Robbery Count: 1

After a pleasant 8 hour bus ride from San Miguel to Managua, arriving in what is commonly understood to be the safest country in Central America, Susanna and I grabbed a taxi and went to the hotel that seemed the best fit from the description in our guidebook. It was a little difficult to tell the taxi where to go, since in Nicaragua the streets don't have names and there are no addresses, everything is located by describing its location relative to other things. We arrived at the hotel (the address of which is literally "one and 1/2 blocks west of the Ticabus station"), which is a fine place with a not-exactly-friendly staff, got a couple rooms and unloaded our stuff.

It was around 5pm, and we decided to go on a walk around the neighborhood, and see the nearby lake. We saw a number of different people along the way, saying hi to some, just walking past some others. It's just a normal residential neighborhood. The streets were littered with garbage, and the houses varied from run-down-shack to pretty-nice-place, but other than that, pretty much a normal Central American experience. After a few minutes, we walked past an old man, and some little kids playing. Straight ahead of us was a group of six thuggish looking tough guys who I'd guess were in their twenties. Three of them were coming towards us on bike, and three were walking towards us, but they were all approaching together. I saw them notice us, and then all look at each other. They got really close and one of the guys on a bike gave the others a nod, and then pulled out a gun. Two other guns came out immediately after. One guy with a gun went at Susanna. It all happened so fast that at first Susanna thought they were just kidding around, and then instinctively put up a struggle and tried to keep him from taking her backpack (including her video camera, $100, her reporter's notebook, and all of her contacts), but ultimately he won, leaving her bagless with her shirt a little torn up and feeling quite emotionally distraught, but otherwise unharmed.

The rest of the guys came after me.

The second I saw the guns, I put my hands in the air. I had no doubt about what was going on, and I wasn't about to get shot over some ultimately-not-important-compared-to-my-life objects. Immediately I had memories of stories people had told me about Central American thugs shooting people just for giving even the smallest sign of resistance. They were all over me before I could even get my hands all the way up, though, so it was a fairly meaningless gesture. Everything happened so fast, I can't even remember how it happened, but the next thing I know I'm laying on one of their bikes, which is laying on the ground (not exactly "posturpedic comfort" if you know what I mean.) with someone's foot pinning down my neck so I can hardly breath, and can't really see what's happening because my head is tilted to avoid foot-in-mouth-syndrome (I've had this many times before, but it's never been someone else's foot before).

I may not have been able to see everything that was going on, but they made damn sure I saw their guns, and I definitely paid notice. I don't really know anything about guns, but they looked like six-shooter pistols with BIG chambers. Several times I repeated in Spanish "take anything you want. There's no fight from me. Just take what you want." but, as expected, it didn't really effect their behavior towards me.

They went through all my pockets with great thoroughness, and I have a lot of pockets (9 to be exact). They got my wallet, which had some minimal cash--less than $20--my driver's license, student ID, and some other stuff I can't really remember. They also got my camera, which I just got, along with the 2GB memory card inside. Luckily I have uploaded the vast majority of my pictures to http://picasaweb.google.com/ogoldberg so I only lost the most recent stuff, but unfortunately, due to time constraints, many of the pictures weren't uploaded at their full resolution which is kind of a downer. I also lost my spanish-english dictionary, my sunglasses case, and my notebook with all my notes and contacts. If we've met you along our way through Central America, and you are reading this, please let me know your contact info so we can get in touch with you again. We'd hate to lose touch with anyone.

So, while going through all my pockets, they became aware of the fact that I was wearing a money belt. They started digging in my pants trying to get at it. Suffice it to say, this was rather uncomfortable and unappreciated. Fortunately, something occured a few days before, which at the time seemed like bad luck, but in retrospect was quite lucky. A few days before, the buckle of my money belt broke. At the time I was a little upset, because I didn't know what to do, but then I remembered that I had packed America's favorite tool: duct tape. I covered the strap and the broken buckle with duct tape, and, since the buckle no longer could unbuckle, started putting on the belt everyday like it was a pair of shorts, one leg at a time, before putting my pants on.

What does this all mean? It means that when those assholes tried to snap off my belt and run off with it, they weren't able to. This was very lucky, because I had my American and British passports, $300, my credit card, and my debit card in that little pouch. I would have been in a really, really bad position if they had managed to take that stuff. Go duct tape!

So they gave up on the money belt, but got everything else, and decided they were ready to go....after getting in a couple kicks. When I got up there was a whole bunch of people standing around, mainly kids, and some older people. I don't blame them AT ALL for not interfering. There were guns involved and there was nothing anyone could do.

Almost immediately after the thugs turned the corner, a police pickup drove by with a cop standing in the bed of the truck holding a fully automatic weapon. Everyone started yelling "Policia! Policia!" and there's no way they didn't hear us, put they just kept on truckin'. I asked someone to call the cops, but they told me someone already did. After waiting a good 20 minutes, they finally showed up. The thugs were surely long gone by now. If that first truck had only stopped they definitely could have caught them.

The cops asked some questions, and then asked us to get in the truck so they could take us back to the station. We got in and then the car turned the corner and then stopped. There was a mob of kids hanging around outside a house. The cops talked to some people and then suspected that the thugs and in fact entered this house JUST AROUND THE CORNER. I don't know if there was justification for them to think this, but they started to approach the house, and then decided against it since they are only 2 guys with guns, and the thugs were 6 guys with guns. Fair enough. I didn't think they would just go into some house around the corner anyways--but it doesn't matter. My stuff isn't worth anyone risking their lives for.

So they took us back to the station, we went through the arduous process of filing a police report in a foreign language, and it was done.

There's a lot more stuff I could talk about, catching up over the last few days, talking more about the cops, what we did today, etc., but this has already been a long blog entry, so I'll just leave it at this: Everyone is ok, no one was really hurttoo bad, no one was shot, we still have our important travel documents and credit cards, we both have travel insurance, and we look forward to the next couple days here in Managua, then Granada (Nicaragua), then onto Panama, Venezuela, and maybe Bolivia. We had a tough night last night, and a tough morning today, but things are looking up and we are going to go full steam ahead.