Sunday 3/30/08 Piedras Blancas, Costa Rica
The beach had been quiet all day. A few families and groups of friends had set up tents in the camping area, but not more than 30 people hung by the water’s edge on the mile-long stretch of sand that makes up Uvita Point Beach. My camp site, a small sandy plot set back into the woods just off the beach, was at least a quarter mile from the populated camping area. From the sand, my tent was barely visible and my bike was completely hidden.
At about 4:00 p.m., tired of sleeping, swimming, and listening to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on my iPod, I decided to go for a walk. I packed up my things on the beach and went back to my camp site. Not wanting to carry anything with me just in case I wanted to swim during my walk, I decided to hide my backpack and my handlebar bag, both containing lots of important stuff, off in the woods. I figured that if anyone came upon the camp site, at least they wouldn’t find my valuable stuff if I hid it away from camp. About 30 yards from my tent, I hid my backpack and my handlebar bag under some palm fronds and a flat log. From the trail into my camp site, the two bags were completely hidden.
Content that everything was safe and secure, I went for my walk. When I returned 40 minutes later, things were missing.
I went to uncover my two bags and found only one remaining. My handlebar bag was gone. My heart sank. How could I have been so stupid to have left such an important bag here, I immediately thought. My iPod, my camera, my camera’s memory cards, my bike computer, and my wallet were in the bag. Luckily, my backpack was still there.
When I opened my dry bag, the one that sits in my trailer and holds all of my clothing, food, and other odds and ends, I was shocked to see that it had been ruffled through. Sure enough, the most valuable thing in it, my external hard drive, was missing. My heart sank again.
I felt my mind starting to race. I fought to control my runaway thoughts. Calm down, I thought. It’s not the end of the world. The bike is still here. The tent is still here.
I opened my backpack and found my wallet. Whoever had stolen the handlebar bag took the wallet out of it and placed it in my backpack. When I opened the wallet, my 2,000 colones (about $4.00 U.S.) was still inside of it. This made me smile. Despite having stolen so much other valuable stuff, the thief clearly took pity on me and left me my cash.
So, now that a day has passed and I’ve had some time to think about the whole thing, here’s my take on it.
First, the positive things:
1. My load is lighter now ☺
2. Hopefully I turned someone on to some good music—that iPod was filled with 30 gigs of music, all of which survived a serious and recent music culling in which I weeded out the so-so stuff.
3. I learned a lesson—Never again will I leave valuable stuff somewhere and then go for a walk. You see, I’m an idiot. I know this. Sometimes I need to do stupid stuff like this to teach myself a lesson and make it stick.
4. The handlebar bag I had sucked. It was too small and the rain cover didn’t work well. Now I have the chance to get one that better suits my needs.
5. Stuff is stuff. Nothing more. I can always get more stuff. I’m so fortunate that I’m healthy and motivated to live out this trip I’m on. Things could be so much worse! I’m still very much alive!! Yeeehaw!
6. The bike and my tent were untouched—this stuff is a tad more important than the other stuff. Without these things, the trip would be much more difficult (not impossible, but more difficult.)
7. I didn’t run into the thief in-person.
8. My memory cards were basically empty, so almost no photos were lost.
9. Petty theft hasn’t stopped me before, and I’m not letting it stop me now! I was robbed in China and Cambodia on past trips, and I refused to let both incidents overshadow my memories of those places.
10. All of the amazing people I have met in Costa Rica specifically and Central America in general will prevent me from letting this one incident taint my opinion of this area of the world. I was robbed by one person (or a couple of people), not the entire population of the country.
11. All of the music on the iPod is backed up on my laptop.
Now, the bummers:
1. The things I lost were things that, although not crucial to my day-to-day riding, were things I used frequently.
2. The things were expensive things. I’ll need to replace them.
3. The website is going to go without photos and video until I can sort out the camera problem.
4. I was right in the middle of Fear and Loathing. Doh!
5. It’s a pain in the butt calculating my riding distance each day without a cycle computer.
6. The thief might rob someone else in the future.
7. The thief thought that robbing someone was a good thing to do.
So, am I curled up in the fetal position in my tent somewhere, crying my eyes out and dwelling on the past? No, of course not. Life pops and swells and bubbles and steams away in the present, not the past. Was I frustrated when I first noticed my things had been stolen? Of course. But the world is still spinning, my heart is still beating, my brain still works, my bike still moves, and there is more road ahead of me. So bring on the tailwinds!
Posted in Bike trip: Costa Rica
