Naked Blog Rat
If you are sitting there wondering to yourself why the blog seems a bit naked these past few days… it´s probably because I´ve been chronicling my adventures from a nude beach here in Mendoza. Either that or I had my laptop swiped and I am now without my photos. 🙁 You decide.
Yeah. Major bummer. I had been staying in what I thought was a relatively safe hostel here. There was a gate with a buzzer on it to get into the property. Everyone in the place was friendly. There were lockers. Above the reception desk were two plaques for winning ¨Safest Hostel¨in 2006 & 2007. So maybe I let my guard down a bit. Even despite hearing stories from other guests about thefts in Mendoza.
Last night I was feeling a bit drowzy at around 10:30pm so I took my laptop up to my room and watched an episode of The Office. After it ended I closed the laptop and slid it under my bed. I was in the corner bed on the bottom bunk so the laptop was the farthest from the doors that you could possibly put a laptop. And I was sleeping in the bed above it! It was a 6 person dorm, so there were 5 other people in there as well. But somehow at some point during the night a prowler snuck into the room undetected and managed to relieve me of my 15¨ Macbook Pro while I slept only inches from it. I guess I really was tired as I can normally sense humans in my personal space, even while sleeping.
After talking to other people in the hostel and the police, it turns out that 4 unscrupulous individuals (allegedly from Buenos Aires) checked into the hostel late last night and then went around pilfering rooms. At one point one of the girls asked to borrow some shampoo from a Canadian gal residing on the hostel. Being a Canadian, she naturally obliged and gave her some shampoo — at midnight. The girl then took the shampoo into the ping pong room. Note: there is no shower in the ping pong room. Then at around 3am the same girl was found IN the Canadians room. The Canadian (Sarah is her name) woke up to the same girl again asking for… shampoo! Right. Something is NOT right. These people also managed to pick 200 pesos out of the pocket of a passed out Hawaiian dude.
Anyways, long story short… I am now without a laptop and it totally sucks! I´ve been in a major funk the last few days and am now just trying to figure out how to cope without a computer. I wassoupset and depressed that I actually stooped so low as to eat at a McDonalds. Yes, it was that bad. I just wanted to see if the Mickey D´s could possibly make me feel any worse. Only slightly. Almost everything I had on the laptop is recoverable… except for ALL of the photos & videso from this trip! I guess it´s a good thing I was keeping this blog as those photos are still available. But there were some other gems that are just not replaceable. I guess I´ll always have the memories.
It´s actually pretty amazing that nothing else has happened to our laptops in the last 7 months. But we had heard all along that South America was going to be dangerous. Sure enough.
Word to the wise: Apparently knocking on wood has no effect in protecting laptops.
There must have been some small print I missed on that one.
*sigh*
Life goes on.