A Traveler's Worst Nightmare

Theft.

Tourists are always vulnerable to theft, despite their best efforts to prevent it.  It's the lifestyle. Everything you own is in a nylon or canvas bag.  If you are lucky there is a small locker where you are staying for your most valuable items.  Theft when traveling comes in varying degrees of severity.  Here is a list, in order of most troubling to minor annoyance.

1. Passport
2. Visa and Debit Cards
3. Money
4. Computer
5. Stuff

So you're probably at this point wondering why I am writing about this.  Don't worry Mom and Dad, all is well.  However, about a week and a half ago, it wasn't.  Two things happened.

1. At the beginning of my trip, my debit card was eaten by a very hungry ATM machine - a common occurrence here in Latin America.  At the time I didn't realize you could make the bank open up the machine and they could get it back to you intact (take note fellow travellers).  I thought it was gone and called my bank to cancel my card.  I knew I still had a credit card so I wasn't too concerned.

2. A week and a half ago, I tried to withdraw money from an ATM in San Isidro, actually I tried three times with no success.  I called the bank only to learn that they had suspended my account due to some suspicious activity...there was actually a lot of suspicious activity with transactions coming all the way from Saudi Arabia!  My credit card had fallen victim to fraud.  As I was on the phone with the bank, the representative could see more transactions going through and informed me that he needed to cancel my credit card.  My credit card.  My only source to money.  My credit card, which represented food, shelter, travel, and security.  I almost panicked as I held the receiver of the public phone, my mind racing, wondering how and what I would do.  I explained, doing my best to hold back tears, that without access to my card that I was going to be in a lot of trouble.  And so, bless his soul, he opened up my account again, and told me to drop the receiver of the phone and run over to the ATM across the street and withdraw as much money as possible, and them come back to the phone.  So with my time on my phone card ticking I did just that.  I was able to withdraw enough to get me through the rest of my time in Costa Rica - just barely.

And so, step two, mail a new credit card to a country where addresses don't exist.  Every address in Costa Rica is located through landmarks, not street names, numbers, or postal codes.  And so, my card was being couriered to a hotel in the front of the park, across from the church, in the region of Perez Zeledon.  Crazy right?

Well, on Friday I arrived back to the hotel from my latest farm (blog to come) to find my package waiting for me.  The very good folks at Hotel Chirripo, signed for and stored my package until I came back.  And so, while still needing to budget, I have access to funds again, and can afford to eat more than bananas and avocados.

I'm now in Dominical, a chill little surfing town on the Pacific Coast.  I can see the ocean as I write this.

Pura Vida!