ABOUT BEING ROBBED

I have mentally prepared myself to be robbed while traveling because, well let's face it, it is very likely to happen. Having the dorm broken into and my stuff stolen in Santiago was already a disappointing experience which brought quite a lot of afterwards consequences with it, but then being robbed face to face is definitely a complete different level.

So that happened in Ometepe, at 7PM, on my last day in Nicaragua. After our hike and an incredibly good dinner, Anne and me walked to the hostel where our traveling friends were staying. It is a dark road so I used my phone as a torch because we could not see anything. Suddenly we saw to our left side a man running down the field holding a branch in his hand approaching us. I sensed something bad but I could not quite assign this negative feeling towards a certain thing.
So this guy climbed over the wire mesh fence, holding the branch high, doing the stabbing moves towards me while pointing to my phone and said "Asalto, asalto". He was really focused on me and turned his back to Anne and I was just really really scared and could not believe it was actually happening. So many thoughts were running through my head, things like if it would hurt badly if he actually stabbed me with the branch, if I should hit him in his balls with my knee, if Anne is searching for things to hit him from behind (she was looking for the wallet to give him money but he did not care about it), if I should just give him my phone to not get hurt. I offered to give him money because I really did not want to give up my phone. But he would continue doing the stabbing moves, threatening me and went to grab my hand which was holding the phone. And since I really was not ready to give it up, I was holding on to it really tight and we kind of jostled with each other. Even though I was really scared of him actually stabbing me, after a good while of fighting over my phone, I got really angry. So I screamed "Fuck you I'm not giving you my phone" and it was a split second reflex when I grabbed the branch and broke it in half. The robber was flapper gasped and angry - I guess, and when he went to attack me with his hands, I started screaming. Then Anne started to scream from the top of her lungs with a very high pitched voice (girl can scream!) We both then stood in front of him and screamed as loud as we only could. So the robber panicked (we were really loud!) and slowly moved away from us a little bit. I took that chance and grabbed Anne's hand and yelled "Run" - so we ran for our lives, as fast as we could. Two things I screamed while running away were "Fuck you for not having a knife" (arrogant fool, that's what I am!) and "Anne, promise me you will never walk alone in the dark ever".

Needless to say, I was shaking and crying once we arrived at the hostel. It was really really so scary.


What a way to end my Central and South American trip. But thankfully this incident and the stolen belongings incident out of the dorm are not the first things I remember when I think about the time I had.

Gracias!