The ultimate travel cliche happened; we got robbed in Mexico… It happened in the trendy hip coastal area of Tulum in the state Quintana Roo in the Yucatan Peninsula, in broad daylight!
We´ll tell you all about how we got robbed of our two suitcases in Mexico and what we did to make the best out of this horrible inconvenient situation. And what lessons we learned from it. And we´ll tell you how you can prevent this from happening to you!
Robbed in Mexico?!
After a wonderful and wild three-week road trip through the heart of the Yucatan Peninsula (Cancun, Holbox, Valladolid, Chichen Itza, and Tulum), we felt quite safe in Mexico. Nobody looked at us funny, we didn´t hear scary tales from people we met, and we didn´t see any suspicious activity. This set us up to be more trustworthy than we were supposed to be because we got robbed anyway…
What happened you ask? Well, let´s get down to it: we had to leave a hotel (checkout time; 12.00) and we could check-in at 15.00 at another hotel in Tulum. So we had three hours to spare, so we went to the beach area to enjoy the beautiful beaches and beach clubs of Tulum Beach. We had our two suitcases and two backpacks with us in our rental car…
We put our suitcases and one backpack in the trunk of the car. It was closed off, and you couldn't see a thing from the outside in. We were quite neurotic about our stuff, so we were always triple-checking if everything is locked. The car was locked.
The car was parked at a long beach road between about a hundred different cars. Police were driving around on ATV´s and many people were walking to the playas, which were about 3 minutes further walking. It looked so safe and fine…
We came back after about 2.5 hours of having a great time on the beach, to find out that our car was completely empty!!
The two suitcases and backpack were gone!!
What was in the suitcases?
It´s a horrible thing to discover that sneaky rats took away your precious luggage, but it hurts, even more, to discover that we´ve made a classic mistake of trusting too much… Because we stupidly left our two passports and two laptops in the suitcases!
#$%&!!”%$
We might have made that mistake, but in the end, it´s still very wrong that people stole our stuff. Don´t f***n touch other people´s stuff…!
What was in the suitcases? Let´s sum it up…
> two laptops
> two passports
> a wallet with bank cards
> a diamond wedding ring
> all our clothing
> all our cables
> handy travel gadgets
> an e-reader
> all our toiletries
> good walking shoes
> a year of medicine and contact lenses
> some memorabilia
> and so much more…
All in all, they stole about 3500 dollars (3000 euros) in value from us.
The money lost sucks. And what sucks maybe even more; we lost our perfectly curated stuff. We loved our perfectly curated vests, jackets, shoes, packing cubes, handy cables, our little handy things like a flashlight and a medkit, and our expensive perfect laptops. And the lost wedding ring hurt the most. We cried a bit when we discovered that our precious ring was gone as well…
So we were left with only our one outfit we had on, our smartphones, cash, cards, our camera, our drone, our bottles, and some small details. From two suitcases and two backpacks to just one backpack…
We were official minimalists!
(we even lost this little skull candy souvenir…)
Why it hurts even more
If you know our story, then you know what we´ve done to get to this point, but if you don´t, let me explain; we started Free Birds Magazine and the verb freebirding to have a more adventurous life. To travel more, to discover more, to explore more. So we sold everything we have (from the house to the car to the Playstation to the desks to the bed to the cutlery), Suzanne quit her well-paying job as an oncological physical therapist, and we set out to travel the world for multiple years. This operation was humongous, and it took about 8 months of careful and meticulous preparation.
And the pandemic was also very unpredictable, but we were very adamant about our goal; we´re doing this!
So after three weeks into freebirding, our preciously curated cargo was stolen from us, and to be frank, that sucked quite hard.
What did we do?!
At first glance, we screamed and cursed. It hurts us badly for a moment. You feel alone, and dumb, and lonely, and mistreated, and scared, and even a bit shellshocked. Then comes the crazy laughter of what the hell happened. For a minute or two, you´re a maniacal mess. Your mind is all over the place. You´ve been robbed in Mexico, WTF!!
Then, it´s time to get in action.
We looked around for clues, for entry points (there was a little scratch on the left, they entered smoothly and opened the trunk from within), and then made a video and some photos of what happened (the location, the clues). After that, we asked some locals if they´ve seen anything. Then we saw a cop on an ATV and he tried to help us. He was actually kinda surprised to hear that it happened, which makes us think we´ve been marked!
Our theory of what happened is that robbers have marked us as typical tourists, and had a little idea that we´ve had some stuff with us. Other cars were not robbed, so that means they had an eye out for us. And that´s the downfall of being a caucasian-European-looking couple. You look like spoiled rich white people to thieves…
Sidenote; we´ve seen some real poverty in Mexico, even in tourist places like Tulum, Holbox, and Cancun. It´s quite logical that these poor people steal from the more wealthy because they really have not much. Some people sleep in little huts with hammocks, ride a rusty bicycle, drive maybe a very weathered old car, and look like life has beaten them up from all the hardship. The difference between rich and poor is crazy out here. Mexico, fix your economy and help your people so that they don´t have to do radical things like stealing. Gracias.
Policia, ayuda!
´Ayuda senior! Help help!´ – The Mexican police officers don´t speak English. And sadly, they don´t give a single shit about tourists. Even at the station, with us having some clues of the thieves, they didn´t want to hear our story (I hope some Mexican official reads this, be ashamed of your system sir!). They only send us to the Agencia Del Ministerio Público, a place where you can fix the papers for your insurance with some weird dudes that don´t speak English at all. They write something on official papers so that you can prove to your insurance, your embassy, and other organizations that you´ve been robbed.
Meanwhile, when this report was being written, we were actively busy with these important steps to make;
> Call our credit card agencies to block the cards
These thieves had already swiftly stolen 800 dollars from our American Express card. Credit card agencies luckily cover robberies. But it´s so absurdly weird and dumb that they have these pin codes on the back of the cards. Their policy, their loss. We got that money back after a quick call. But they didn´t start an investigation of any kind, while we did have some clues (there are cameras on the ATMs and we knew the time of the transaction and where it was made!).
> Change all your passwords
Be quick and change all your passwords of your banking accounts, your Mac or Google accounts, your laptop (you can lock it from a distance these days), your PIN codes for any cards, your government logins, etc, etc, etc. I´ve had to change my 20-year-old password…
> Inventize what you´ve lost and need back again
For the records, build a list with everything that was in your belongings. This will be written up into the report and hopefully, your insurance will cover the whole shitstorm. It will be hard to remember what it all was, especially when stressed, but it could save you an extra couple of hundreds of dollars in the end.
An expensive but good travel lesson
A whole week later, and a whole week of shopping in Playa del Carmen (I mean, we had nothing, not even a toothbrush!), we´ve repacked ourselves (mentally, and with the necessary basics again). We may have temporarily lost our friendly smiles towards locals, we might be closing the car doors when we drive around, and we triple-check literally every little detail when we move around, but we will NOT let getting robbed in Mexico ruin our dreams of freebirding. They will not steal our joy, and definitely not our goals of seeing the world.
It has been an expensive lesson, and we hope that you won´t make the same as us. Don´t ever leave anything ever ever ever in your car in Mexico.
To receive our black belt in world traveling, we knew we had to overcome drama in some way, and we now have promoted ourselves to orange belts. The positive of this whole story is that we can share this with thousands of travelers who will not have this travel drama. And we´ve also realized we were packing too much stuff and it´s fine to travel even more lightly with just one backpack and one suitcase in total for the both of us.
Sidenote; we even lost our passports, and we´ve had to contact the Dutch embassy in Mexico City to get an appointment. In Covid-times, which made it even more difficult. But we´ve got it done and we´ve gotten a little lucky that we´ve got an extra fast delivery service of 1 week instead of 4 weeks. Renewal, plus airline tickets, and all other costs to get it done, we´ve lost about 500 dollars extra. Wheeeeej…
A couple of tips for you when in Mexico
These tips apply to every country, maybe even in your home country;
> Don´t look prosperous (try not to wear watches, rings, expensive brand clothing)
> Don´t ever leave anything in your car
> Always keep your passports close to you, wherever you go
> Don´t go out at nighttime (avoid shady streets)
> Try to remain calm when shits happens
> Reminder; just bad days, not a bad life
> Have everything backed up in the cloud (documents, copy of your passport, your work on your laptop, etc, it´s a must!).
So, now you know. Don´t allow anybody to steal your stuff!
How can you help?
Well, by sharing this article and story with your traveling buddies. With these tips in the back of their minds, they will be more careful and wise about their stuff. Sadly, being a bit neurotic is a must when traveling.
If you want to help us in another way, you could even send us some love via Paypal so that we can repack our precious lost stuff. We´ve lost about 3500 US dollars in gear and had to rebuy for about 2500 dollars, including the expensive renewal of our passports. So any help would be so great to keep us afloat! Any amount is deeply appreciated.
You can also become a patron on Patreon. There you can become a VIP member for exclusive content and you can pay whatever amount you want to support us on our further journey. Gracias in advance! 🙂
Greetings, stay safe and don´t let this discourage you to keep traveling and pursuing your dreams, Martin & Suzanne.
Still feel inspired to go to Tulum? Great, but be aware and stay in safe hotels! We've curated the finest accommodations in Tulum.
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