(First off, I am uninjured and they only stole my watch, my sense of security and some money.)
So, I forgot to pack my watch when I was packing for Ecuador. A day or two after arriving here I made a trip to the local mall and bought a fine $20 model. It had everything I needed including time, date, water proofing, stopwatch. *sniff* I loved that little timepiece. *sniff*
Friday night I took the trolley out to the new part of town to visit the bars to try some Ecuador beer and meet some people. Turns out the area from the trolley stop until the bar area is not the safest area. Actually I knew it wasn´t 100% safe and was taking some precautions already about what I brought with me and which streets I went down, etc.
Turns out I picked a bad street even though it was lit and had some people around... My beautiful watch was working great and told me it was around 8:20pm, dark, but not terribly late yet.
I saw a suspiscious character ahead on the sidewalk and also noticed a group of people on the other side of the road. I continued on, thinking that this guy was just going to beg some money or try to sell me something. As I came up to him he said something I didn't understand and I figured he was asking for money and I moved out to the street to go around him.
That is when things went bad and time moved into a whole other set of rules where it moved both extremely slow, stretching out interminibly and at the same time moved incredibly fast, too fast to consider all the options at hand. This guy grabbed me from behind and three of his friends from accross the street started to run over. I tried to run off and repeated again and again 'quitame!', 'quitame' which roughly means let go of me you jackass. They must not have heard me, as they more or less jumped on me and hands started reaching into my pockets.
All this time I'm trying to decide whether I should 1.) go calmly, 2.) try to get away, 3.) fight back and try to get away. I had no idea if they had weapons or not. Without real conscious thought, I went with the option of trying to escape without pissing them off by fighting back. After a bit of this one of them hit me in the face and bent up my glasses. Even then I could see one of them standing in front of me... I was sitting on the ground basically at this point... and I could see I had a good crotch kick I could give him.
I decided to instead switch to not struggling, but just going along with them and saying 'calmate', 'calmate' and 'no, not my keys', 'no, not my map', 'no, not my passport' (which I didn't realy have on me). Calmate basically means calm down.
They eventually finished with their robbing ways and ran off with my money and my *sniff* my favorite newest watch. *sniff* I was left sitting on the corner of the street with bent glasses and tons of adrenalene with several people, whom had watched the whole thing, looking on. Worst of all, I had no way to know what time it was!
I straightened my glasses and moved to what I hoped was a safer area. The thieves had stolen my dummy wallet in my front pocket with maybe $40 dollars, but had not found the hidden pocket in my travel pants that had my real wallet with my ID and credit card.
I found 2 policemen and explained what had happened. We walked around for 10 or 15 minutes looking for the 4 guys, but never found them. They did do a search of a middle-aged black couple whom fit the bill only in that they were black and at least one of the young men that robbed me was black.
I decided that I had had enough for the night and took a taxi home.
That is the story of my favorite, recently newest watch.
(In all seriousness though, this was one serious and seriously scary event. I'm just thankful it wasn't worse. Becuase after it is all said and done I was left uninjured and in one piece. I remember being suprised that they didn't try and hurt me more. I mean they could have kicked me or hit me more to make me more cooperative, or just for the fun of it, but they didn't. They were just after the money. I definitely lost some of my naive sense of security and I'll be even more careful from here on out.)