Ripped Off!!!

\December 30^th,

                          Breakfast today started at the hotel with fruit and juices and a quick shot of coffee.  It concluded at the Garden Café a small but well established breakfast and lunch place that serves up a variety of breakfasts, most of which fall on the healthy and nutritious side of the scale. [In stark contrast to Kathy’s Waffle House, which can easily counter the benefits of every cholesterol pill known to man!]

 Following breakfast we headed for Tierra Tours to book our planned outing.  Disappointingly, our trip to Volcan Masaya was not to be. Turns out the park limits visitors to 50 a day and we were 51 and 52.

  So instead we flagged down a taxi and headed for the lakeside. Once there we walked along the lakeshore, enjoying the somewhat cooler temperatures. Our peace and quiet was interrupted constantly by hawkers promoting boat trips to Las Isletas, Totalling about 350 in number these islands are the detritus of a prehistoric eruption of Volcan Mombacho. Ranging in size from barely noticeable to an acre or so, many of them are permanent or vacation homes to the very wealthy.

  After finally succumbing to the pitch of one salesman, we set off for an hour-long cruise along the lakeshore. In some ways it was reminiscent of the 1000 Islands cruise of the St Lawrence, but with definitely different vegetation.

  Returning to town we enjoyed a filling and tasty lunch at El Garaje, a small restaurant run by an Ontario couple Paul and Heather, who we met on our last trip.

 While I headed out to find a coyote (money changer) Susanna spent the afternoon catching up on all the sleep she missed last night.

  When I first encountered the street moneychangers on my last trip, I was rather apprehensive about the risks of getting mugged or stuck with counterfeit currency. Most of these people are actually sanctioned by the banks and are generally trustworthy- although rates can vary. Carrying a wad of cash, which might total several thousand dollars, these people definitely expedite the process of money exchange, eliminating the time and paperwork of doing the same process at a bank. 

     9:30pm

  We returned from a rather mediocre supper tonight to discover that our room had been robbed. I had noticed some occurrences of  “missing money” over the last few days and wrote it off to circumstance and perhaps forgotten purchases. This time I was 100% certain of the types and quantities of some Euros that I had left inside a money belt in a locked drawer. I called for the owner to come down and together we rehashed the details of the theft. After some fairly rigorous accounting I determined that over the last few days we have been ripped off for about $90 US and $90 Euro. Not a whole lot of money to part with, but the experience has definitely put a damper on the vacation.

  Having been involved with many loss prevention issues in my career, I should have investigated and created a stink when the first $40 or $50 appeared missing on Wednesday morning.

 The annoying part of the whole thing is that I know most of the staff from last time and I don’t think they would steal from me. Theft is often a crime of opportunity and once identified it tends to stop happening. Could it be as guest at the hotel? Who knows? The owner has offered to deduct the estimated losses from my bill and we are now storing all our excess cash in her safe.