Ah, South... no, make that Central America. How nice to be robbed!

Today was the day that I had to pay my hotel bill in cash. I brought $2300 of which $1820 was to settle my bill here. Because I was a bit hesitant at first I did not pay the bill straight away but left the money in the safe. Distributed over 3 wallets, nicely separated in 23 bundles of 5 $20 bills. You know, where you fold the 5th bill over the other four for easy counting.

I never touched the wallets again here and only checked them once or twice to find that they still contained all the money. Or so I thought. It turns out that a very clever thief had taken 1 or 2 bills from every bundle (in total $820) so that I would not notice the money being gone. From the safe, mind you. It is an old fashioned one with a key but I never left it in my room unless I was close by. The only people who entered my room where hotel staff.

The manager wants to make me belief that I must have left my key laying around and a thief used it. Yeah, right. With an iPad, a laptop, an ebook reader, 3 cameras and a lot of other stuff just lying there he goes and finds the safe, opens my wallets, carefully removes a couple of bills instead of taking everything. That sounds about right. This is very typical for the way hotel staff steal from guests, because it is hard to prove.

The manager told me time and time again she had called the police but guess who never showed up? No police report, no insurance. They were probably too busy...

I am having breakfast with the owner tomorrow. I have $1100 left and that is what he is getting. The picture below is quite representative of my mood.



To be honest, the female manager did seem genuinely upset too.