Some Costa Rican stole my bag, and my Camera, and all my photos, and my journals (of 6 months), and my mp3 player, and my....

I dont think i've ever had anything important stolen from me before. Maybe a pen at school, perhaps even a 5 pound note i left lying around... so arriving in La Fortuna a couple of days ago was a bit of a shock. During these travels i've put all the stuff that's really important to me in my small bag, always had that close to me- on the bus i put it over my head, letting one of the straps hanging down so i could check every so often to see if it was still there. But, when i was moving to get off i found that my bag had been replaced with an empty one. This annoys me- if someone took the trouble of bringing an empty bag on board they were clearly planning to do something like this, its not an opportunistic crime but rather something totally planned.

So, when i get back home i wont be able to show anyone the photos that i've taken over this trip, 6 months of my thoughts (in journal form) have disappeared, my logs of all my dives are gone- many of the things i would have used to remember my time abroad wont be coming back. So, its surprising that i'm not more pissed off than i am right now. Perhaps its that i got righteously drunk with some Belgium guys i met on the bus as soon as i discovered the bag was gone, or perhaps its that i've found these material things i've lost don't matter to me as much as i thought they did. I still have the emails of all the people i've met on this trip, with luck i'll be able to get photos of the various parts off them, and this blog is some semblance of a journal.

Which is not to say that i'm totally content. This happening has highlighted to me some things i need to work on about myself- perhaps i can summarise this by saying that i'm too happy to let things slide, too confident that things will just work out with minimal input from myself. There have been numerous times on this trip when i've left my bag in far less secure places than i did on that bus a couple of days ago, and each time that i just raised the possibility a little more that something like this would happen. Also the things in the bag- i could have backed up the photos, but i didnt because it didnt occur to me that something like this would happen. So, a lesson learnt there, and its probably good that i learnt it at this time.