29th January 2013
Shock and Horror, our Planned relaxing day was ruined! We were sat on a bench outside the interview room of the district police station. We were brought here in a police car with rather large windows so everyone could see who was sat in the back. Oh, the shame of it all.
It would have been if we actually committed a crime and also if we didn’t keep smiling because a hot policewoman was talking to us. See picture. She can arrest me anytime…
No, rather we were victims of a crime…rather Auston was and David and I were just caught up in it. You see, Auston had his bag stolen.
It all started off with a great breakfast in the hostel to recover from the wine drinking yesterday. But one thing was lacking, great coffee. I wasn’t too bothered but travelling with 2 Americans, you soon realise that dependency for great coffee. So it was planned to go to a coffee shop. They wanted to do the American thing and work from a coffee shop with wifi and I said I would just go off window shopping while they work after a coffee with them.
Walking inside the cafe on a busy street, it was far too hot to sit outside, Auston placed his bag on the chair next to him. All of us could see it. No problem. The waiter came and gave us the menus. The customers behind us were moving and the door tinkled as they left. The waiter came back and took our order. I saw some kids running about outside and the waiter warned us to look out for them in case they came into the shop. Auston went to grab his bag next to him to find it was totally gone. What? No one came in? I had my eye on the door the entire time and no one came in..only the customers behind us left…wait…could it have been them? It would have been the perfect crime of opportunity.
Creating a fuss, we let the staff made aware but it wasn’t much they could do except point us towards the police station. Following their directions, we arrived here and spoke with the duty police in charge, he asked us to wait while the tourist police came. This time, all of us had to climb in the car and be taken to the district police station. I felt a little at unease about the whole thing. With experience on my RTW travels, I was very unsure about the honesty of police. Were we to bribe him to get a police report for Auston’s insurance claim?
Luckily, we did pull up at the district. And that’s when we found ourselves on a bench outside the interview room. Taking all of Auston’s details, we were told that she would come to the hostel later on about 7pm…and would we be there? I started to speak ‘of course, it’s free wine….‘ stopped by an elbow to my ribs from David. Oops.
No, we smiled, we would be at the hostel.
It wasn’t until later, that the police rang up to say they couldn’t make it and could we come to the police station the next morning? Ah well, we got to do some stuff anyway. The next morning, Auston and David went off themselves while I hung about looking after our bags, and chatting up some hostel guests as you do. 2 hours later, they got the report, but had to go through what happened again for the 3rd time in complete Spanish.
Moral of the story? Keep a hold on your bags at all times.
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