"A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”– Lao Tzu
And the Down Side of Travelling…
1 May 2012 | No Comments | posted by Intrepid Explorer | in Full Travel Blog, South America
Day 105 – Otavalo, Equador
Today was a pretty bad day. In the hostel in Quito over the last few days, we’d heard from a number of people that had gotten robbed on buses in Ecuador. We’ve always been really careful, always keeping our valuables in sight, etc, so we thought we were pretty safe. Well, apparently not safe enough. On the two hour bus ride from Quito to the market town of Otavalo, we were robbed. Jon had his daypack by his feet, with a leg through the strap so it couldn’t be snatched. I had my daypack by my feet, with the zip locked.
It was about 2pm and we had taken out the netbook and were watching a movie. When it as over, Jon reached down to put it away and the bag was open, and our soft camera case was gone. Somehow, the theives had managed to take a 7″ x 5″ x 3″ case out without Jon feeling it whatsoever. Amazing.
Luckily, the only thing the theives got was our two cameras that broke in the Galapagos, and some extra batteries and memory cards. We’d uploaded all our pictures to dropbox already, so we didn’t lose any of those. The most annoying thing was the case also had all our chargers – for the camera, computer and iphone!
So, when we got to Otavalo we were in a pretty horrible mood. We know we didn’t lose anything major, and we were really lucky, but it’s still a pretty terrible feeling. We’re going to try and be in a better mood tomorrow and not let it ruin the city for us.
And the lesson to all our travelling friends – In Ecuador, please lock your daypacks while on the bus!!!
This article was written by: Intrepid Explorer