Snatch-and-Grab: My iPhone Woes

So I traveled with Julita and Paulina for a month without any incidents. They left and within a few hours I was attacked by a machete wielding bandit.  Then I met Colin and Dave; traveled with them for 4.5 days without any further problems; I left them and within 1.5 hours I found myself once again heading to a police station.  Apparently I should not be traveling on my own.

We left Lake Coatepeque relatively early and headed for San Salvador.  The guys were actually going back to the beaches, but would not hear about dropping me off on the side of the highway to catch a bus to my bus station in San Salvador.  So after about 45 minutes of navigating the traffic and fume infested streets of San Salvador, we finally made it to Terminal Oriente.  There I parted ways, headed into the chaos of the bus terminal, and managed to track down my bus after grabbing a nice breakfast.

Everything seemed to be going well.  According to the guide book it was to be a 3 hour ride to the border, than a 10 minute taxi ride to the first main town in Honduras, from where a 2 hour bus would get me to Santa Rosa and another 1.5 hours by bus would finally get me to Gracias.  In San Salvador I waited less than ½ hour before my bus left and settled into two seats, with me next to the window and my big backpack on the seat beside me. 

Having just gotten into an interesting section of The Count of Monte Cristo on my iPhone the night before, I was keen to continue reading.  As a result, whenever the bus stopped or the road was less bumpy, I would try to get at least a few pages read.  With my iPhone out I also took the opportunity to snap a few nice shots out the window putting to good use a new application I had just downloaded.  Somewhere at the 1.5 hour mark of my journey we stopped in a slightly larger town and about a dozen or more vendors boarded the bus all offering their assortment of goods and yelling one overtop the other.  The cacophony of noise was insane.  Apples followed mangos, followed epanadas, chickens, fantas, candies etc.  Everything was being shouted at the same time and I figured no better opportunity to record what goes on a chicken bus than right there and then.  I got a good 2 minute clip by which point most of the vendors had made it to the end of the bus and had quieted down. 

With the bus still stopped I decided to continue reading.  All off a sudden a hand reaches over my shoulder and grabs my phone out of my hand.  It was so quick that I barely had a chance to jump up and attempt to grab for it.  My reflexes were to slow, my big bag was blocking my way, and there was no way I could leave my camera bag behind to give chase.  All I could do is yell “STOP!! STOP!!! STOP HIM!!” as everyone turned around, looked, but did nothing.  My last hope was the guy standing at the front of the bus who collects the money and helps people load their luggage.  If he had so much as stepped a bit forward and blocked this man’s way, there might have been a chance of recovering my phone.  Yet he simply stood back where he was and did nothing.  As the guy jumped out, sprinted down the street and turned the corner the bus was already moving leaving me in a daze of disbelief.  The whole incident took maybe 20 seconds at most.

Having already some experience trying to explain to the police an incident such as this in a language that I could not speak, I decided that it would be best to get the assistance of my fellow passengers.  I managed to communicate to them that I wanted them to write down what had just happened and to let me know where the nearest police station was.  Armed with a 4 line Spanish summary of the incident, I was let off in the next town and made the trek to the police.  They quickly indicated that there was not much they could do for me but agreed to write up a police report as I walked over to a nearby internet café to block my phone number and advise Fido of the theft.  It’s funny that the only sentences that the police seemed to be able to put together in English was:  “Do you have a boyfriend?” and “Are you single?”  They were quite nice though and probably didn’t have too many foreign girls stopping by, so I can’t blame them.

So after 1 hour at the police station I was now without my iPhone, without my alarm clock, without my calendar, contacts, Spanish dictionary, camera application, voice recorder, emergency phone contact, emergency text messaging, all my prior photos, voice memos and notes, currency convertor etc.  The monetary value aside, it was an annoying loss that left a very bitter taste in my mouth.  At this point I had to wait another ½ hour for my next bus to the border.  Once I got on that, I realized that somewhere between the police station and the bus I had managed to lose my good-luck Teddy.  So only 4.5 countries, Teddy’s travels officially came to an end. I think his loss hit me the hardest.

I made it to the border after a further 1.5 hours.  The journey would have taken the estimated 3 hours had it not been for my unplanned stop.  Instead, by the time I crossed over into Honduras it was around 1:30pm.  After the taxi ride I was ushered onto my next bus and based on how quickly they rushed me onto it, I assumed that we would leave in the next few minutes.  Unfortunately it turned out that this bus didn’t leave until 3pm and took over 2.5 hours to get to Santa Rosa.  There I caught my last chicken bus of the day to Gracias arriving some time after 7:30pm exhausted, dejected, completely frustrated, paranoid about walking anywhere on my own (especially in the dark), and simply glad to have left El Salvador behind.

At that point I was ready to retract my recommendation to travel to El Salvador. With time to let the feelings subside, I can still say that it is a beautiful country and maybe no more dangerous than the rest. I simply had a stretch of bad luck or maybe bad judgment.  Thankfully it didn’t cost me my life, my health or anything too valuable or irreplaceable. Hopefully if any of you choose to go there, you will only experience the positive side of that country: its amazing people and its beautiful scenery.  

PS:  It took me nearly an hour of wandering all around Gracias and into virtually every single store to finally find a replacement alarm clock in the form of an "authantic" Casio wristwatch that is water resistant to 10 meters and bought off of a street vendor.