I Was Robbed, But Didn’t Lose Anything
My unlikely case of loss and luck
What got stolen? Well, everything in my small bag, including:
- my passport
- my computer
- my external HDD
In hindsight, it seems painfully obvious every time I tell this story that this guy was NOT working for the hostel, but I fell for it at the time.
Just before the incident, I had taken out the maximum amount of cash I could from the Chilean ATM to only pay those fees once, so I was loaded. My wallet, stuffed with wads of cash, was bulging in one pocket while a point-and-shoot camera and phone were in the other.
I looked very conspicuous with my two bags, the large one on the back, the smaller one at the front — like some human version of a camel — trudging heavily along the street, very much a tourist and obviously in search of a place to stay. I was kind of an easy target.
As I approached the hostel, he came up looking affable and asked the obvious, ‘was I looking for a place to stay’? ‘Did I want to have a look at the rooms’? After three months of travelling in Chile and Argentina, I was used to being sold to, and thought nothing of it. I followed him through the small front door into the hostel. The door swung closed behind us.
Savour the details because they establish the frame in which everything happened.With the door closed, I removed my large backpack and put it up against the wall before approaching the front desk. The receptionist was on the phone and before I reached her, the man, who’d seen me put down my large bag, assured me that I could safely leave my bags in the reception while we went to see the rooms.
Yes, I know what you’re thinking.
Seeing as the receptionist was busy, I decided to leave my small bag next to my large one, in clear view of the reception, and followed the man down the passage towards the rooms. As I walked away behind the man, the receptionist was looking at me, still on the phone, with confused look on her face. Positive confirmation bias made sure I thought nothing of it.
Once we reached a single room — sharing rooms isn’t a thing in Chile, so it’s more of a hotel really — the man tried to open the door, but it was locked. Feigning surprise, he apologised and said he’d quickly have to go and get the key. I could wait there. Of course I could. I still thought nothing of it.
A minute passed before the lady from reception came down the passage saying she assumed I wanted to look at the room. She did have the key! All fine and I decided to take the room, so now it was back out to the reception to pay.
At that exact moment I was re-entering the reception, a much younger man was coming in through the front door carrying two small backpacks in front of him in either hand. One of them was mine.
‘Da f*ck?
My eyes darted from my bag in this man’s hand, to my large bag, which was still there, to the receptionist, and back to the man. I moved towards him and snatched my bag rudely out of his hand looking at him with a confused frown.
‘What are you doing with my bag?’ I asked him rather bluntly.
Unaffected by my rudeness, he seemed eager to tell me what had happened.
CCTV — Real reality TV
He worked at the carpark next to the hostel, and the two businesses shared a CCTV system. With no one parking, he was sitting there bored and got to watch everything that had transpired. The incident must have been the highlight of his day.
‘I really only noticed when I saw fast movement,’ he explained. ‘I saw this guy come into the reception from the back and he grabbed your bag and another small bag and left the hostel running.’ He was moving around the reception area showing me what he’d seen the other man do. ‘It was obvious what was happening…so I ran after him! I caught up to him about two blocks away from here, and then I just pushed him hard in the back and he tripped and fell over. I then grabbed the bags and brought them back here. He didn’t try and follow me.’
He’d been enthusiastically getting into his narrative and seemed a bit sad that it was over so quickly. I just stared at him, clutching my bag. What do you say to something like that?
I stammered out a thank you before reaching for my wallet and handing this guy a 20,000 peso note (about 40 USD at the time) as a token of my appreciation. He seemed content. It may have all been some elaborate plan, but I doubt it, and I don’t really care either.
Has something like this ever happened to someone else? It seems rarely fortunate to me, but I’m sure every possible wacky and random thing has happened to someone at some stage. This was how I was stolen from. I mean the bag had left the hostel and was running away in the arms of a Chilean crook, or Chilean advertisement for travel insurance as I like to think of it, but I didn’t end up losing my stuff. It was all there.
I nearly cried later when the full impact of what had nearly happened dawned on me. Contained on that external HDD was my only backup of all my photos taken from over three months of travelling throughout Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. The other copy was on the computer, which was also in the bag. As annoying as it was, I could have replaced the passport, but those photos, those I could never have gotten back.
People might ask why I didn’t back up to the cloud. Well:
- This was 2013.
- While traveling I was often not around reliable internet.
- My camera didn’t connect to my phone.
- My phone wasn’t much of a smartphone.
Having learned my lesson in a big way, I promptly took things to the extreme as soon as I returned to Santiago. I bought 4 large (for the time) MicroSD cards, made 4 copies of everything, left one with a friend in Santiago and placed the others in different places on me:
- one in my wallet (always in my pocket, not my small bag)
- one in my large bag (probably too heavy to steal easily)
- one in the sidewall of my shoes
Every few days I would download from my camera and update the various backups. Naturally, I never had any other issues with theft, and so they weren’t needed.
In hindsight, it seems painfully obvious every time I tell this story that this guy was NOT working for the hostel, but I fell for it at the time. The context, or ‘frame’ made it so that once I had bought into the fact that he was an employee of the hostel, positive confirmation bias ensured I didn’t pick up on anything to the contrary.
