Baños and Robbery

Puta Madre!!! Fucking bastards!!! We have been robbed!!!!!!!!!! I can't believe it. We have had such a great time so far and now this happens.

We caught a bus from Quito heading towards Baños. After our confrontation with the racist woman on the way to Cotopaxi we decided to sit near the back of the bus. Our bags were on the floor in front of us. We were both knackered, we´ve been up since 4 in the morning and we were happy that we were back in civilisation and looking forward to a few days R n R.

About 6 young lads got on the bus and sat directly behind us, behind us and to the other side and finally two on the back seat. I remember thinking at the time that I wasn´t comfortable with this lot behind me, but dismissed the thought straight away.

At no time did we both go to sleep, but we were dosing with our eyes closed. The bus is incredibly noisey, they have a film showing, with the sound blasting out all over the bus, and the roads are quite bumpy and twisty, so the roar of the bus engine added to the mash of noise.

The lads behind us got off. About an hour later I wondered what the time was and went into my bag to retrieve my mobile. I couldn´t find it. After searching for a few minutes the sudden realisation that we may have been robbed smacked us in the face. Ad scrambled for his bag, which was still by his feet, and let out a cry of agony as he discovered that both his cameras had been taken. We both felt sick, but instantly recognised that they must have hooked our bags from under the seat behind us and pilfered the stuff. The fuckers were clever. They covered all the seats behind us so that anyone getting on the bus wouldn't disturb or discover them.

We are both feeling stupid, vulnerable and naive. It's hard not to blame yourself and Ad is having a hard time not doing that. But we are the victims here, to place any blame on us necessarily excuses, even if only slightly, the perpetrators of this crime. Of course we will learn from the experience but I refuse to accept any fault or blame on our part!!!!

We arrive in Baños and after checking in to our hostal go to the local police station. The Commissario is really friendly and helpful and thankfully can speak good English. We receive a crime sheet and then Ad has to begin the tortuous process of making an insurance claim and arranging for replacement cameras and other bits to be sent out to us.

The next few days are spent arranging things... it's all so long winded and complicated when you don't have your own phone or fax or computer. Its gonna take over a week for replacements to reach us and as I write that could still be a conservative estimate. Luckily Ad had the foresight of anticipating that this may happen and had already left all the paper work, receipts etc with his mum, who is sorting things for us back at home. Thank you Leigh!!!!

As you can imagine the past few days have not been the best. We haven´t really done anything exciting as we want all this business sorted first. We have both gone through some depressed moments and it's hard not to become jaded and let this incident cast a gloomy shadow over the trip so far. Hopefully things should be sorted in the next day or so and we are both of the opinion that we need to move on from Baños and try to start to enjoy ourselves again. We have both been supportive of each other and I'm glad that we both have each other to pick the other up in times of gloominess.