Expat Community > Costa Rica

Meck
Joined 2011
Posts: 5

Robbed in Uvita

11 years ago

We just returned from a trip to Uvita Costa Rica and feel I should report an incident of theft and most likely corruption within the area of Uvita.

My wife and I live in Panama and every six months we have to leave the country to renew our visas, on this occasion we made arrangements to stay at beautiful property between Dominical and Uvita. We arrived in Uvita before lunch after a pleasant two hour bus ride from the border of panama We decided to rent a car from Alamo, the representative held a small desk with in a tour operator business in a small strip mall type building. After renting the car, we crossed the main street and parked directly in front of the main entrance to the BM Supermarket, Locked all three doors (it was a small Suzuki Jimny with two doors and rear hatch door) and went into to buy some supplies. We were there no longer that 15 minutes, when we came out, the back hatch had been unlocked and all of our luggage was gone. My wife's Passport and two laptops were the biggest loss, but everything was gone and we were left standing in front of the grocery store stunned with only the cloths on our backs. Thankfully I had all the cash, cards and my Passport on my person. The police station was just a couple hundred yards from the grocery store my wife ran to the station and we had two officers on motorcycles at the scene with in ten minutes. They asked a few question and then rode off stating that they would look for the perps. So they rode off out of our site and returned in around ten minutes saying they were sorry but they did not see anything and could not find the thief(s). Needless to say we were in shock and definitely not thinking clearly, but later (hind site is always 2020, ha ha) we realized that the police questioned none of the people that were within visual of the scene of the crime, and there were at least 20 to 30 that could have seen something if they had been looking at our car. We filled out a crime report at the station and started preparing for our unscheduled trip to the US Embassy in San Jose. Of coarse nothing was found and we were stuck spending two weeks in Costa Rica waiting for a replacement Passport for my wife.

My thoughts on this incident now that we have had nearly three weeks to recover and reflect; Corruption within the police department and the Alamo rental agent. My feelings have been confirmed by others who have lived in this area, they flat out said that the Alamo agent has an extra key that he sells or gives to his conspirators. And the police departments lack of tactic speaks for itself. They questioned NONE of the possible witnesses. My advice; avoid this area or at least go there with a very high level of caution.

Hope this helps all you travelers, we love to travel and have never been robbed like this, it really was extremely stressful and costly in more ways than one.

Cheers,
Jon and Jules

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Robbed in Uvita

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