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The Day I Got Robbed In Armenia

Summary:

I lived in Colombia for over 3 years back in the early 70's... I have stayed in hotels in the towns of Pereira and Armenia, they are two of the towns that were just destroyed in that earthquake. This is a short story about "The Day I Got Robbed In Armenia"

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The Day I Got Robbed In Armenia
by Jim Nasium


I told her that this was no place for her to wear her summer dress, and her summer sandals, even though we both agreed that it was very hot here. I begged her to wear jeans and work boots, and some thing baggy, like one'a my old shirts, so that she could cover up her natural beauty... but she just wouldn't listen to me.

She had no idea how important it was for a woman as beautiful as her to dress down here, in Colombia. She wanted to run around in her bikini! Her point was that after all our hotel here in Cartagena, The Hotel Bella Visita, was right across the street from the ocean, but after much discussion of the subject, she [we] settled for her wearing a summer dress. I told her to wear underwear, that ya could see through her summer dress, and that every man in all of colombia would want her, and try to get her to go with them, to their homes to try to get her to give up sex for drugs... She didn't believe me.

This was our forth day in Colombia, South America together, and already I was ready to take her back to the States, Back to Philly and then return to this wonderland, all by myself. This wouldn't be the first winter I spent her alone. I decided that since we had been here in Cartagena for four days already, and since we had bought everything that we would need for a month already, and since I didn't really wanna fly back home to Philly to drop her off and then return to spend the winter, that it was time for us to move on, it was time for us to leave this hotel and his town.

I decided to take a long bus or long steam train ride to some new unexplored town, some place way out in no where land, high in The Andes and so I told her to start to pack up our stuff, we were leaving town...

I paid the bill for the room we had for the past four days and for the food we ate there, at the Hotel Bella Vista and ordered a car to take me to the bus station, on the far side of the old walled in city some 5 miles from the hotel, while she packed up all of our things, and got that big bag of the "stuff" stashed away, safely, deep inside of her.

The private car pulled up in front of the hotel in no time, and as we got in it and headed off to the modern bus station on the far side of the old walled in city of Cartagena, I felt a sudden sadness over welmed me. I felt a sudden concern about taking this woman, who refused to dress down, deeper into this 3rd world country, because having lived there for 3 years already, I knew how colombian men desired american woman. She sure was a beautiful woman and I wanted her to dress down to save me a lott'a trouble with the local men, some of whom had already asked me "how much" to have their way with her. I wore my gun so that it was exposed a bit, under my silk sports coat, so that hopefully most of the men, who would bother her and I would reconsider, when they saw the gun, but even having a gun didn't help much, because most all men in these small Colombian town wear guns and machetes.

I told her that she had to stop wearing summer dresses and wear pants, baggy jeans, and a baggy shirts and big work boots to make her look less like a rich american tourist, and more like someone that may even belong there, in the back lands of The Andes, but she just didn't know how true what I had been telling her really was yet...

Once we got to the bus station we took a real nice bus south, we bought tickets for a bus that even had soft seats and glass in all the windows. We were heading South to the small town of Armenia, in the coffee growing district, some 400 miles south, on the Pan American Highway, and then we would turn off and go another 250 miles east on back roads paved with potholes, over the first mountain range, into the valley that lay between the first and second range, to get into the little town of Armenia...

The bus trip with her, in her summer dress, from Cartagena to Armenia was one I will never forget. It was a long hot trip, in a bus that had broken air conditioning, and way too many people in it. Most all of the men on the bus kept on looking at her, sitting there next to me, in her summer dress, and I knew she was starting to get scared. There was one man on the bus who kept offering me cocaine, big bags of cocaine, to have his way with my "american woman", because he thought I was Colombian and had an american whore with me. Because I could and did speak perfect Spanish that helped me to convince anyone I met, anywhere in Colombia, that I was a Colombian, and not a rich gringo, and that helped me to blend in down there. It was very important to "blend in" down there too.

The fact that she refused to dress down pissed me off and I thought that I may as well be wearing a neon sign saying "I'm a rich american tourist, please, someone rob me" and this bus trip I hoped, helped to prove my point to her, that she needed to dress down.

We got into the town of Armenia safely, and the first thing we did was to get our selves a nice hotel room in a nice hotel, in the center of town. I paid top dollar for a big hotel room with a private bath that had hot running water in it, hot water is a luxury in Colombia.

The first thing we did once we got into our rooms was to unpack, layout clean clothes, and then take a nice long hot shower together. We washed each other with oils and soap and the hot water and finger tips on our naked bodies excited us and so we made love in the shower, then got dressed and went out, into town, to get something to eat for dinner.

I begged her not to but she wore her yellow summer dress and flip flops for shoes, and me, I wore my jeans, my boots with the knife hidden in the ankle, a sleeveless t shirt, my gun and my white silk sports coat. You see, wearing a White Silk Sports Coat was a sign of having connections, or power down there...

We were sitting there at the table, in front of the out door cafe just down the street from out hotel room, and every man that passed us by looked at her... every man sitting in the placed kept looking at her, and me. watching us eat, winking at her, and smiling at me... It didn't even seem to matter that I had my white silk coat on, with the handle of my gun exposed, there were so many of them there, in the cafe watching us. When one of them, the biggest man walked up to me and said "how much do you want for her" I just stood up, pulled my gun out from under my coat slowly, laid it out on the table, then picked up my wine, and threw the whole glass of it in his face... He closed his eyes for a moment, then wiped the wine from his face, and he just turned and walked back to his group, at their table, when he opened his eyes and saw that the gun that was just down on the table was now in his face...

I threw a hundred peso bill out on the table, excused my actions to the cafe owner, grabbed her by the hand, and drug her back to the hotel to get her into some jeans and a baggy t shirt right away, and to leave town on the next bus or in a private car just as soon as I could... I knew the man I covered with wine in the cafe, would want his revenge, and since this was his town, and since he had many friends here in this town, I thought it best to leave as soon as I could...

We stopped at the main desk in the lobby of the Hotel Delta to get our key, and to see if I had any messages since I was expecting one, and as soon as the man behind the counter handed me the key to my room, I felt that something was wrong... When I touched the key, that he was still holding, it was as if I had picked up his guilt vibes, and I knew that something was wrong...

She and I made our way up the old wooden stairs to our second floor room with a balcony and as we walked down the long narrow hall to our room, the feeling that something was wrong grew inside of me. When we got to our room we could see that someone had taken a crow bar, or something like a crow bar, and forced open our hotel room door, and took everything that we had in the room... yes, all of our stuff was gone!

I thought to myself, now, that the men, in the cafe, that started trouble did so as a distraction, and that the were trying to keep me in the cafe, so their buddies could pay off the hotel manager and get him to allow them to empty out my room...

I freaked out! "I knew it" I said and then started screaming at the top of my lungs "what the fuck is going on here" She was kneeling down on one side of the bed, and she dug deep into the mattress to be sure that our money and "stuff" was still where we hid it... it was thank goodness... She started to hide the "stuff" inside of her again as I ran down the wooden stairs, to the main desk, where I grabbed the hotel manager by the neck, and drug him back up the stairs with my gun pointed at his head.... I dragged him down the hall to my room and showed him the door that had been broken open... I started to ask him how this could have happened and what was he gonna do about it and he started to cry.

I drag him, still crying, to the room next to mine and kicked open the door. I pulled the manager into the room with me and help him there, at gun point, while she searched the room for our stuff, it was not there. None of our stuff was in this room. I went to the next room, dragging the manager by the neck and kicked in that door, held the people in the room at bay at gun point, while she searched the room for our things, our things were not in this room either. I went to two more rooms, kicking in the doors, holding everyone back at gun point, while she searched for our stuff, before the police had finally arrived on the scene. They did not look happy when they got there either...

The police had been called by someone in the hotel, and they ordered me to hand over my gun, but before I would, I told them that I had to explain to them what had happened, and that I was only looking for my stuff. They asked me to describe what was missing and when I mentioned a big orange waterproof back pack one'a the cops told me he had just seen a man, with a bag like that, down at the bus station...

Leaving go of the hotel manager and taking her hand in one move, I ran out of the hotel room, down the hall, flew down the steps and ran down the street to the bus station.

I ran in and then searched the inside of the tiny bus station, I searched the bathroom, the out houses, and I searched the front and the back of the bus station and I even searched the buildings near the bus station, I found nothing. I saw nothing. I saw no body at all that had a big orange waterproof backpack... my backpack.

The police arrived at the bus station and explained to me that they needed me to got to the police station with them and to fill out a report... I was frightened now, because I didn't know if I would be arrested or not for holding the hotel manager at gun point and for kicking in all of them hotel room doors, breaking each one that I did kick in... plus she still had the "stuff" rammed up inside of her and if one'a them cops got nasty, and tried to have his way with her, we'd both be arrested for having "stuff" and that was a 10 year jail sentence!

The Police chief turned out to be a nice guy, and he explained to me that no charges were being pressed against me, if I would be willing to pay for the damage to the doors, in the hotel, and pay him for making the time to write up the robbery report...
[see the attachment]

I told him that I had some money on me and that I would be happy to pay for any damage that I did in the hotel and for his time and then I offered to buy everyone a warm beer... that made everyone happy!

The chief and I wrote up the official police report, and he promised me he'd get his best man on the case in a day or so... that there was nothing I could do, but go back to the hotel and wait. He had his eye on my 12 dollar timex watch, so I gave it to him and thanked him again for his time, and just went back to my hotel, felling helpless.

When I got back to the hotel the hotel manager and the hotel owner, his brother, told me that they had called the airlines, and told them that I had been robbed... I asked them how they knew what air lines I had been using, and they confessed to me that they had been in my room, searching through my stuff, and that they had seen the "stuff" and money I hid deep inside of my mattress, and that they took one hundred of my dollars for themselves, just before the robbery, and that if I didn't pay them more money, for the damages and the trouble I caused in the hotel, they would tell the police that they knew I had that big bag of the "stuff"

That night she and I sat up partying away as much of the "stuff" as we could consume... the next day, around lunch, a representative of the airlines, came to me in my hotel room, and offered me a ride to the nearest airport, in Pereira, and so I took her up on her offer... She, the airline rep and I drove the 4 hours from one town to the other, stopping along the way to get some food, and to talk about what really happened...

She knew that I still had some money, and the "stuff" and she wanted me to give her some money to assure my safe trip to the airport in Pereira and then on to Cali, Bogota' and Miami... She went on to tell me that she could turn us in, and would turn us in to the police, if we didn't play along with her and give her money...

well I am home now, and safe... below is the original police report... I scanned it for you to see.
BTW
While in Armenia, DO NOT STAY AT...
Residencias President
cra 17 #17-20
tel 49 569 or 49 207
Armenia, Cuindio, Colombia



©1999 Jim Nasium
La Galeria de GymArt
http://www.voicenet.com/~gymart