When my host family told me that Bus #132 is the one where all the gringo tourists get pick-pocketted, I just laughed and promised I’d squeeze my bag tightly.  Which I did, standing on a hot packed-full bus, chatting to the friendly guy pressed up against me, squeezing the black leather handback my Aunt Joan had given me “so I wouldn’t look like a hippie.”

At one point someone poked me several times in the back, but when I turned around I met only blank stares.  So I went back to talking with my friendly local while his colleagues went back to slitting open my bag and pulling out my money belt with my passport and all my money.  It wasn’t until after a stop that the same person from behind told me I’d just been robbed.

Now I was a fresh UBC grad, in Psychology no less, so it didn’t take me long to figure out that the friendly guy had been a distraction, the pokes had been an attempt to warn me without putting themselves in danger.  Ya, one smart UBC grad, that was me – don’t worry Mom!  

But now what to do? I asked.  They told me to get off the bus and run back to the stop.  Which I did.

When I got there, I just asked the people standing there “Que hago”, what should I do?  ”Run that way”, they pointed.  I still didn’t know why, but I started running blindly.  The next group of people I came to started pointing down a path, like they were all marshals on a cross-country race, so I went that way.  It started to dawn on me that I was chasing some Nicaraguan thugs, and I had no idea what I’d do if I did somehow catch up, but there I was running down a dirt path, across a cow field, doing a Mel Gibson drop&roll under a barbed wire fence and getting my shirt torn in the process. 

Each time I approached bystanders I’d yell “Donde, donde? – Where, where?”  If that didn’t work, I’d add in my brilliant Spanish “Banditos.  Ladrones. – Bandits, thieves”, and they’d figure it out and point again.  Then at one intersection an old man sitting in a rocking chair didn’t get my 3-month-old present-tense-only Spanish.  After repeating "Bandito, ellos me roban!” (Bandit, they are robbing me!), he decided I wasn’t loco after all, scratched his head, and pointed undecidedly down the road.  Whether he was just pointing to get rid of this crazy gringo or actually remembered some men running there I didn’t know, but again I just followed.

Now it started to get really exciting.  Some kids were watching, so I yelled at them to come run with me.  Laughing and chattering, they easily kept up with this rapidly tiring, desperate gringo.  What I thought some 10-year-olds would do to help me with the thugs I had no idea, but it was good to have company.  Then some young men were running with me.  Then some men with guns were beside me.  Then a car pulled up and had me get in the back seat – a police car, it luckily turned out.

We stopped suddenly and all started running across a field.  In the middle of the field a small group of men were motioning us to stop, holding up my money belt that I guess they’d wrestled from the banditos.  I clutched my money belt in disbelief, even more so upon finding that my passport and cash were still in it – in their haste, they’d managed only to pull out my travelers cheques and my parents’ credit card (sorry Mom!)

I pulled out a couple hundred-thousand cordobas and gave it to the men, asking them to buy some beer for all those who had helped me.  But the policemen got very angry and made them give it all back to me.  Still angry, the police threw me back in the car and started driving around, doing the same routine that had led me to that field –pulling up beside people to ask them questions, then speeding up to the next spot and doing the same thing.   Finally we stopped at a bus-stop, where one of the police got on the bus and dragged off a huge thug of a thief.