Tangua, Colombia

We woke up with the sun today and enjoyed some coffee with the family while taking in the incredible views, before seeing the kids off to school (Saturdays are game day at school) and getting underway. We only had a few hours of driving before we hit Pasto, which is the large city before you cross into Equador, so we figured we would stop for some lunch and find a cyber café to get caught up on work.

After striking out on internet at our first location, we headed down into the heart of downtown, where the guidebook said a few cyber café’s were located. After driving around for a bit trying to find parking we finally parked in front of a church on a plaza, and headed off with our computers to find a bite to eat. After about an hour, we returned only to be greeted by a lady and her children rattling off Spanish so fast it made my head spin. We figured she was trying to get us to pay her kids for watching our car, which is common down here. A few moments later, we were wishing that’s what they were saying. A quick glance at the side of the van and we immediately saw the glass on the ground and strewn about the dash. Noah went to open the passenger door and immediately noticed that it was unlocked. The same was true for the sliding door. Shit. An overwhelming urge to vomit immediately came over me. We were quickly realizing that our worst nightmare was unfolding before us.

Our minds raced as we looked in the back seat and tried to take inventory of what was missing. Our clothes? Gone. Our fishing gear? Gone. Our tools? Gone. Our guitar? Gone. All in all, everything that was in the back seat that wasn’t bolted down minus a bag of dirty underwear and the orange safety cone we smuggled out of Honduras was removed from the van. It all happened within an hour in broad daylight on a busy street and plaza with plenty of people around. We stood in awe for a few moments, just bewildered at how something on this scale could happen so quickly. After about fifteen minutes, we started to regain some sense of composure and realized that the secure lock-box that we installed in between the front seats had saved our passports, and credit cards. We also were thankful that we had made the storage area under the back seat a lockable box, as that saved all of our camera equipment.

After waiting for about an hour for the police to come the two blocks to our van, we drove to another station that one of the locals had told us was a few blocks the other direction. The officers there were a little more helpful, and basically told us that they had put the word out to keep an eye out for this stuff, but weren’t very optimistic that it would turn up. Pasto is a town of 400,000, so while I didn’t like that answer, I knew it was a reality. It wasn’t like we were going to see someone carrying the 200 pounds of gear down the street. These people pulled up a vehicle next to ours and just loaded everything into it and drove off into the hustle and bustle of the city. Our first thought of recovering from this was that we needed a police report for insurance. They directed us to a station another few blocks away, that when we arrived, we weren’t surprised to find it closed on the weekends. We said F-it, and decided to get ourselves out of this city.

With our confidence in our safety and the future of our trip shaken, we left Pasto and headed into the countryside to find a place to stay. Anywhere would be fine as long as it wasn’t here. Tomorrow we would cross the border into Equador and say goodbye to the one bad day that couldn’t begin to tarnish a great experience in Colombia.