Having travelled for almost 6 months at this point, I had developed a system of knowing exactly where everything was supposed to be in my backpack and daypack at all times, which of course relied heavily on not rushing around at last minute and packing things in randomly.
Having independently travelled in other developing places in the past (ie. Nepal, South East Asia, East Africa), I was also aware that bus stations were prime locations for 'snatch and grab' thievery, yet a small distraction for no more than 10 seconds at Guayaquil bus station in southern Ecuador cost me over a months worth of original photos on memory cards :(
That morning I was in a mentally exhausted state after spending 2 consecutive back-to-back nights on uncomfortable, unsleepable, buses from north Peru. My plan for the day was to take a connecting local bus to Puerto Lopez on the coast to check in that night and get some real sleep before heading out for some whale spotting the following day.
Whilst piling onto the bus with another 20 people or so, I placed my daypack above my head (I now see this is "always" a mistake), to take a jumper off from around my waist and seconds later realised that my pack was gone from above; instead it was halfway down the bus, and ripped open. I was in disbelief things had been done so fast, yet a pouch containing my memory cards was missing and was convinced that no-one had passed me to leave the bus, hence the thief was most likely STILL on the bus with us.
My wallet, passport and mp3 player were all still there untouched, which further strengthened my theory that the perpetrator was now trying to play a low profile in the bus, yet I knew little Spanish, more people were piling on AND no-one was offering to even help me despite obvious distress. Short of interrogating and searching every single person there, I realised I was never going to get my stuff back and to finalise the indifference people had around me, the bus driver started the engine and began pulling out of the terminal.
I'd normally count this as a new lesson to be learnt, however this time count it as purely "bad luck timing" that I was obviously not 100% on the ball with no-one helpful around me. For the next few days I was stewing about it and hardly took a photo until I made it to Ecuador's capital, Quito.
