Con Artists

Of all the nomads I know, I have heard multiple stories about people getting mugged. I, most fortunately, have never even been close to getting robbed. Among the stories I hear, I think well, you were walking by yourself at night, listening to your ipod, not paying attention to your surroundings, holding your cell phone out for somebody to snatch, etc. I've never felt unsafe, but then again, I avoid all of the above situations. For two of my close friends here however, they were robbed in the exact same way and didn't realize they were being taken advantage of until after their stuff had been stolen.

On weekends in Bogota they have ciclovia which is when they close off a bunch of the streets in the city and people can ride their bikes, go running, and walk their dogs. My two friends (not at the same time) were riding their bikes by themselves during ciclovia when a fellow biker started riding next to them and just started chatting them up. This guy went on and on about how he runs a bike club and there are 9-10 people in it that ride together every week. So acting perfectly nice and chatty he offered each of my friends his business card. They rode a block away from the main bike path to the guy's "house" where his "brother" was supposed to meet him with the business cards. As they were waiting, the guy locked his bike and asked to take my friends' bikes for a quick spin. And with that, he rode away and never came back, leaving my friends stranded. Just their luck that they had left their money/cards/keys attached to the bike as well.

Upon hearing the story and looking back on it, you think, wow, how did I not see this coming? Of course, it could have been much worse, but the icing on the cake is that you actually believed that the person was being nice and genuine. The only thing you can really do is ignore the person sitting next to you on the bus, the guy waiting in the same line as you, your cab driver, and that person having coffee one table away from you. In our minds we feel like absolute jerks, but you never know what you are getting yourself into once you open up the door for conversation.

If only it were like Wisconsin where the only worry of having a rando start talking to you was that he was trying to hit on you.