Robbed!

On April 1st, we were robbed! We arrived at the local bus station in San Jose, Costa Rica in the morning and waited like everyone else to purchase tickets to our destination. The place was buzzing, and while waiting in line, a lady picked up one of our small backpacks and walked off. We saw nothing. It all happened literally within a few seconds from us visually seeing the bag to it being gone and us not being able to see any sign of it. We knew it was a lady only because Ami saw a lady sitting nearby, but she did not get a decent look at her.

I immediately jumped out of line when Ami mentioned the bag was missing and we asked a couple of people in the area if they saw anything. They responded no. One idiot taxi driver said with a smirk he saw a lady run off with several bags. I immediately ignored him because I had a strong feeling he only wanted to drive me around the area - I felt like he would rip me off in a taxi rather than really help us out, so I just decided to run around a few of the neighboring blocks and see if I could see anything. After around 10 to 15 minutes, and seeing nothing, we resigned to the fact the bag was long gone. You realize that these guys probably have done this 100 times and have a way of concealing the act within seconds, and my efforts running down a few streets were more out of ´just in case´ rather than really expecting to see anything. Ami found a policeman relatively quickly as well and mentioned the situation. He shrugged his shoulders and said you need to watch your things.

Not knowing the area around the bus station very well, we decided it was in our best interests to get on our bus and resolve the situation when we arrived in La Fortuna. We took inventory of what was in the bag and realized nothing lost was super costly. The most important item was the camera, and primarily because we procrastinated in posting our pictures on-line, therefore the majority of our pictures were gone. But, we realized we have the few pictures we have posted on our blog, that with digital you end up with a lot of pics you never do much with and that we have been fortunate to share many of our travel experiences to date with some very cool people. Luckily we exchanged contact information, and we sent out an email asking them to share their pictures with us. This is one of those situations where it helped to have 10 digitals and 10 of the same pictures taken! Everything else in the bag was replaceable and not a huge issue. We lucked out in the big picture.

Speaking of the big picture, we talked a lot about attachment, especially attachment to things. There are emotions that seem pretty prevalent after something like this occurs. We felt annoyed and frustrated for most of the bus ride after the theft. Annoyed at ourselves for not being more careful, and therefore frustrated that we allowed it to happen. But, the situation was done, and we could only learn from it now. But, we quickly removed ourselves from attachment to the things in the bag because it would only prevent us from moving forward.

So, we are now surviving on disposable cameras until the end of this month when, lucky for us, my parents are visiting us in Central America. We will have a new camera and will be ready to capture our last two months digitally. Look out for a picture blog as well in the future!