*Spoiler alert: Be extremely careful, I got stolen at Punta Cana’s international airport.
On the summer of 2015 I got the wonderful chance to spend one week with my family in an all-included-with-cool-bracelet type of Resort. If I have to be sincere, I’m not an all included type of person, but hey, mum and dad were buying so hell yeah!
We spent a wonderful week by the seaside (we did some small trips too, more posts about that soon) where I could invest some time in reading a couple of books and enjoying the Dominican sun.
The last day, on our way back to the airport somehow I felt that something was wrong. Once we had to do the check in of our bags the guy working there asked ‘Where’s Pau Mateo’s bag?’ which I (silly me) said here. I was a bit weirded out by that question because all of us were going to the same destination and since I was doing the check in with my parents it really didn’t matter that my mother’s name for example would be on my bag.
So I left my bag on the belt and I just saw it again at Madrid’s airport. One thing that made me feel a bit suspicious was that the padlock was on the lower part of the bag, because I ALWAYS leave it on the upper part. See, I’m a bit obsessive with these type of things, but in a way it really helps me control my stuff.
Later on, when we put the bags in the car (ready to drive for 4 hours to go home and with the Jet Lag all over us) I realised that the zipper had a small opening, but since I was quite exhausted I didn’t overthink it and went home.
Once I started unpacking and I couldn’t find my laptop charger I started to really feel weird. I kept on thinking where I could have left it. I always double check the room to avoid loosing something and thankfully (knocks wood) I have never lost something of important value. After I saw that my small with extra batteries, chargers and SD cards were missing was when something clicked inside of me. I FUC*ING GOT STOLEN!!
I do spend much time watching YouTube videos. Suddenly it came to my head one video I saw of one guy opening a locked zipper and then I understood how it all happened.
Immediately I started screaming. I was so angry. I ran to the internet to see if it’s a popular place to get stolen and I unfortunately found over 200+ comments on different sites of people having stuff stolen just like me.
Fortunately I didn’t get any pictures stolen. I had my camera and laptop on my backpack. And luckily too we had a travel insurance which covered the expenses of my stolen stuff.
I have to say that it was a pain in the ass. Going to the police, calling the insurance company… but finally I got all my gear back (and new!). In the end it could have been way worse but it wasn’t.
Probably I won’t come back to that airport. I do want to come back to the Dominican Republic though.
