Don’t mess about in Masaya or even tiptoe into Tipitapa!
In a perfectly uncorrupt, prison-free and selfless world (another reasonable Obama goal?) there would be no headline news items talking of man’s inhumanity to man just the occasional accident and natural disaster accompanied, of course, by stories of man’s humanity to man.
A similar picture would hold when people meet up travelling from country to country exchanging stories solely on their experiences of how well they had been treated in previously visited villages, towns and cities. It has to be noted that most of the unseemly stories that are chewed over on the subject of safety and security are what people have heard or felt with regard to a place, rather than necessarily a matter directly affecting them; thank goodness. Where there is a notable discrepancy between poverty and wealth the ugly matter of theft often raises its head. At this juncture please allow me one more deft knee to the groin of the British Members of Parliament recently charged with theft: they, too, surely couldn’t have believed they were being rewarded insufficiently in life and therefore had to carry out a little wealth distribution of their own?
Anyway, how safe is safe in Central America? If you never have anything stolen then it is as safe as anywhere else you haven’t had anything stolen. Conversely if you are held up and/or lose money and possessions then you just might think it is the worst place in the world. The very general consensus from what I have heard in my travels so far is that Costa Rica and Panama are some kind of step ahead of the others and the others namely: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras rank fairly equally in terms of security. There are measures you can take that will reduce the possibilities of problems but of course bar never leaving your accommodation nothing is foolproof. Touching a very large piece of wood, so far I have been untroubled by theft but have certainly picked up some tips as I move along that if I had not known could have got me into the kind of trouble certain other souls have had to endure.
In Costa Rica I was witness to a taxi driver being punched in the face -for what reason I have no idea- and also the theft of a bag (not mine!) from immediately above my head on a bus from La Fortuna to San José. I saw the bandage on the nose of a fellow hosteller who had been attacked and robbed immediately outside our hostel in downtown San José by some form of taxi connivance (legally registered taxis or not I do not know). Unfortunately this sequence of unnerving incidents took a much more serious turn for the worse when my hostel neighbour Steve from Davis, California tried to get to Masaya by bus one typically gorgeous day in Nicaragua from the much-vaunted and visited colonial town of Granada.
Over breakfast Steve and I had had one of those very enjoyable penetrative humanity-examining conversations before he skipped off to see some “events” in Masaya later that day. The next time I saw him was the same evening when I stretched out my hand to welcome him back “home” to the Hospedaje Cocibolca, our hostel in the centre of Granada, only for him to shockingly reveal that his day had largely been taken up with a very unenjoyable penetrative and humanity-examining phenomenon called kidnap. His ordeal was extremely unpleasant for what actually occurred but far worse for what his kidnappers led him to believe they were going to do to him. Thankfully one could sense Steve’s relief that at the end of the day because he was still in one piece and had “only” lost a camera, a couple of plastic cards and cash, perhaps as much as US$400, presumably together with as much adrenalin as the body can manufacture in a day.
Although being a very experienced traveller Steve’s mistake was overshooting Masaya on the bus and then trusting the apparently innocent woman who coincidentally descended from the bus at the same point as him while talking on her cell phone. The cell phone was the key because the seemingly friendly group (of kidnappers) turned up on cue in a car to “help” Steve, and the lady who Steve thought was another wayward traveler, back to Masaya. It all looked fairly innocent at this point and in usual foreign fashion Steve, not understanding too much Spanish, was liberated from thinking about any suspicious innuendoes they no doubt were making. However, when he began to suspect something, for example the car going back in the reverse direction and then not stopping at the gas station as they had explained was the motive for retracing their steps, and then actually tried to get out of the car, the five incumbents revealed their collective hand by immediately and forcibly restraining him on the back seat.
It is quite a few years since Nicaragua had a problem with roving bands of terrorists. In fact, ironically, Steve last travelled through these very parts back in 1978 when his travel plans were severely hampered by a major military incident on the Nicaraguan-Costa Rican border at Peñas Blancas between the Sandinistas and Contras. Almost knee-jerk reaction-like he jumped to the assumption that they were terrorists. They took his spectacles and covered his face with his hat and began to punch him with the intention of intimidating him into not only handing over everything he had but revealing the pin numbers to his cards also. He was surprised that the women were worse and being the forgiving kind of fellow he is Steve defended their circumstances by not only recognizing that they were poor but that they might have been as scared as he was. They threatened to kill him especially if he did not give them those pin numbers: not sure if Steve’s forgiving nature ever came up with an altruistic excuse for that because surely at that point he had to be far more scared than they were! After a lengthy and very frightening ordeal, by which time he realized they were all just thugs and nothing to do with any kind of political terrorist group, they actually gave him back his spectacles, passport, antibiotic medicine and just enough money to get the bus back into Masaya the right way. Steve even mumbled to me something about them actually being quite nice after all, considering this parting sliver of a gesture of man’s humanity to man.
In Masaya police station he made a full and difficult report to the police with the help of a few local people who could speak some English but realism indicated that the perpetrators would not be caught for this crime because Steve recognized, again either realistically or excusingly, that the police just do not have the “resources”.
While Steve was busy on the internet trying to recover his financial situation I became immersed in a conversation with the hostel management who had been contacted by the police earlier in the afternoon to alert the staff to the fact that the villains probably had Steve’s room key although there was no indication on the key as to which establishment in Granada it was. The conversation with the management put the blame immediately and exclusively on a band from Tipitapa. According to them this was a town near the capital Managua where there is a very high percentage of delinquents and malcontents. According to them this group came from there without any shadow of a doubt whatsoever.
What can one learn? With varying degrees of importance: don’t stop anywhere near Tipitapa, be very careful when you get into an unknown vehicle, don’t trust single women with cell phones who get off the bus in out of the way places with you, and proven -yet again unfortunately- there are just too many people in our world who want more than they have and will stop at nothing to get it.
Steve, to his excellent credit, recovered quickly and fully and continued happily with his travels after several laborious hours in communication with various financial institutions in the USA and the American Embassy, the latter making the customary almost entirely unhelpful token offer of a list of telephone numbers of “reliable” taxi services in Managua should he want to head back that way again.
Goodbye Masaya and Tipitapa as Steve takes the safer travel option.
