The Worst Day of the Best Trip
I got mugged. It is something I thought only happened in movies or in really shady places at night or to people who were clueless about what was going on around them. But it happened to me and I can say that in my 35 years, it's truly the most terrified I've ever been.
It was an overcast day in Guayaquil, Ecuador, a port city that used to be known for its grit and crime and as a stopover for tourists on their way to the Galapagos Islands until a riverfront revitalization project several years ago put Guayaquil on the map as a legit destination in its own right. In fact, I too, was coming off one of the best weeks of my Gap Year after disembarking a boat in the Galapagos where I had the experience to wrestle in the open ocean with sea lions and swim side by side with docile sharks, penguins, and tortoises. There is virtually no crime in the Galapagos and on the boat we were encouraged not to lock the doors to our rooms.
Maybe it was the envelope of safety that lulled me into a lazy false sense of security or maybe it was the lax attitude after seeing the literally hundreds of police officers lining the touristy area where I was staying, known as the Malecon 2000, where locals, police, and every guidebook advertises the safety of the area. Last night as I strolled the riverfront with hundreds of tourists (and hundreds of police) I saw families with little kids, runners, and tourists alike even after 10 pm.
So I didn't occur to me that leaving my little cocoon of touristy safety would pose a problem when I decided to visit one of Guyaquil's most well-known sights - a lighthouse and church on the top of a hill (Cerro Santa Ana) just a 20 minute strenuous walk not far from where I was staying. Even when I'm in an area that seems safe, the New Yorker in me always has a guard up. I don't wear fancy jewelry, I am always vigilant to see what's going on around me, and I try to blend in as much as my blonde hair and baseball cap will let me.
I knew that I wanted to go see the lighthouse that was at the top of the hill that I could see easily from my apartment, but the streets in this area wind around and around to reach the top, so I used google maps on my phone to plot my walking route. As any user of Google Maps knows, it chooses for you the most direct route and it hasn't yet rolled out a feature to "avoid shady ass areas." So I'm headed up this hill and a couple of guys start whistling at me. I wish I could say that it was because I was looking particularly good that day, but not so. It's the blonde. This outwardly Western symbol, while extremely useful for the better part of my youth back in the States, is an annoyingly irremovable emblem of what most foreigners assume equals wealth. At the very least, the blonde invokes curiosity. Today I went for a run through the main downtown area that supposedly is fine by day and seedy by night, and I couldn't go a single block without getting a whistle or a comment. Hearing it once makes you feel glad you did those extra squats; hearing it dozens of times makes you wonder if you forgot to put pants on.
So as I began ascending the hill full of beautifully colored houses around 4 pm, I got a few catcalls from teenage guys up above. Depending on the tastefulness of the come-ons, my response is typically somewhere between feigning complete deafness to a "good afternoon." I couldn't even see these guys they were so high up, so I didn't even bother to acknowledge it. I rambled through the neighborhood for about 5 minutes or so until I came across a school playground with dozens of kids screaming, a friendly soccer match in progress, and a picture postcard perfect backdrop of all the Crayola colored houses below. I was on an elevated sidewalk about four feet off the ground and it gave a really great vantage point. I thought to myself it would be a great photo op. I took my phone out of my pocket and as I'm apt to do, looked around to ensure no one was planning to relieve me of my valuables. Just at that moment, a young guy approached me very quickly from the front. I didn't like the looks of him and the elevated sidewalk we were on was fairly narrow, so I turned the other way to hop back down onto the street. As I did, I saw a sight that I just can't get out of my mind.
It was the kind of thing you see only in horror movies, usually as the bad guy is jumping out of a dark alleyway or from behind a shower curtain: a raised long knife with a red handle pointing straight at me wielded by another young guy. It only took a second and the first guy was pinned against my back reaching for my phone while guy #2 held the knife at me. I screamed. I screamed like I have never screamed before. If you heard this scream, you would have thought that I had already lost a limb. It was 100% adrenaline and reaction. Knife guy was shushing me. I kept screaming. The guys pushed me off of the sidewalk which was a 4 foot drop onto the cobblestone street. I'm not sure exactly how I landed, but judging by the gash on my elbow, it was probably there.
I instinctively curled up into fetal position and by luck or lack of it, my backpack ended up tucked into my stomach. Which presented a problem for the theives. I was clenched so hard out of fear that it would have taken the jaws of life to pry my bag from me. Now, mind you, I don't give a shit about the bag. It is an Osprey daypack that I have been complaining about to anyone who will lend an ear. The only thing inside it was a wallet with about $100 cash and a jacket. It wasn't like I was protecting something valuable or sentimental. I was completely frozen with fear. Guy #1 was really unhappy that his friend had relieved me of my phone and he had nothing to show for the heist. So he dragged me by my hair for several meters while I was still screaming for my life and clutching my bag in fetal position. Eventually the guy must have been too afraid that my screaming would draw a crowd (which it did) and he ran away with his friend.
I lay there in a daze in the middle of the street. It seemed like it had been minutes, but the whole thing only took about 15-20 seconds. Soon enough, people came to see what all the commotion was about and what a sight they must have come upon. A crazy screaming blonde in the middle of the street bleeding from elbows and knees and blonde hair strewn about the dark cobbles that had been pulled out by my assailant. No one came to help. I walked toward the nearest sympathetic face, an old Ecuadorian man, to whom I asked in broken Spanish if he could take me to the police station. "I don't see nothing," he replied as he turned away from me. My heart dropped. No one else came forward.
Just then a couple on a motorcycle came over the hill and upon seeing my state and hearing my cries for "policia!" they put me on the back of the bike and drove me down the hill to the nearest precinct. Upon seeing the burly Ecuadorian police officer, I lost it. Tears flowed down my face and I tried in my best Spanish (which is way less than mediocre even on my best day) to relay what had happened. The policeman asked why I was alone in such a bad neighborhood. I had no idea it was so bad. It was the middle of the day and didn't seem so creepy to me. I called my husband, which made me lose it once again. I think by this point the police were afraid to leave me alone because they always kept one officer in the room with me. Or it could have been the fact that the blood dripping from my elbow was being slowly covered by soft tufts of my blonde hair falling from my scalp every with every sobbing heave.
What happened when I got back to my apartment and brushed my hair.
Even in an emotional state, it still occured to me that I might be able to find those fuckers using Google's "find my phone" capability, so I began logging into my Google account from the police desktop. Because I hadn't logged in before from that computer, Google wanted to authenticate my ID via a second method. The first option was to send a code via text to my phone. Clearly that method was out. The second option was to send an email to my other email account at Yahoo, which I use only for spam. Authentication sent. Unfortunately, I ran into what we call in the Computer Science world an infinite loop. Yahoo also wanted to verify my identity using either my cell phone or my Gmail account. Who knew Yahoo was so secure? D'oh!
So I did the next best thing and had my husband hack into my Gmail account from my home computer back in New York. My phone was showing no connection to a network, so GPS location wasn't possible. With no other alternatives, I had to wipe my phone. The police asked me to identify the thieves from a bunch of photos of perps they knew about, but apparently dark-skinned and carrying a knife didn't really narrow down the list of suspects too much. The real boondoggle came when I asked for a police report so that I could turn my losses in to my insurance back at home. I was advised that the person who does this job (there were about ten other police officers in the office) was not available because it was the beginning of some sort of festival. After two extremely frustrating hours of arguing with the police (over Google Translate animated with very exaggerated hand motions) I was able to convince someone to type out a few words on some police letterhead that detailed my losses. Eventually a policeman gave me a motorcycle ride back to my apartment where I proceeded to sob my eyes out for the next few hours and could not even enjoy the also extremely emotional Chicago Cubs win in the World Series, nearly 100 years in the making.
I am not really sure why I am sharing all this. I gave my family a heads up but this is probably going to really freak them out and want to kick themselves for not trying to talk me out of coming here. Probably because when something traumatic happens, it just seems natural to want to do SOMETHING. And seeing as how I'm holed up in an apartment too scared to even walk out the front door for water (I've been crying for hours and really dehydrated and not sure if the tap water is drinkable) writing seemed like the most natural thing to do. Maybe someone else has been through something like this and has some advice for how to move forward. At this point I have about 3 weeks left in South America and I'm wondering if I can enjoy the rest of the trip or if I'm going to be constantly looking over my shoulder. Part of me wants to just hole up in a luxury hotel for the remainder and just get room service and watch Netflix, but that's not what I came to South America to do (and besides, I haven't yet found a place in South America with good enough wifi to be able to stream anything.)
I've been reflecting on what went down and here are some things I think went pretty well (as far as muggings go) and also some lessons learned.
What Went Well
1. Be Cheap - I don't wear any jewelry other than the very simple travel wedding band I bought specifically for this trip. I had a cheap plastic watch, but it broke.
2. Don't put all your eggs in one basket (or daypack.) I keep a few bucks tucked inside my phone case and a separate wallet in my daypack. The majority of my cash and some credit cards, not to mention my passport were back at the apartment, so even if my bag was stolen, I still had some money and my passport.
3. Keep an eye out. Despite getting mugged, I thought I was pretty aware of what was going on around me. When I was starting to get my phone out of my pocket I was doing a visual sweep for bad guys. Clearly it didn't make a difference this time, but it wasn't for lack of trying.
Lessons Learned
1. Double check the supposed safety of where you're going. Sure, few places outside the US match the safety back home, but if I had asked the front desk of my building, they definitely would have told me not to go where I did.
2. Go with a friend. I have been lucky in most of my travels to have made friends along the way and I'm usually with someone else when walking around. I only had one day in Guayaquil and I wasn't staying at a hostel, so I was flying solo.
3. Your stuff is not valuable. You are. I am really lucky that I walked away with only some scrapes and a bald spot. If someone wants your stuff and appears to be willing to take your life for it, give em your stuff. If I hadn't been so completely taken by fear, I would have given up that godforsaken backpack before I lost half a head of hair.
Anything like this ever happen to you? Were you able to move on and enjoy travel? Did you change anything about your behavior? Leave your comments here or on Facebook and I will read them as soon as I get myself together! I won't have What's App until I get back to the States since I don't have a phone so Facebook Messenger is the next best thing.