![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.nomadicmatt.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/mugged3a.jpg\")
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Posted:<\/strong> 4\/2\/2019 | April 2nd, 2019<\/p>\n Editor’s Note:<\/strong> I wavered on writing about this for a long time since I didn’t want to put people off on Colombia. As you can tell from my posts here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>, I really love the country. I mean it’s awesome. (And there will be plenty more blog posts about how great it is.) I didn’t want to play into the negative image surrounding the country. But I blog about all my experiences – good or bad – and this story is a good lesson on travel safety, the importance of always following local advice, and what happens when you get complacent and stop doing so.<\/em> <\/p>\n \u201cAre you OK?\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cHere. Have a seat.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cDo you need some water?\u201d<\/p>\n A growing crowd had gathered around me, all offering help in one form or another. <\/p>\n \u201cNo, no, no, I think I\u2019ll be OK,\u201d I said waving them off. \u201cI’m just a little stunned.\u201d<\/p>\n My arm and back throbbed while I tried to regain my composure. “I\u2019m going to be really sore in the morning,” I thought. <\/p>\n \u201cCome, come, come. We insist,\u201d said one girl. She led me back onto the sidewalk where a security guard gave me his chair. I sat down. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s your name? Here\u2019s some water. Is there anyone we can call?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll be fine. I\u2019ll be fine,\u201d I kept replying. <\/p>\n My arm throbbed. \u201cGetting punched sucks,\u201d I said to myself.<\/p>\n Regaining my composure, I slowly took off the jacket I was wearing. I was too sore for any quick movements anyways. I needed to see how bad the bruises were.<\/p>\n As I did so, gasps arose from the crowd.<\/p>\n My left arm and shoulder were dripping with blood. My shirt was soaked through. <\/p>\n \u201cShit,” I said as I realized what had happened. “I think I just got stabbed.\u201d <\/p>\n There\u2019s a perception that Colombia is unsafe, that despite the heyday of the drug wars being over, danger lurks around most corners and you have to be really careful here. <\/p>\n It\u2019s not a completely unwarranted perception. Petty crime is very common. The 52-year civil war killed 220,000 people<\/a> — although thankfully this number has drastically dropped since the 2016 peace agreement. <\/p>\n While you are unlikely to be blown up, randomly shot, kidnapped, or ransomed by guerrillas, you are very likely to get pickpocketed or mugged. There were over 200,000 armed robberies in Colombia last year. While violent crimes have been on the decline, petty crime and robbery has been on the upswing<\/a>.<\/p>\n Before I went to Colombia,<\/a> I\u2019d heard countless stories of petty theft. While there, I heard even more. A friend of mine had been robbed three times, the last time at gunpoint while on his way to meet me for dinner. Locals and expats alike told me the same thing: the rumors of petty theft are true, but if you keep your wits about you, follow the rules, and don\u2019t flash your valuables, you\u2019ll be OK.<\/p>\n There\u2019s even a local expression about it: \u201cNo dar papaya\u201d (Don\u2019t give papaya). Essentially, it means that you shouldn\u2019t have something \u201csweet\u201d out in the open (a phone, computer, watch, etc.) that would make you a target. Keep your valuables hidden, don\u2019t wander around places you shouldn\u2019t at night, don\u2019t flash money around, avoid coming out of nightlife spots alone at night, etc. Simply put: Don\u2019t put yourself in a position where people can take advantage of you.<\/p>\n I heeded such advice. I didn\u2019t wear headphones in public. I didn\u2019t take my phone out unless I was in a group or a restaurant, or completely sure no one else was around. I took just enough money for the day with me when I left my hostel. I warned friends about wearing flashy jewelry or watches when they visited. <\/p>\n But, the longer you are somewhere, the more you get complacent. <\/p>\n When you see locals on their phones in crowded areas, tourists toting thousand-dollar cameras, and kids wearing Airpods and Apple Watches, you begin to think, \u201cOK, during the day, it\u2019s not so bad.\u201d <\/p>\n The more nothing happens to you, the more complacent you get.<\/p>\n Suddenly, you step out of a cafe with your phone out without even thinking about it.<\/p>\n In your hands is papaya.<\/p>\n And someone wants to take it.<\/p>\n It was near sunset. I was on a busy street in La Calendaria, the main tourist area of Bogot\u00e1. The cafe I had been at was closing, so it was time to find somewhere new. I decided to head to a hostel to finish some work and take advantage of happy hour. <\/p>\n I\u2019d been in Bogot\u00e1 for a few days now, enjoying a city most people write off<\/a>. There was a charm to it. Even in the tourist hotspot of La Calendaria, it didn\u2019t feel as gringofied as Medell\u00edn.<\/a> It felt the most authentic of all the big Colombian cities I had visited. I was loving it. <\/p>\n I exited the cafe with my phone out, finishing a text message. It had slipped my mind to put it away. It was still light outside, there were crowds around, and lots of security. After nearly six weeks in Colombia, I had grown complacent in situations like this. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s really going to happen? I\u2019ll be fine.\u201d<\/p>\n Three steps out of the door, I felt someone brush up against me. At first, I thought it was someone running past me until I quickly realized that a guy was trying to take my phone out of my hand.<\/p>\n Fight or flight set in \u2014 and I fought.<\/p>\n \u201cGet the fuck off me!\u201d I screamed as I wrestled with him, keeping an iron grip on my phone. I tried pushing him away. <\/p>\n \u201cHelp, help, help!\u201d I yelled into the air. <\/p>\n I remember distinctly the confused look on his face as if he had expected an easy mark. That the phone would slip out of my hand and he\u2019d be gone before anyone could catch him. <\/p>\n Without a word, he started punching my left arm, and I continued to resist. <\/p>\n \u201cGet off me! Help, help!\u201d I screamed.<\/p>\n We tussled in the street. <\/p>\n I kicked, I screamed, I blocked his punches. <\/p>\n The commotion caused people to run toward us. <\/p>\n Unable to dislodge the phone from my hand, the mugger turned and ran.<\/p>\n After people helped me sit down and the adrenaline wore off, I got lightheaded. My ears rang. I had trouble focusing for a few moments. <\/p>\n Blood was dripping through my soaked shirt.<\/p>\n \u201cFuck,\u201d I said looking at my arm and shoulder. <\/p>\n I tried to compose myself. <\/p>\n Having grown up surrounded by doctors and nurses, I ran through a quick “how bad is this” checklist in my mind.<\/p>\n I made a fist. I could feel my fingers. I could move my arm. \u201cOK, I probably don\u2019t have nerve or muscle damage.\u201d <\/p>\n I could breathe and was not coughing up blood. “Ok, I probably don’t have a punctured lung.”<\/p>\n I could still walk and feel my toes. <\/p>\n My light-headedness dissipated. <\/p>\n \u201cOK, there\u2019s probably not too much major damage,\u201d I thought. <\/p>\n Words I didn\u2019t understand were spoken in Spanish. A doctor arrived and helped clean and put pressure on my wounds. A young woman in the crowd who spoke English took my phone and voice-texted my only friend in Bogot\u00e1 to let her know the situation. <\/p>\n As an ambulance would take too long, the police, who numbered about a dozen by now, loaded me onto the back of a truck and took me to a hospital, stopping traffic on the way like I was an honored dignitary. <\/p>\n Using Google Translate to communicate, the police checked me in at the hospital. They took down as much information as they could, showed me a picture of the attacker (yes, that\u2019s him!), and called my friend to update her about where I was. <\/p>\n As I waited to be seen by the doctors, the owner of my hostel showed up. After having taken my address, the cops had phoned up the hostel to let them know what happened and she had rushed down.<\/p>\n The hospital staff saw me quickly. (I suspect being a stabbed gringo got me quicker attention.) <\/p>\n We went into one of the exam rooms. My shirt came off, they cleaned my arm and back, and assessed the damage.<\/p>\n I had five wounds: two on my left arm, two on my shoulder, and one on my back, small cuts that broke the skin, with two looking like they got into the muscle. If the knife had been longer, I would have been in serious trouble: one cut was right on my collar and another especially close to my spine.<\/p>\n When you think of the term \u201cstabbing,\u201d you think of a long blade, a single deep cut into the abdomen or back. You picture someone with a protruding knife being rolled into the hospital on a stretcher. <\/p>\n That was not the case for me. I had been, more colloquially correct, knifed. <\/p>\n Badly knifed. <\/p>\n But just knifed.<\/p>\n There was no blade protruding from my gut or back. There would be no surgery. No deep lacerations.<\/p>\n The wounds wouldn\u2019t require any more than antibiotics, stitches, and time to heal. A lot of time. (How much time? This happened at the end of January and it took two months for the bruising to go down.)<\/p>\n I was stitched up, taken for an X-ray to make sure I didn\u2019t have a punctured lung, and required to sit around for another six hours as they did a follow-up. My friend and hostel owner stayed a bit.<\/p>\n During that time, I booked a flight home. While my wounds weren\u2019t severe and I could have stayed in Bogot\u00e1, I didn\u2019t want to risk it. The hospital refused to give me antibiotics and, being a little suspicious of their stitching job, I wanted to get checked out back home while everything was still fresh. When I was leaving the hospital, I even had to ask them to cover my wounds. They were going to leave them exposed. <\/p>\n It’s better to be safe than sorry. <\/p>\n Looking back, would I have done anything differently? <\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to say, \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you just give him your phone?\u201d <\/p>\n But it\u2019s not as if he led with a weapon. Had he done so, I obviously would have surrendered the phone. This kid (and it turned out he was just a kid of about 17) just tried to grab it from my hand, and anyone\u2019s natural instinct would be to pull back.<\/p>\n If someone stole your purse, took your computer while you were using it, or tried to grab your watch, your initial, primal reaction wouldn\u2019t be, \u201cOh well!\u201d It would be, \u201cHey, give me back my stuff!\u201d <\/p>\n And if that stuff were still attached to your hand, you\u2019d pull back, yell for help, and hope the mugger would go away. Especially when it\u2019s still daytime and there are crowds around. You can\u2019t always assume a mugger has a weapon. <\/p>\n Based on the information I had at the time, I don\u2019t think I would have done anything differently. Nature just set in. <\/p>\n Things could have been a lot worse: The knife could have been longer. He could have had a gun. I could have turned the wrong way, and that small blade could have hit a major artery or my neck. The knife was so small that I didn\u2019t even feel it during the attack. A longer blade might have caused me to recoil more and drop my phone. I don\u2019t know. If he had been a better mugger, he would have kept running forward and I wouldn\u2019t have been able to catch up as the forward motion made the phone leave my hand. <\/p>\n The permutations are endless. <\/p>\n This was also just a matter of being unlucky. A wrong time and wrong place situation. This could have happened to me anywhere. You can be in the wrong place and the wrong time in a million places and in a million situations. <\/p>\n Life is risk.<\/a> You\u2019re not in control of what happens to you the second you walk out a door. You think you are. You think you have a handle on the situation \u2014 but then you walk out of a caf\u00e9 and get knifed. You get in a car that crashes or a helicopter that goes down, eat food that hospitalizes you, or, despite your best health efforts, drop dead from a heart attack.<\/p>\n Anything can happen to you at any time. <\/p>\n We make plans as if we are in control. <\/p>\n But we\u2019re not in control of anything.<\/p>\n All we can do is control our reaction and responses. <\/p>\n I really like Bogot\u00e1. I really like Colombia. The food was delicious and the scenery breathtaking. Throughout my visit there, people were inquisitive, friendly, and happy. <\/p>\n And when this happened, I marveled at all the people who helped me, who stayed with me until the police came, the many police officers who assisted me in numerous ways, the doctors who attended to me, the hostel owner who became my translator, and my friend who drove an hour to be with me.<\/p>\n Everyone apologized. Everyone knew this was what Colombia is known for. They wanted to let me know this was not Colombia. I think they felt worse about the attack than I did. <\/p>\n But this experience reminded me of why you can’t<\/em> get complacent. I gave papaya. I shouldn’t have had my phone out. When I left the cafe, I should have put it away. It didn’t matter the time of day. That’s the rule in Colombia. Keep your valuables hidden. Especially in Bogota, which does have a higher rate of petty crime than elsewhere in the country. I didn’t follow the advice. <\/p>\n And I got unlucky because of it. I’d been having my phone out too often and, with each non-incident, I grew more and more complacent and relaxed. I kept dropping my guard down more. <\/p>\n What happened was unlucky but it didn’t need to happen if I had followed the rules.<\/p>\n This is why people always warned me to be careful. <\/p>\n Because you never know. You’re fine until you aren’t.<\/p>\n That said, you\u2019re still unlikely to have a problem. All those incidences I talked about? All involved people breaking the ironclad “No Dar Papaya” rule and either having something valuable our or walking alone late at night in areas they shouldn’t have. Don’t break the rule! This could have happened to me anywhere in the world where I didn’t follow the safety rules you’re supposed to that help you minimize risk. <\/p>\n But, also know, if you do get into trouble, Colombians will help you out. From my hostel owner to the cops to the people who sat with me when it happened to the random guy in the hospital who gave me chocolate, it turns out, you can always depend on the kindness of strangers. They made a harrowing experience a lot easier to deal with. <\/p>\n I\u2019m not going to let this freak incident change my view of such an amazing country. I\u2019d go back to Colombia the same way I\u2019d get in a car after a car accident. In fact, I was terribly upset to leave. I was having an amazing time. I still love Bogota. I still have plans to go back to Colombia. I have more positive things to write about this.<\/p>\n Learn from my mistake. Not only for when you visit Colombia but when you travel in general.<\/p>\n You can’t get complacent. You can’t stop following the rules.<\/p>\n And still go to Colombia! <\/p>\n I’ll see you there. <\/p>\n A couple of other points:<\/strong><\/p>\n They did catch the kid who tried to mug me.<\/strong> There\u2019s security everywhere in Bogot\u00e1. He made it one block before they caught him. My hostel owner tells me he is still in jail. He was only 17 too. I feel bad for him. There\u2019s a lot of poverty in Bogot\u00e1. There\u2019s a very stark income divide there. Assuming he\u2019s not some middle-class punk, I can understand the conditions that led him to rob me. I hope his future gets brighter.<\/p>\n While the doctors were nice and the stitching turned out to be great, I wouldn\u2019t go to a public hospital in Colombia again.<\/strong> That was not a fun experience. It wasn\u2019t super clean, they had patients in the hallways, they didn\u2019t give me antibiotics or pain medicine or cover my wounds, and they wanted to send me home without a shirt (thanks to my hostel owner for bringing me an extra!). There were just some basic things I was shocked they overlooked.<\/p>\n This is a strong case for travel insurance!<\/a><\/strong> I\u2019ve always said travel insurance is for unknowns because the past is not prologue. In my twelve years of travel, I was never mugged \u2014 until I was. Then, needing medical care and a last-minute flight home, I was glad I had insurance. I needed it bad. It could have been a lot worse than a $70 hospital bill and a flight back home, too: if I had required surgery or had to be admitted to the hospital, that bill would have been a lot more. Don\u2019t leave home without travel insurance. You never, ever know when you might need it, and you\u2019ll be glad you had it! <\/p>\n Here are some articles on travel insurance:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Book Your Flight<\/strong> Book Your Accommodation<\/strong> Don’t Forget Travel Insurance<\/strong> Looking for the best companies to save money with?<\/strong> Looking for more information on visiting Colombia?<\/strong> Photo credit<\/strong>: 1<\/a><\/p>\n The post So, I Got Stabbed in Colombia<\/a> appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Posted: 4\/2\/2019 | April 2nd, 2019 Editor’s Note: I wavered on writing about this for a long time since I didn’t want to put people off on Colombia. As you can tell from my posts here, here, here, and here, I really love the country. I mean it’s awesome. (And there will be plenty more […]<\/p>\n The post So, I Got Stabbed in Colombia<\/a> appeared first on Nomadic Matt’s Travel Site<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colombia","category-south-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourfunjourney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourfunjourney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourfunjourney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourfunjourney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourfunjourney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ourfunjourney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270,"href":"https:\/\/ourfunjourney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions\/270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourfunjourney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourfunjourney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourfunjourney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\nBook Your Trip to Colombia: Logistical Tips and Tricks<\/h4>\n
\nFind a cheap flight by using Skyscanner<\/a> or Momondo<\/a>. They are my two favorite search engines because they search websites and airlines around the globe so you always know no stone is left unturned.<\/p>\n
\nYou can book your hostel with Hostelworld<\/a>. If you want to stay somewhere other than a hostel, use Booking.com<\/a> as they consistently return the cheapest rates for guesthouses and cheap hotels. I use them all the time.<\/p>\n
\nTravel insurance will protect you against illness, injury, theft, and cancellations. It’s comprehensive protection in case anything goes wrong. I never go on a trip without it as I’ve had to use it many times in the past. I’ve been using World Nomads<\/a> for ten years. My favorite companies that offer the best service and value are:<\/p>\n\n
\nCheck out my resource page<\/a> for the best companies to use when you travel! I list all the ones I use to save money when I travel – and I think will help you too!<\/p>\n
\nCheck out my in-depth destination guide to Colombia<\/a> with more tips on what to see, do, costs, ways to save, and much, much more!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n