Valparaiso, Chile - not the safest place to be in ;)

We got robbed yesterday while we were exploring Valparaiso, a pretty but apparently more dangerous town on the Chilean coast.

We walked around the city for a bit on a special tourist-walking-track that's supposed to be nice and scenic. We turned into a little sidestreet and walked up a hill where I stopped to take a picture with my digital camera. I was just about to put it back into my backpack when a guy runs up to me from behind, rips the camera out of my hand and takes off. Nigel started chasing after him until we realized that he had an accomplice with him who picked up two bricks and threw them at Nigel.
I was pretty freaked out at that point and just yelled to let them have the camera before somthing more serious happens.
Nigel ended up with a pretty big bleeding bruise on his arm and some scraped off skin on the other wrist.
Everything happend so quickly, it was over within about half a minute and I don't think I've realized at that point what had just happened. If I rewind the situation in my head now I wish I would have yelled at them: Arschloecher,fucking bastards, puta madre... but I was too perplex to say anything!

Afterwards we went to the next police office and all they basically did was write a report for my insurance company. The description of the two thieves wasn't really important to them. Nothing they can do about it - that's it!
Kind of disappointing but also understandable if you take into account that things like that happen all the time(one of the police guys told us that approximately 10 robbed tourists come in every day). They were really helpful afterwards though! We got a ride in the police car to the next hospital where Nigel's injuries got taken care of and then the police guys drove us back to our hostel. At first it felt kind of weird, all this special treatment, but they seemed pretty happy to get out of the office for a while since it was Nigel and me and then 3 police officers.

I don't care about the stolen camera that much since I'll probably get the money back from my insurance. The thing that really bothers me though is the whole set up! The guy was dressed all nicely, clean clothes, a camera bag over his shoulder - almost like a normal tourist. He walked up the hill in front of us, then fell back a little and sat down on some stairs next to the road (probably to check us out and to wait for the right moment).
The rock-throwing-part also upset me a lot. I imagined what it would have been like if they would have hit Nigel's head and seriously injured him? I wonder if they would have cared.

I was pissed off the whole afternoon and evening (and I still am now when I think about it). I wanted to kick or punch someone really hard and I don't know what would have happened if I would have come across those guys on the street...

Oh well, it could have ended a lot worse and I wasn't expecting to get through my 4 months in South America without anything like that happening.
I'm in fight-mode now whenever something like that happens again ;)(kidding, we actually agreed not to interfere again and just let them take off with the stuff next time)

I'm glad that we're heading down to Patagonia on Friday to go hiking and camping in the wilderness... less chance of getting robbed down there :)

I will still be able to put up pictures online even though it might take a little longer now. I still have my manual FM10 with me and I can have them put the pictures on a CD when I get the roll of film developed.