We spent a wonderful day in Valparaiso, a cute and colorful port town famous for its street art.
We had a big lunch on the tour, so what I wanted for dinner was ice cream!
We had been warned many times to be careful with our cell phones. I started wondering if it was an urban legend in Santiago. Who would steal cell phones? You can’t really use them after they are locked, right? We were in a new-to-us part of town, we looked around to see if anybody was around who could grab our phone. Seeing no one, we took our phone out of our pocket to look at a map. Less than a minute later, a guy on a moped drove by, tapped me on the shoulder, and as I instinctively turned, he grabbed my phone. He was an expert. We knew we couldn’t pull Jim’s phone out of his pocket so we quickly found a Starbucks to kill my phone. I’m so thankful we had this second phone. Without it, we would’ve really suffered. In the less than 10 minutes, it took for us to get to the coffee shop and erase my phone, the thief had changed the password to all my Gmail accounts. He was able to do this because he could do the two factor authorization because the phone was unlocked when he grabbed it. Even though we had another phone and an iPad, we had no access to anything we needed for traveling. I couldn’t access Airbnb, our flights, our hotel, our guide in Easter Island, or texting on my phone or by WhatsApp. Because I couldn’t do the two factor authorization I was locked out. It was so awful trying to re-create our whole travel itinerary. I had all our information in a Google doc and that too was lost. I had no map, and no camera, and no library book or podcasts. We were up almost all night, calling credit card companies, and worrying about what else the thief might’ve taken from us. It was a hard time.
The Bible verse I had memorized that morning was “rejoice always pray continually give thanks and all circumstances.” I kept repeating it like a mantra to comfort myself. I knew God would take care of me.
Here’s a wild side to the story. Many years ago, my mom’s wedding ring was stolen and they caught that thief. Of course, he had already pawned the ring and spent the money. So he was ordered to pay us restitution and his future wages were garnished. I don’t think it was a coincidence there was a check in the mail from this theft when we got home. The money from one thief paid for my phone from the other thief.
My identity was stolen, but I still had my passport and my physical health and I was able to continue with the trip. So I had a lot to be thankful for.
Marsh Travels 