Murphy’s Law Part One: The Theft

When we set off on this trip five months ago, we knew that bad things had the potential to happen. We were putting ourselves at great risk by travelling for so long. Of course, you never think that the bad things will actually happen. You try not to think about it while at the same time you try to plan out a standard operating procedure for all those “what if” situations involving theft, assault, kidnapping etc.

So here’s the reason why we haven’t posted anything on this blog for over a week: we were robbed. We’re ok. We lost only material possessions – not our limbs or lives or our irreplaceable good looks.

Below is an account of the events surrounding the theft as I (Gully) witnessed it:

We had spent four days surfing on the beach in Peru that boasts the world’s longest wave (Puerto Chicama). Conditions were epic, but we decided we needed warmer weather and warmer water. So we decided to leave central Peru and head north to get closer to the equator. At about 11 am we were waiting for an intercity bus on the main drag of a little town called Paijan (population of a few thousand). All of our bags were stacked against the side of a building and Elise and I were standing on either side guarding them. I decided to go to the variety store a couple of doors down to get some snacks for the long road ahead. As I walked away from the bags, a mototaxi (see image below) pulled up a few meters away and waited, unnoticed by Elise and me.

Typical mototaxi

All of sudden I heard Elise yell “HEY YOU!!”. She had turned her head for a few milliseconds and in those few milliseconds someone had snatched my daypack from the top of the bag pile. Elise was already running toward the mototaxi that the thief had jumped on to when I got my own legs in motion. As I ran toward the mototaxi I witnessed Elise do the bravest yet most foolish thing I have ever seen anybody do. She grabbed hold of the mototaxi. When the mototaxi started driving away she didn’t let go. She fell. She kept holding on. And holding on. And holding on. I was running after them but there was no chance of catching up. I was helpless as I watched my girlfriend get dragged down the Panamerica highway at 50 km/h. I was horrified. Can you believe she did that?! There were witnesses to all of this but they didn’t do anything to help. Actually, it all happened so fast that they probably wouldn’t have been able to. Anyway, it dawned on me that the rest of our bags were still sitting on the side of the road, so I had no choice but to run back and tend to them. I yelled from a distance to some bystanders to look after them, praying that they were trustworthy people and I didn’t just kiss the rest of our belongings goodbye. I darted back to the street as Elise was about to leave my view. I jumped in another mototaxi (real cars are rare in rural Peru) and just said “VAYA!” (simply, “GO!”). Luckily, this mototaxi driver had just seen where the thief (with Elise in tow) had turned off the main street and was able to follow the same route. They had turned on to an unmaintained dirt road with some pretty big rocks on it. My heart sank, Elise was nowhere in view. We turned the next corner and there she was. Her pants were in tatters, but she was walking toward me when I approached in the mototaxi. Words cannot describe the relief I felt at that moment. The bag was gone, but Elise was ok (relatively speaking). All she said was “GO GO!! The mototaxi is red and it says ‘Mavila’ on the back!! GO!!” Some bystanders who had seen Elise go by had already come to her aid. So I kept going, but the thief was already out of view. There were many places to drive and hide in the back roads of this shanty town. Then a cop truck passed me; they must have been alerted by some people back on the main road. Then another cop truck came up and I jumped in with three officers wielding rifles. We drove around for the next ten minutes looking for the thief but never found any sign of him.

Growing more and more anxious about the rest of our bags back on the highway and not knowing the extent of Elise’s injuries, I had the cops drive me back to where it all began. Our bags were fine, but Elise hadn’t come back to the place where we had been waiting. We drove around, scouring the streets for “la chica rubia” (the blonde girl). Finally, some witnesses told us that she had been taken to the town clinic. Her legs were covered in deep scrapes and bruises were already forming. It looked pretty bad, but unbelievably she wasn’t hurt too seriously.

An hour later, Elise was discharged. She never got a great look at the thief (actually, it turns out witnesses saw three thieves in the mototaxi including one woman) but she was able to say that he was chunky with a round face and he was wearing a hooded sweatshirt. Apparently, that was enough of a description to give the cops a lead so when we were driving back to the police station we pulled up beside a heavy-set guy on the street and the cops started demanding answers from him. After some yelling back and forth the cops threw him the back seat of the truck right beside me and Elise! He was pleading ignorance and innocence to the cops and refusing to even look our way. We said this might be the guy, but that was enough for the cops to drag him to the station and interrogate him. He gave nothing up. We could only sit there all day and look at him in disgust as he averted his eyes from us. We went with the cops to his house (which had dirt floors) and searched it. Nothing. He had had enough time to stash the bag anywhere. The new mototaxi out front was red and branded Mavila. He even had fresh, deep fingernail marks on his forearm – likely from Elise’s clawing! This was the guy, but there’s nothing we could do. There was no concrete evidence so he eventually went home.

It was after 11 pm by the time we finished all the paperwork for the police report. We lost my passport, the laptop, my camera, my iPod, $100 cash, credit cards and bank cards, all our pictures from the last month in Peru, some clothes and other valuable, hard to replace items that I won’t bother listing. Worst of all, Elise was badly banged up and limping.

Don't worry, Elise is ok and she's healing excellently. But, you’ll realize in the next part of this two-part series, everything that could go wrong for us seemingly did – and it all happened over the last week.

-G

The only remotely pleasant memory of all this: riding on the back of a police bike.



Would you have kept holding on?



After Gully's handiwork

Is there a doctor in the house?

Nothing left to do but eat ice cream.