Surely Dee´s Colombian vaccination gave immunity for the both of us from theft, robbery and muggings!? Well apparently not...
We arrived back in Panama City from Bocas a day before our flight back to Colombia and had time to kill. We had heard that there was a nice national park just out of town so we decided to head there for the day. The hostel where we stayed gave us directions for the local bus station which was apparently only twenty minutes walk away on safe streets. Dee wanted to take photos with her big SLR so she put that in her backpack along with a little digital camera and a spare lens. To boot, we couldn´t access the safe at the hostel, nor was a room available for us yet so we had no option but to carry our passports, credit cards, tickets etc as well...
We followed the directions given to us and arrived at the place which seemed to be where the bus station should have been; apart from the fact that the buses were missing! We asked a few people standing nearby where the bus station was and, in true Panamanian form, they were completely disinterested and unhelpful. So, we walked another block but then came to a main arterial road. We could see ahead that there was a dodgy looking neighbourhood so we tried to hail a cab. None would stop... We saw that there was a road which just skirted the dodgy looking area and which should get us back to where we came from so we walked ahead. Coming closer to the area, we could see two guys staring at us from across the road. Our instincts told us that there was something going on. We looked at each other and I said that we should walk in the middle of the road rather than on the foot path and Dee agreed. The hairs were standing up on the backs of our necks as we tried to reach the safer looking ground less than a hundred metres away. Then we heard running feet behind us; this was bad... Suddenly, I felt an arm tighten around my neck in something like a sleeper hold. Things happened so quickly that it is only in hindsight that Dee and I could sort of reconstruct what happened. Dee thought that she could see the guy hold an object against my side (a knife?). "Ey Amigo" the guy who had me around my neck said. I quickly pushed him off and saw a dark guy in his twenties, medium build, along with his friend now standing a few metres away. I looked towards Dee with the backpack on her shoulders: she puffed out her chest (true!!), looked at the guys and said "HEY, HEY, HEY, DON´T MESS WITH US!!" That´s my girl!! All the while, a middle-aged man was walking in the same direction as us no more than five metres away and he did nothing to come to our aid. I don´t have a clue why but the guys actually looked scared of us and started retreating... We hurriedly walked towards the safe area keeping a close watch behind us.
Panting, hearts racing and full of adrenaline we looked at each other wide-eyed. "How the hell did we get away with that!?" we asked each other. We have gone over the incident so many times since then and are still not sure. Luckily it was probably a combination of two disorganised assailants, us actually fighting back and making noise and the fact that we were so close to a safe area. More than anything though the most disappointing thing with the whole event was that a local saw what was happening to us and did nothing to help. Irregardless, hopefully that´s the end of vaccinations for the both of us...
