RANSVESTIA

airport. Finally I went back and got my bag and went through customs and toted it out to the taxi lineup. I spotted an aircraft captain by his four stripes and figuring that he would speak some English, I approached him. He did speak some so I got him to get me a taxi and explain for the driver to wait at the curb at the hotel while I went in to cash a traveler's check so I could pay him. So he did so and off I went, arriving at the hotel, and finally getting some Colum- bian money to pay the guy. Can you imagine no place in an airport to change money?

I had been warned beforehand to be very careful with my handbag because it is commonplace for thieves to snatch it or cut the strap. But I hadn't realized the nature of the country until standing at one of the desks in the big hotel getting my key, I found myself next to four young people and gathered from their conversation that they had all been robbed of all their ID, passports and most of their money. We talked a little bit and then I had to follow the bellboy up to my room. A while later I came back down to the lobby to inquire about a city tour in the morning. One of the group came by and I asked him how they were doing and we got into a conversation. It seems they were having difficulty making a collect call out of the country to home. So I figured-American style-that since I was renting the room for a couple of nights that it was my "home" and therefore I ought to be able to place a collect call from it, so I invited the four of them up to the room and tried to do just that. They wouldn't accept it. I talked to the assistant manager and that was the rule. Can you imagine that it is impossible to place a collect call out of the country except from a private home, and what tourist in distress is going to have any con- nection with a private home? The guy I tried to befriend was an Italian and he had been to the Italian embassy and their reply was, "How do we know you are Italian?" and with his passport and ID stolen how could he prove it? The next day he was going to try to persuade them to place the collect call to his home so he could prove he was Italian. The other three were Canadian and the Canadian embassy was taking its own sweet time getting around to providing them with passports and some emergency money. With robbery being a national pastime-they will slip wrist watches off of your hand, snatch a necklace from around your neck or anything else that looks valuable. The next day when I took a trip out in the country, we went through one of the nicer residential districts on the way and I observed that this was the only country I had ever heard of where İ they build bars into the windows when the house is built, not just

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