Santa Cruz del Quiche

Sunday we had our first opportunity to sleep in. After lounging around like layabouts until about ten it was time to hit the road. Though I would soon regret it, I decided it was time for Lori to see a little peice of real Guatemala. Instead of finding some kind of Shuttle up north, I opted to take her on the chicken busses. First from Antigua to Chimaltenango on Route 1, then very bumpily from Chimal to Los Encuentros and finally along the ridge from Encuentros to Santa Cruz.

Upon arriving at the volunteer house and decompressing a bit, we decided to hit an ATM and have a bit of a look around. But when Lori went to get her debit card, it became clear that there was a problem. Lori's wallet had been gone through, with her debit card and two credit cards missing. Strangely enough, the theif had left behind more than a hundred quetzales of cash as well as her passport.

Though we hurried to Enlace to block the card, when she accessed her account it appeared it had already been drained. Her available balance was a little more than eight dollars. Upon calling her bank it indeed turned out that someone had spent large sums at McDonald's, Radio Shack and a home improvement store. They told her that if she wanted a chance to get her money back, she would have to go to make a police report. When we told this to my coworkers at Enlace, they laughed. The last place anyone in Guatemala wants to go for anything is the police.

Not knowing what to do, we nevertheless arranged for Pablo to go with us the next day to the police office in hopes of filing a report. Upon arrival at the office the next day, we had the tremendous luck of bumping into a city council member who periodically works with Jesus and Pablo on City Hall's various web projects. He made a couple phone calls and within minutes he had Santa Cruz's Asistur (federal tourist assistant) officer at Enlace with us taking down information.

It turns out when you make a police report, they file something called a denuncia with the Public Ministry. With Edy from Asistur, we were able to bypass the police completely and go directly to the the Public Ministry. After what seemed like hours of waiting and then hours of translating and hashing out the details in writing, Lori's misfortune was now a matter of public record and we had an official document ratifying our claim that the latest charges to her card were fraudulent.

Though I would have liked to have spent more time in Santa Cruz, we had to be at the airport the next morning to greet Beth, so with just enough time to hit Gautemala City before dark, we were on the bus there.