The Big Trip: The Great Chicken Bus Robbery

OK

So, three days into out trip and I have been pickpocketed already.

We are now in Panajachel which is a beautiful village on the northern tip of Lake Atitlan. I would love to tell you what a wonderful time we've had here but between making extended frustrating calls to cancel all my cards and avoiding the monsoon which starts at 2pm and persists well into the evening we havn´t really had a chance to chill.

So, on Sunday morning after a fantastic breakfast we packed our backpacks and set off in high spirits to find a chicken bus to take us to Panajachel. Luckily we found one straight away, so we threw our packs onto the roof, climbed on board and just hoped that the packs would still be there when we got to the other end. To get nto Panajachel you need to change at a non-descript town called Chimultenango. It was here, as we had just started the second leg of our journey that, as I patted my trouser pocket, I realised that I had been robbed. I have no idea who did it or when but my guess is that it was within a minute of getting on the first bus.

Now, any normal security conscious person with multiple cards and quite a lot of cash on them would split it all up carrying only what they might actually require on the journey. But not me. I had it all in safely stored my wallet in my unbuttoned jeans pocket.

I am now shaking with adrenaline with the realisation that someone is going to have one hell of a party tonight on four cards and $300 of cash. Oh, the stupidity. Added to this, the heavens have opened and we are stuck in some goddam hole that I can´t remember the name of waiting for another bus to take us down to Panajachel. After using the local toilet which is reminiscent of the scene from Trainspotting we finally catch the bus and arrived in Pana at 4pm. The next few hours are spent trying to call all of my banks where I find that 12 fraudulant transactions have already been made on my credit cards including two purchases from shoes.com and three from
another footwear website, so I´m guessing it was a woman who robbed me.

The local tourist office are great to us and waste no time in getting a police report for me that I can send to the insurance company. They also recommend a pleasant local hotel called Matitia (Q62 per dbl room) which we hole up in for the night. It has a parrot.

Today, I have spent more time in internet cafes sorting everything out. The card companies have scratched the fraudulant transactions so that´s a relief. I just need to get together all I need for the insurance claim.

It has been raining even harder this afternoon so we have decided to stay for one more night. Tomorrow we will take the local boat or llancha across the lake to San Pedro where we will begin our Spanish lessons!!