Being robbed by a little old lady.

(pronounced Wa HAK ka)

The longer (Size and time) bus takes 8 hours and leaves Puerto Escondido at 22.15pm from the old bus station, which we got to just in time. Stu sat with the bags; I then went to check in, I was made aware that we had somehow come to the wrong place. The informant grabbed my hand and in a semi blind panic we both sprinted 10 ft to the left which was then suddenly the right place, without thinking Stu followed me sprinting 5ft to the left, I quickly turned to him and said ‘BAAAAGGGGS’ He had abandoned 2 backpacks and 4 shoulder bags holding such luxuries like my skilfully constructed Debenhams bikini (rare to find such a fit over here), 7” travel kettle, our precious tiny laptop that has ‘don’t steal me’ aurically protecting it, all such treasures that would possibly make pirates weep with such a find, but luckily (maybe thanks to our runner bag guarding angel) they were all fine. Its seems ok if you miss this bus as three separate sets of people did that night, they all individually tail gated the coach by speeding taxi, the coach stopped and let them all on at various points on route.



The bus journey was similar to being in the Apollo programme, we took off with the force of a solid rocket booster as we thrusted up hills and around many tight corners, an anti sickness pill would have been settling at this time, a slight over sight on my part in the packing process. The boys driving looked barley legal to have sex let alone hold a licence and throughout the whole night they had an open mike communication with their ground controller, probably their dad. As we tried to drift off to sleep around midnight the resemblance of a
London Arriva bus full of people all shouting at each other through mobile phones on loud speaker irritated me senseless, the controller had the most screechy, echoing, reverbed crackling voice cranked up to Peavey 11, which was in direct competition with the bad AM radio station also challenging us at full volume with head splitting Mexican trash, a different kind to mariachi.



We pulled up at Oaxaca bus station at 5am an hour and a half ahead of time and the temperature had dropped considerably too freezing. I gave all 4 shoulder bags to Stu, telepathically instructing (as I am a woman, this is what we do) not to take his eyes off them this time, while I got the bigger backpacks. We were ready to go when we realised one bag had gone…. out of all four bags that looked exactly the same they took Stus bag. Apparently during the split seconds from us getting off the bus to us leaving, some very old twinkle fingered wrinkly banditteress asked Stu for the time, therefore diverting his attention from his single most important job at hand. That is all it took. We ran into the station to catch any sightings, not a recognisable shoulder strap in sight, the old lady vanished, she must have had a magic blanket as she was earlier remembered to be verging on crippled, (the standard united code of practise for beggars) she could not have worked alone.



Now our attention was drawn to the inner sanctum of this decrepit bus station, (one of two, of course it was the poorest) it was the first time in Mexico we have seen so many homeless bodies sprawled out on the floor, a lot of them were kids, snotty filthy very awake kids, most of the adults resembled motionless corpses covered by one in a million off white relief aid blankets, the Val d’Isere of the 3rd world. For a minute Stu wanted to throttle who ever had done this, but sympathy took hold super quick, which made me see him in a new light….we both then just said ‘oh well, look at these poor people let them have it.’ The real personal disappointment was I didn’t voice my warnings and concerns for ‘fear’ of sounding like a loon * and Stu’s upset with his lack of vigilance at being caught off guard and with one of the oldest tricks in the book, by a sweet butter wouldn’t melt in her very old sneaky desperate toothless mouth. The only down side for the thief was they didn’t get the various chargers and adapters for the UK appliances for it to have been the perfect steal, as they were all in my bag. 77% of Oaxaca’s population lives in extreme poverty and this morning 2% of them were on the rob the other 75% soundly sleeping in this one bus station.



* (My soul. cultivator indulgence....) 3 times last week my amazing pack of Sonia Choquette oracle cards which have not let me down so far...gave me the ‘deceit’ and then 'intuition' card as my guidance advise for the week, same cards...given twice….which was the most negative vibe so far…. also our new neighbours at Olgas told us to not forget to ‘strap our bags around our legs on the bus’, but we thought they were being overly cautious and very English. (Mike & Mel you were on the ball, and we didn’t listen) Then in the night on the bus one of our bags fell to the floor from the above rack, nearly taking out this old lady opposite, ‘Id hang on to that’ blared into my head like some inner voice shouting between my ears with two mega phones…. how symbolic we nearly gave that 'old lady' an injury....so this was my final of many intuitive warnings id received over the last 3 days , and all egotistically left brained ignored.



Less than six hours later and after no sleep for over 48 hours and much running around trying to find the right place to report the incident, a simple cop shop would have been suffice, but because we failed at 6am to report this incident immediately we had to go down another route. We came across ‘The Agente Del Ministerio Publico in street named ‘Murguia’. We sat down with a man from the law enforcement section of the tourist incident desk…who reminded me of a Mexican Windsor Davis, one bushy eyebrow authoritivly cocked upward, hussainly moustached and wearing half glasses carefully balanced on the bridge of his nose. He was to hand type our entire statement on an old fashioned Olympic typewriter that pinged like a microwave at the end of every sentence and thudded back to the beginning like a machine gun in full throttle, he translated word for translated word what happened intending to originally use a single slice of blue carbon sandwiched between 2 bits of A4 paper. We listed all that was in the bag, translating the value from UK pounds in to US dollars, it went something like this:

Black bag $ ok-ish.00
MP3 (Sobbing his heart out) $ 2 much.00
Portable speakers $ silly.00
‘Special’ Headphones $ how.much.00

Windsor Davis didn’t move his head an inch

This is a tree
2000 years old Tule Tree.....
he just looked over his halved glasses directly at us moved his eyes up to match his tangled eyebrow, like a suspicious headmaster. We carried on the list…….

7.1 mega pixels digital camera $bloody hell.00
pictures inside (intuitively copied the day before) $PRICELESS
Camera case $ had too pay for this extra ONLY IN UK!!
Game boy $stupid.00
Games x 6 $stupider.00
Game expert carry case $ God. nothings free these days.00

How Larry Grayson did this all sound…..Could have thrown in a cuddly toy and a set of champagne crystal glasses, as this is how stupid it was sounding, even to us.

First aid kit (had all my emergency period pain drugs in it, malaria pills for the year, super sonic antibiotics for gastro im dying situations. just incase emergency IV needles. $silly price as we could have got them all for next to nothing over here.
My moleskin notebook and foldaway amazing pen (Sorry Ali & Angie we lost it)


Windsor was so not amused and visibly yawning, thinking about it at least he had had a full nights sleep, we had not.
He was now on to his third piece of carbon

Monte Alban
Having a break in the grass
paper using 6 x A4 sheets.

We continued…

One Acapulco cockatoo beach towel (We thought this wrapped up our extravagant western lives safe like cotton wool padding a wound. It worked for me in Temazcalli sweat lodge blog.) I did think, maybe we deserve to have had it all stolen. And as Windsor pinged his typewriter for the 300th time, asking if that was all, we finished with……

ONE SODDEN FROMMERS MEXICO 2007 GUIDE BOOK
(Our second to go walkabouts by itself…a message maybe that we don't actually need them? $deserves to get stolen

We wont mention the blow up pillow
pyramid key ring with Stus padlock keys for his big backpack…..lucky I have his spares.

Grand total $ a,stupid,amount.00

What were we thinking carrying all that expensive and yet 2-007 essentials for the modern traveller? We are not secret agents; traveller’s maybe, actually it's worse we are effectively homeless backpackers! We are meant to be roughing it, to be fully able to merge in, eco out…or else we’d be staying at the worlds Hiltons with an entourage and possible film crew, im an Aquarian this is how I dream. The pearls of advise and wisdoms lovingly given by our great ancestors and my two personal spirit Nannies in (P.V temazcalli blog) chant…via shaman lady (10th April) has proven true, all this brain numbing conditioning that we all buy into…it is overwhelming at times…we are advised that we must have all these time saving, digital, smaller, essential items to survive, or you will die!! In some parts of the western world its more important to have the latest mobile phone than fresh water and wholesome food…All this stuff is all certainly more fun and convenient than the things I went travelling with 10 years ago, when I thought I had everything back then....But the time saving bit brings me back to what I mention in PV Blog, what time are we saving to do what with, not be with family, friends, or quality time with ourselves were all too bloody busy then knackered, even with all these so called time savers!



10 years ago I travelled with no insurance...umm…I had a chunky wind on camera holding x 4 AA batteries, I carried roles of used and unused film in colour and black & white ‘just in case’. I had a separate video recorder, which was the size of a shoebox, with spare film… I had a brick sized Sony walkman tape thing that warred and clicked and chewed up tapes, which also took x4 AA, I carried only six- 90-minute tapes to listen too and got very bored with them all for many months of journeying. Foam head phones were the fashion in them days, similar to the free hand outs you get from air lines for in-flight films which you can not hear over the engine noise. Back then phoning home to see if all is fine, fingers crossed no disasters was an expensive and time consuming task, even worrying at times if bills were not paid correctly and services threatened to be cut…. email was still being developed in 3rd world countries, it was there and then it was not there, am referring to the long emails Id write while online at 20p a minute to my 2 mates who owned a computer, but I had no means to save the document nor attach any photos (as I didn’t get them developed until I returned to Boots the chemist back in Blighty) So while struggling with my typing speeds in some back street shop, the power in the street went for the day/night and nothing was saved nor sent, just darkness within.....very frustrating times.



Now I have the best travel insurance, incase of any untimely health complications due to rapid age increases since the last time I travelled, including sudden death and then piece of mind. I carry a slither of a camera smaller than my hand mirror with a chip that recharges from the mains, stores 1000 photos in black & white and colour and it can take video footage as well. I can cram 1000 music albums, videos and 800 photos on to my palm sized mp3 player, and our headphones are foldable, noise cancelling, in ear, sweat proof, head looped pieces of science. Not only can we email with unlimited connection speeds from most funky 3rd world cafes, but also many places have free wireless connections so we can do it all - for free! (Nothings free in the UK…please UK give us something for free…) we can fully document our tedious travel tales calling ourselves titles like ‘travel bloggers...’ with fancy shopped about photos and videos for handfuls of people to view anywhere in the world.


Stu and I don’t have a home to phone home too any more, we don’t even have a mobile phone anymore, so we are not worrying about corporate companies screwing with us, making out bill are not being paid when they have, taking funds from your account without your prior permission, then taking 6 months for them to return it with not even a comp slip.. We can now contact anyone anywhere in the world using cheap telephone 'online' using Skype, we can chat to people and actually see their faces using video web cams or write quick messages using MSN messenger or through night dreams/astral projections, telepathy and psychic links which im currently busy working on.. Gene Roddenberry was a visionary genius. Iv bought postcards here but iv only used them as bookmarks so far...! Im holding on tight to my one bag from now on....and Stu can share all that I have left....



I have grown up within these exciting times and yes I bought into all these very convenient wonders. Which has helped me creatively and therefore have assisted in my personal growth. But where will it end at to what cost? Its funny, over here after the statement ordeal we really felt embarrassed, with what little we think we have brought out with us, this is nearly all we actually have left. These few remaining essentials were soft back tickles of creature comforts that should not be begrudged by others. As I said in blogs previous, nearly everything happens for a reason, every hold up, miss hap, bit of bad luck, I now believe this single event was meant to happen, I was meant to ignore warnings, which i now don’t feel bad about as it soon made me go do something very positive about it in Oaxaca city……more to come.



'You're a materialist, like all ignorant people. But you materialism doesn’t make materialism true. Don't you know that? In the final summing up, it is spirit and dream, thought and love and act that matter' 'The Citadel Of The Autarch' by Gene wolfe.



NB Our alleged specialists in backpacking insurance we bought ARE CHEATING LIAR CRAPS. They settled all Stu’s lost items by sending compensation that barely bought a new disposable camera, a cheap shoulder bag and 2 coffees! They cleverly worded the policy to mislead. A lawyer would have a hard time understanding the big print let alone the small print…..It was painful and we felt helpless in arguing, insurance companies are all the bloody same, cheating liars and thieves, who don’t give a damn. God forbid if this happens to me I shall name and shame this company on every travel website. I only hope that again God forbid anything happens where we are really ill, they will honour their policies and put cash on the table and look after us.

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