The method of mugging in Latin America appears to be dictated by the language barrier.
The typical young Peruvian knows little English and the typical tourist does not understand much Spanish, especially that spoken by street gangs.
The tourist is not likely to respond to “”hand over all your money” is Spanish.
And so gangs prefer to strangle their victims. Not to death, fortunately, but enough to cut off the blood and oxygen supply to the brain so the victim passes out for a few minutes and the gutless young louts get to pick over the bodies without resistance.
On a recent trip to Peru it happened to three people in our party. All were in their fifties. It was only 20 metres from the hotel, but the street, like most in provincial Peruvian towns was dark and narrow. It was night.
They took the lot — passports, cash, credit cards and watches.
Naturally enough they were upset, agitated, furious at the youth of their host country and so on. They also thought they could have been killed.
The trouble is, of course, that most tourists in the poorer countries of Latin America, indeed anywhere, wander around with a year’s income of the average Peruvian in their pockets. I should imagine the mugging rate in Canberra would sky-rocket if an identifiable group of people carried around $40,000 in cash.
Muggings are not restricted to night, back streets or easy targets. We met two Frenchmen in their 30s who were set upon in broad daylight in the main square of a provincial city.
One of the advantages of travelling in an organised group is the immediate support from the organisation — in this case Peregrine and Great Adventure People — and the other members of the group.
They organised, through their people in Lima, new passports, cancelled credit cards, organised money and the trip continued.
Without an organised group, the incident would have cost days.
But safety is a small factor to decide whether to go in a group rather than on a self-organised trip.
It may take a little longer but you still get out strife on a got-it-alone trip.
El Salvador, 1979. There was a nasty, aggressive border official with a pistol and machine-gun stabbing his finger at the number plate of the hire car: Uno; cinquenta; ocho, neuvo (1-50-89). And then stabbing the same finger at the car’s registration papers in triumph: Uno; cinquenta; ocho, (ital) ocho (ital) (1-50-88). He was not going to let me out of the country into Guatemala. I thought about offering a bribe, then pictured a few paragraphs in an newspaper: “”Australian sentenced to 20 years for bribing Salvadoran official”. He went back and forth from numberplate to rego papers reciting the numbers in Spanish and then searched the car several times. It went on for two hours. I realise now that a bribe of a few dollars would have fixed it, but there was no tour leader to tell me.
Finally he let me go.
Central Australia, 1987. 46 degrees in the shade, perhaps 70 or more in the sun. The Subaru was up to both axles hopelessly bogged in the sand. There was no Centralian Tours to extract us. We dug for hours.
But we still ended up safely in Canberra.
And money makes little difference. What you save through the travel company’s ability to bulk buy you lose in their profit margin.
Even the organisational power of a travel company should not be decisive.
If time is short, both in the country you are going to and at home in the lead up to the trip, it is good to get someone else to organise all the travel and accommodation. But you can muddle through alone.
I was foolish enough to forget the international dateline once and landed in New York at 11pm to find my hotel booking was for the next night.
“”No trouble, I’ll have a room tonight,” I said.
“”You crazy or something, man,” was the reply. “”You ain’t gunna get a cigarette pack to sleep in tonight. You know what today is? They ran the New York marathon today.”
I walked the New York marathon, with luggage. But found a place without a tour guide.
I like the unexpected in the go-it-alone tour.
Nubian desert. 1983. I was travelling by very slow dilapidated trains from Alexandria to Khartoum.
The train stopped in the middle of the night. No-one explained where, why or for how long. The hundred passengers (mine one of the very few white faces among them) got out and started a spontaneous wild, wild Arabic dance and chant under the stars on the desert sand. It went for more than hour. And then, suddenly, they stopped and everyone got back into the train.
The experience was that much more mystical because there was no tour leader, no know-all organisation to say this happens every week as the southbound train waits for the northbound train at the only siding in the X00km of track laid by Lord Kitchener in the 1890s. That much only became clear when the other train arrived. Unlike me, the dancers had seen the distant light across the desert so knew to get into the train.
On the other hand, the leader of an organised tour can point out things that the go-it-aloner would miss.
No; the real choice is between the joy and frustration of the unexpected on a go-it-alone trip and the culturally educative experience of being thrown together with five to 10 unknown people.
Culturally educative?
In Peru, while on the Inca trail, I learned what BSE had done to the British beef industry. True, I could only get one side of the story — from a British beef farmer, but it was a perspective I had never had before.
And then the view of smoking from John, an American ear throat and nose surgeon.
“”Good people dying in pain,” he said to the young Canadian student. “”If you want to give up smoking spend an afternoon in my surgery. But I understand the addiction. I cut this fella’s larynx out and the next day he was sucking in smoke from a hole I’d crafted in his neck.”
I love the cultural clash. Churchill was right about two cultures separated by a common language. It is precisely because we are fluent in the language of the British, Americans, Canadians and New Zealanders that we can discover how foreign they are.
The American penchant for gadgetry can be great fun.
Jim, from Ohio: “”I didn’t learn any Spanish. You only need three God dang words: Cerveza. Senorita. Bano. And this!”
He triumphantly extracted what looked like a personal organiser. In fact it was an English-Spanish translation machine.
It was immediately dubbed the Gringo Machine.
The American student had a laser pointing device. (Essential equipment for the Inca trail.) But it was a great hit with the kids in remote villages as the student terrified chickens by chasing them with the little red dot.
John had a pocket canister of mace. Of course, he wasn’t in the robbery party.
At the airport it set the metal alarm off along with his Swiss Army knife, so he had to take them out of his pocket and go through again for the all clear. The security staff then dutifully gave him his mace and knife and back and he got on the plane!
Don’t go with the group just for convenience. Go for the fun of it and to meet people.
But don’t discount the convenience because even the best gadgetry and self-reliance can let you down.
There was Jim, standing robbed without cash, passport or more than three words of Spanish. He reached for his Gringo Machine and it, too, was gone.
Where’s the tour guide?
Internet:
crispin.hull@canberratimes.com.au