With my backpack on, it would have been impossible to take the lens case without cutting the strap. So its probably better that i did give up in the end!
It was a bit strange to see my camera disappearing down the road after having had it round my neck everyday for the last 6 months, and i immediately felt like i should have done more to keep hold of it. But of course that would most likely have been a very bad idea. I could have chased them, but then what! Its not like i would have done a better job the second time. So, i walked over to a taxi rank to call the police. Incredibly, they hadn't seen anything only 30 meters away and asked me if i needed a taxi, no - Policia, por favour!!!
5 minutes later a police car turns up and takes me round the neighbourhood to see if i can identify anyone. Sure, that's exactly what I would do if I'd just made off with $8000 of camera gear, hang out with my homies on a street corner! Well, at least they tried, and they were quick arriving too. After that they took me to a police station to make a report. There were two French guys there, who had been in the wrong area and had come off a lot worse. Bandages around their heads after being hit with rocks when they had tried to resist!
The only good thing about that day was going back to my hostel and enjoying a nice bottle of white wine, and also a bottle of red; for some reason I was still completely sober afterwards!
What to do now?!! I was going to go to Bariloche to the lake district and go hiking, but with no camera it would have been sad to go to such a nice place and not photograph it. I thought my mountain climbing was over for this trip, but a friend i met in Beijing about 5 years ago just asked me to fill the place of a team member who had dropped out of an expedition to Mt McKinley in Alaska! Sure, I'll come, why not! So that has given me a lot to do in the last few weeks since losing my camera.
I decided to skip Bariloche and go back to Mendoza to climb a different 6000m mountain to train for Alaska. Doing Aconcagua again would have been nice, but i only had a week (a bit risky) and it was end of season anyway so i would have been climbing illegally. This mountain however had no restrictions, so as soon as i got back to Mendoza i stocked up again at the supermarket and headed off to climb Cerro Plata. The first day out 3 dogs started following me, they were still with me 6 hours later when i pitched my tent and cooked dinner. I guess they wanted food. Sorry, but stray dogs don't get my charity.
The next morning there was still one dog outside my tent. He followed me for the next 5 days! all the way to the top of the mountain at 6000m!!! For at least 3 nights it was -10C, and every morning i thought i would find a dead dog outside my tent. I actually started feeling sorry for him, but I wasn't going to feed him for a whole week, i only just had enough food for myself. I wonder how many times he's been up that mountain, not the first time, I'm sure, but it may be the coldest trip he's had. He really didn't seem to be enjoying the frigid nights, especially being covered in ice by the morning!
As well as being cold, Cerro Plata is a very windy mountain. Twice on the way down from the summit I was blown back up two steps!!! This never happened to me before, although on Mt Fuji in Japan once, i had to lie down on the ground with my ice-pick in the snow to stop me being blown away! The next day on the way back down i was looking out for my hiking shoes which I'd cached under some rocks when i changed into my mountaineering boots. Three days later, however, all the rocks looked the same and i couldn't find them anywhere! I reached the road at the bottom and resigned to the fact i had gone too far started walking the 15km road back to civilisation, not a nice prospect when you have stiff mountain boots on! A few minutes later though i was picked up by a tour company with a Korean and German client going back to Mendoza :) The guide was wondering what i was doing walking down the road in plastic boots! He also told me that a woman, weighing about 50kg, once had been blown about 10 meters in the air while she was hiking!
here is a link for images of Cerro Plata (non of them are mine, so i dont want to copy them...)
http://www.google.com/search?q=cerro+plata&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=g9E&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=pd65TbGEJfCD0QHo5Iz5Dw&ved=0CDcQsAQ&biw=1042&bih=532
That night I went for dinner with the Korean girl and German guy, my last day in Argentina. In the morning I took a bus over the Andes to Santiago in Chile to catch a flight to Guatemala. With my flight at 6am, and me arriving late in Santiago, I went straight to the airport and slept for a few hours until i could check in at 4am. Having taken 6 months to get this far, with all but a short hop by plane from Panama to Colombia, taken by bus, it was strange to be going so far so quickly to a place i had visited already on this trip. After a stop in Lima, Peru and San Jose, Costa Rica i was back in Guatemala. I had a bit of a surprise in San Jose, although i had been waiting at the gate for an hour i was using the free wifi and lost track of time. 5 minutes before departure i got a 'last boarding call for Christian Kober'. Lucky i didn't have my headphones on!
I had planned to come back to Guatemala for Semana Santa, Holy Week, more than 6 months ago. And after planning it so well and staying on schedule it was a shame not to have a camera with me. Just after losing everything in Buenos Aires I put a message on couchsurfing.com asking if anyone with a good camera was going to the festival and if i could use it. Two people wrote to me saying I could, it was really nice to get these offers, but not having my own camera just wasn't the same, and i didn't do a good job of photographing the festival, but at least i got a few shots.
Since then I've been training more for Mt McKinley. I joined the gym here for a week, climbed a volcano (3766m) and have taken some free salsa classes. My training is going better than the salsa though! I'll probably keep doing this until I fly back to the U.S. on May 10th. I just bought a new camera (Nikon D7000) online, so hopefully it will be waiting for me in Denver when i arrive. Unfortunately my insurance company just said they wont pay up any money for the loss of my other camera. Not covered for business use ****! That's £5000/$8000 down the drain :( At least the new camera is much cheaper now.
ciao
well, the last time i wrote i was enjoying a break from climbing and photography, in Mendoza with a German friend Frank Voellm, and his 1200cc BMW.
Now, I'm in Guatemala with no camera and nothing to do but climb mountains….!
I met Frank briefly on a ferry to Manila in the Philippines about 6 years ago and we stayed in touch through email and now mostly Facebook. He climbed Aconcagua a long time ago and after telling me so much about the climb, it was fitting and complete coincidence that we should meet in Mendoza the gateway to this high mountain.
Frank is an even bigger fan of Asado libre (all you can eat barbecue and buffet), and we had a few good days trying to out eat each other. Yes, Frank, I do eat more than you'd think ! ;)
Most travellers in Mendoza take wine tours by bicycle, rolling back to their hostels after half a dozen or so vineyard visits. Doing a tour on a 1200cc motorbike wasn't the conventional way to do it, but just as much fun, if only the free wine tasted a bit better. Frank is a bit of a connoisseur (compared to me at least), and wasn't that impressed, but we didn't want to splash out on the $20 a glass good wines either!
 |
| Frank wondering where to start! |
 |
| good a place as any! |
For the next two days we did a road tour to a National Park with Dinosaur fossils and unusual rock formations. After about 8 hours of driving we decided not to go in, we both like to protest the rip of prices charged to foreign tourists, its not like Argentina is a third world country, and it didn't seem to be that impressive anyway when we saw the visitors centre. At least we got a few pictures of the free dinosaur display. And like they say, getting there is half the fun!
 |
| The 1200cc BMW road tour |
 |
| free shot of a publicity poster! |
Driving back, Frank let me off at a bus station to make my way to Buenos Aires, geographically the last city on this 7 month trip, and as it turned out the last one i would be photographing too.
 |
| Cordoba (on the way to Buenos Aires) |
Buenos Aires is an unusual mix of European, American and Latin styles. Depending on where you are in the city, it can look like London, Paris or even Washington D.C. Its very cosmopolitan and only when you hang around a while do you sense the Latin element coming from its huge population of 15 million people. And if you're really unlucky you might even get to meet a few of them! (No Hernan, I'm talking about my buddies in La Boca, not you!)
 |
| Buenos Aires |
 |
| Buenos Aires |
 |
| Buenos Aires |
 |
| Buenos Aires |
 |
| Buenos Aires |
 |
| Buenos Aires |
 |
| Buenos Aires |
 |
| Buenos Aires |
The first few days were very nice, I walked around the city, photographing as usual, I met a friend that I'd met and travelled with in Colombia and i had another barbecue of course! One of the areas i wanted to go to is Caminito in La Boca district. It has very colourful buildings and people are often dancing tango for tourists. It seemed like it would be very photogenic. The only problem is its in one of the most dodgy areas of the city. I already new this, but i was told as long as you stay in the tourist area and don't walk out to the residential streets, it was perfectly safe. Well, I've got news for you…Its not! I guess i hung around about 10 minutes too late. It was only 7pm but just after sunset (dusk - my favourite time to photograph) and almost no-one left on the streets. Except, that is, for me and the three people who were about to mug me. I had done everything I could have done, like keeping my camera in my backpack except for the few minutes i was photographing and looking around now and agani, but a big camera and tripod is not exactly easy to conceal and they must have been waiting for someone like me to take advantage of.
I did see them coming though, as i usually do, i glanced over my shoulder for a moment to see who is around me, and saw three shadows coming towards me! I knew exactly what was going to happen, so i ran with all my gear!, hopeless, of course, and no where to go anyway i couldn't break through the line they had formed around me. I didn't see any weapons and they didn't have time to make any demands but they did make a big effort to take everything i had. And instinctively i struggled as much as i could to stop them taking anything. With all my lenses, camera and backpack strapped around me they were having a hard time getting what they wanted and after a while they started getting really angry and shouting in my face and trying to pull the camera off my neck, my head was going up and down as one guy was yanking as hard as he could. It must have been quite a scene!
This could have gone on for a lot longer, but i thought i would probably end up worse off if i kept struggling so basically I gave up and let them take my camera. They also got another lens and my tripod. I was able to keep my backpack and my favourite (but not most expensive) lens. Thinking about it now, one of them must have used a knife to cut the lens case off my shoulder. With my backpack on, it would have been impossible to take the lens case without cutting the strap. So its probably better that i did give up in the end!
It was a bit strange to see my camera disappearing down the road after having had it round my neck everyday for the last 6 months, and i immediately felt like i should have done more to keep hold of it. But of course that would most likely have been a very bad idea. I could have chased them, but then what! Its not like i would have done a better job the second time. So, i walked over to a taxi rank to call the police. Incredibly, they hadn't seen anything only 30 meters away and asked me if i needed a taxi, no - Policia, por favour!!!
5 minutes later a police car turns up and takes me round the neighbourhood to see if i can identify anyone. Sure, that's exactly what I would do if I'd just made off with $8000 of camera gear, hang out with my homies on a street corner! Well, at least they tried, and they were quick arriving too. After that they took me to a police station to make a report. There were two French guys there, who had been in the wrong area and had come off a lot worse. Bandages around their heads after being hit with rocks when they had tried to resist!
The only good thing about that day was going back to my hostel and enjoying a nice bottle of white wine, and also a bottle of red; for some reason I was still completely sober afterwards!
What to do now?!! I was going to go to Bariloche to the lake district and go hiking, but with no camera it would have been sad to go to such a nice place and not photograph it. I thought my mountain climbing was over for this trip, but a friend i met in Beijing about 5 years ago just asked me to fill the place of a team member who had dropped out of an expedition to Mt McKinley in Alaska! Sure, I'll come, why not! So that has given me a lot to do in the last few weeks since losing my camera.
I decided to skip Bariloche and go back to Mendoza to climb a different 6000m mountain to train for Alaska. Doing Aconcagua again would have been nice, but i only had a week (a bit risky) and it was end of season anyway so i would have been climbing illegally. This mountain however had no restrictions, so as soon as i got back to Mendoza i stocked up again at the supermarket and headed off to climb Cerro Plata. The first day out 3 dogs started following me, they were still with me 6 hours later when i pitched my tent and cooked dinner. I guess they wanted food. Sorry, but stray dogs don't get my charity.
The next morning there was still one dog outside my tent. He followed me for the next 5 days! all the way to the top of the mountain at 6000m!!! For at least 3 nights it was -10C, and every morning i thought i would find a dead dog outside my tent. I actually started feeling sorry for him, but I wasn't going to feed him for a whole week, i only just had enough food for myself. I wonder how many times he's been up that mountain, not the first time, I'm sure, but it may be the coldest trip he's had. He really didn't seem to be enjoying the frigid nights, especially being covered in ice by the morning!
As well as being cold, Cerro Plata is a very windy mountain. Twice on the way down from the summit I was blown back up two steps!!! This never happened to me before, although on Mt Fuji in Japan once, i had to lie down on the ground with my ice-pick in the snow to stop me being blown away! The next day on the way back down i was looking out for my hiking shoes which I'd cached under some rocks when i changed into my mountaineering boots. Three days later, however, all the rocks looked the same and i couldn't find them anywhere! I reached the road at the bottom and resigned to the fact i had gone too far started walking the 15km road back to civilisation, not a nice prospect when you have stiff mountain boots on! A few minutes later though i was picked up by a tour company with a Korean and German client going back to Mendoza :) The guide was wondering what i was doing walking down the road in plastic boots! He also told me that a woman, weighing about 50kg, once had been blown about 10 meters in the air while she was hiking!
here is a link for images of Cerro Plata (non of them are mine, so i dont want to copy them...)
http://www.google.com/search?q=cerro+plata&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=g9E&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=pd65TbGEJfCD0QHo5Iz5Dw&ved=0CDcQsAQ&biw=1042&bih=532
That night I went for dinner with the Korean girl and German guy, my last day in Argentina. In the morning I took a bus over the Andes to Santiago in Chile to catch a flight to Guatemala. With my flight at 6am, and me arriving late in Santiago, I went straight to the airport and slept for a few hours until i could check in at 4am. Having taken 6 months to get this far, with all but a short hop by plane from Panama to Colombia, taken by bus, it was strange to be going so far so quickly to a place i had visited already on this trip. After a stop in Lima, Peru and San Jose, Costa Rica i was back in Guatemala. I had a bit of a surprise in San Jose, although i had been waiting at the gate for an hour i was using the free wifi and lost track of time. 5 minutes before departure i got a 'last boarding call for Christian Kober'. Lucky i didn't have my headphones on!
I had planned to come back to Guatemala for Semana Santa, Holy Week, more than 6 months ago. And after planning it so well and staying on schedule it was a shame not to have a camera with me. Just after losing everything in Buenos Aires I put a message on couchsurfing.com asking if anyone with a good camera was going to the festival and if i could use it. Two people wrote to me saying I could, it was really nice to get these offers, but not having my own camera just wasn't the same, and i didn't do a good job of photographing the festival, but at least i got a few shots.
 |
| Easter procession in Antigua, Guatemala |
 |
| Easter procession in Antigua, Guatemala |
 |
| Easter procession in Antigua, Guatemala |
 |
| carpet of flower, Antigua, Guatemala |
Since then I've been training more for Mt McKinley. I joined the gym here for a week, climbed a volcano (3766m) and have taken some free salsa classes. My training is going better than the salsa though! I'll probably keep doing this until I fly back to the U.S. on May 10th. I just bought a new camera (Nikon D7000) online, so hopefully it will be waiting for me in Denver when i arrive. Unfortunately my insurance company just said they wont pay up any money for the loss of my other camera. Not covered for business use ****! That's £5000/$8000 down the drain :( At least the new camera is much cheaper now.
ciao
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