I made several mistakes today that in combination resulted in my bagpack getting stolen, but let’s start from the beginning.
I was actually believing the advice on my bus ticket, that it would somehow be necessary to show up an hour before departure. In the end luggage check-in started exactly when the bus should already be leaving, so that was a mistake.
Second problem was I talked two two travellers from New York and believed they could watch my two backpacks while I was looking for the restroom. Third mistake was leaving my things a meter away from them. In the end the small backpack was gone after just being away for 90 seconds 🙁 They remembered someone, but they sweared they didn’t see him taking anything.
Luckily I had my money and credit cards with me and also my almost holy passport (as it contains the U.S. visa). Still I lost my Kindle, keys, sunglasses, Leatherman and some small things.
After that I boarded the bus with relatively bad mood, although I was astonished about how calm I took the situation. Also all the carefully selected food and drinks for that 20-something hours ride were gone :-/
Actually what I was upset about most is the inefficiency of such a robbing. I have to spend a lot of time and money to buy everything again, print my flight ticket to go back to Lima etc. while except for the food all things have almost no value (the bagpack was old and starting to fall apart, the sunglasses were expensive but also had some scratches and I am not sure whether they know how to break the Kindles password protection).
Stuck with nothing to read I had to watch the movies, which kept getting worse, but the Spanish was actually good to understand and I believe I learned a lot. As I only two thirds of a seat (the women next to me was sharing hers with her child) I went to the back of the bus enjoying the view for almost two hours. As I was a bit paranoid now, I had not taken the camera into the cabin, so no pictures.
The service and driving style were very good, we even got food and drinks.
We also made several stops, but mostly very short and it didn’t cost us much time in sum.
Thankfully Cuzco has a central bus station (in Lima every company has its own) and I was already awaited and taken to our hostel were I met the rest of the group (7 Peruvians and one guy from Spain).
We went to have some food and afterwards walked a bit through the city where I used the chance to buy a new bagpack and sunglasses.
Now we’ll catch some sleep as we have a good program for the next days.