Strategic Advice
Once we realized we were in a negotiation with a thief, we also realized that our chance of getting anything else back was very limited. We had a short time to act and needed to do so decisively but carefully.
It was time to call our world-traveller friend Cristóbal who also happened to be an ex-porteño and a great asset when in the middle of an interesting internatinal bind. Thanks to our VoIP ), a minute later I was talking with Cris. He was in the middle of checking in code for a deadline before going out to dinner. He said he will call back, and when he did, he had already checked with his mother who just happens to be a tour guide in Buenos Aires (cool eh?)
Cris took it easy on me on the “WTF did she have her passport in her purse” after I admitted we had become somewhat laxed in our travel and that I would promise to put together a strict methods next time.
Cris and his mom had a number of suggestions: Call the American Embassy who aside from their duty to help American citizens may also have interest in recovering a stolen passport, which may be used for terrorist purposes (they didn’t care a bit and happy to explain how we can get new passports--has any American ever been helped by their embassy) or the Tourist Police (which were not that helpful either, though they spoke English.)
What was more important is that Cris helped me put together a strategy for dealing with the situation. As usual we need to put together a few working principles:
1. Cancel All Credit cards (already done.)
2. Consider everything gone. They are all replaceable (more or less.)
3. If there is a NO RISK way to get something back great. Otherwise let it go.
4. Corollary of #3 is that if at all possible we should get to define the place of exchange so that we can [a] verify the existence of the package and [b] we can pick the package up at our safety and convenience.
Friday, August 18, 2006