Cocaine accused's low-rent city shelter

Sharon Armstrong. Photo / Supplied

The Hotel Caoca is an unlikely hangout for an accused drug smuggler.

The cramped rooms have no hot water, and the constant drone of traffic and mosquitoes makes sleeping difficult.

But this is where Sharon Armstrong spent much of her seven days in Buenos Aires before she was arrested for allegedly trying to board a flight to London with 5kg of cocaine worth $275,000.

Staff at the hotel remember the smiling New Zealander who couldn't speak a word of Spanish and had to communicate with them using a translator application on her iPhone.

"She was always going out for cigarettes," said one hotel worker.

"Every morning at 6am, I heard her talking really loudly on her phone ... She nearly woke the whole hotel up."

The worker did not know who Armstrong was speaking to.

Staff said Armstrong went out occasionally on sightseeing trips and to eat, but spent long periods in her room.

She did not venture out at night, staying in her room listening to music.

And she paid the $30 room fee every morning for that night, as if she did not know how long she would be staying.

Three days after Armstrong's arrest, police visited the hotel, asking staff about Armstrong's movements while she was staying there.

They took away security camera images from the hotel and asked if Armstrong had had any visitors during her stay there. They also inspected Room 215, where she stayed.

Whatever comforts that room lacked, it is luxurious compared to Armstrong's present accommodation.

The Maori language expert is in a cell at the medium-security Ezaiza Prison with 18 other foreign prisoners, only one of whom speaks English.

On Tuesday, she was taken from the cell for medical tests at a public hospital.

Prison officials said the tests were a routine check-up given to every female prisoner.

Yesterday, Armstrong's plight hit the mainstream Argentinian press when the tabloid newspaper Clarin splashed her story across two pages.

Under the headline "She says her love tricked her and now she is in jail for drugs", the popular newspaper showed pictures of her before her arrest, and a police-issued photo of her looking despondent after being taken into custody.

The paper said she was supposed to celebrate her 55th birthday with her online lover on a blind date in London.

That lover is alleged to have duped her into going to Buenos Aires to pick up a suitcase for him.

Clarin's police reporter wrote: "What she did during the week she remained in the city is something she did not want to talk much about.

"The truth is that on Wednesday April 13, when she was about to take the British Airways flight 244 bound for London, she was arrested by Ezaiza Airport Security Police.

"A routine scan of the bag revealed that it had ... hidden (very roughly, in a double bottom) three packages with an organic substance. The end result of the inspection determined that it was 5.13kg of cocaine, valued on the European market at more than €150,000."

In an opinion piece accompanying the article, reporter Hector Gambini wrote that Armstrong's story was believable.

"In New Zealand no one seems to doubt the woman, a well-respected academic and cultural [figure].

"It is likely that she met someone online and agreed with him on a romantic blind date in London."

The paper said Armstrong was facing a charge of drug smuggling, which carried a term of up to 16 years in jail.