Fue robado

A month on the road... it had to happen at some point. During the several days of travel, from comfortable, known Xela; through Lago Atilan, El Salvador, Honduras, and Managua; en route to Ometepe... I was robbed. Twice. Sort of. And, I can say that being robbed does not feel good.

I´m still not quite sure what happened time number one. I lost a little under $200 from the bag I was carrying, tossing on top of vans, and stashing in hotel rooms. The good news is that my passport, credit card, drivers license, cell phone, and stash of original 15th century romantic poetry were all left intact. (I honestly don´t know what I would have done on the bus ride without crackly pages of old poems to flip through!)

The second time was far les direct, but far more personally embarassing. At the El Salvador border, I decided to change some Quetzales into dollars (given the first robbery, I no longer had any of those available!). I´m pretty good at math, and pretty good at thinking on my feet, and yet, when the shady looking fellow with the giant stack of bills offered me $31 dollars for 410Q at a 1:7.6 exchange rate, I didn´t really object. I mean, after all, his calculator said 31 on it, and he sounded so nice and sincere. In the US, I think I would have caught the scam for what it was in a matter of seconds, but I´m learning that it´s not just difficult to talk in a new foreign language, it´s difficult to think coherently and quickly in one! That fact was doubly put on display when, right after rip off number one, I handed my passport to a shabbily dressed fellow who assured me he was an official Salvadorean border official... despite the fact that I had just seen everyone else on my bus walk into a cement building clearly labeled emigración. Fortunately, my brain turned on a little more quickly during the second go-round, and with a little American pushiness combined with a little pidgin spanish, I got my passport back sin problema.

I´m still trying to be very open to meeting new people and trusting the folks I meet... but near the bus terminals, I met enough scam artists and potential theives that I am now keeping a far closer eye on my stuff, bargaining a whole lot more aggressively, and trying desperately to avoid bus terminals!