Daylight Robbery.

We sat down together´on stools next to the hut and after an earnest discussion agreed on a price of $4000. $600 for Roger to pay back Susanne and $3,400 for me. Roger and I initially wanted a much higher figure, 7 or $8000 but Malleaneo had realised the amount of problems that were there and was only willing to pay $4000 and was quite insistent about it. We shook hands on the deal, it was the best we could get under the circumstances, and walked half a mile up to Malleaneo´s house. Under a bed he had $3000 in rolls of notes $100 and $20 bills wrapped in elastic bands. He would pay me the last $1000 in a couple of months. We counted the money, put it into an envelope and Roger stuffed it deep into his pocket.

I decided to change my money into travellers cheques. An altogether safer and cheaper way of carrying large amounts of money around Peru. So we went back to Cajamarca, and stopped over at my hostal to pick up my passport. We arrived a few minutes after an armed robbery had occurred right outside the hostal. Apparently the bank employees were filling up the cash machine there, strangely with no police and minimal or no security around when they were threatened at gunpoint by a gang who stole all the cash. 100,000 soles or more than $30, 000 by all accounts. The robbery happened in broad daylight on a busy street and was surely seen by many families and young children. There must have been at least 50 witnesses to the crime, tourists out shopping for souvineers and handicrafts for carnival. Roger made the point that it was clealy a well planned and carefully timed raid because of the lack of security. Absolutely incredible. I was stunned, tired from my journey and still nervous about the deal I had just made.

We went to a (different) bank branch and I bought the cheques with Roger´s help and sealed them up in an envelope. I decided to give it to Roger for safe keeping in his house. We went for lunch and then later we went drinking. We got throught a crate and a half with Malleanio and some of the campesinos at Huacariz. Then later we went back to someones house for more beer and food provided by the women. I threw up outside but we managed to get back to the city centre ok where we engaged in more drinking and I made a complete fool of myself before retiring to bed exhausted at 3am. Luckily the woman on duty a the hostal was Sonia, a kindly and reliable lady who had been working since I last stayed there 18 months before, ´upgraded` me to a nicer single room downstairs.

It was a day that I don´t think I´ll ever forget and it was the end of a turbulent saga for me which I will attempt to describe in much more detail in my later blogs. I tried to write a book about it while I was working in South Korea last year, but I could only write about 40 pages. I will however try to use what I wrote as a basis for these blogs. I am not a good writer at all, but I htink I have an interesting story to tell which will hopefully come out of what I write.

Tom