Trouble in Paradise OR How JJ got his stuff back

I was robbed.

As I slept on Tuesday night, someone with enormous balls crept into my room and stole my backpack. Actually, I'm assuming the thief had giant, brass testicles because he was about three feet away from me when he opened my bag, removed my passport and passed it through the bathroom window. Once the deed was done, he crept out the front door, past four other sleeping dudes and disappeared into the darkness. That had to take some serious, serious bravery or an extreme crack addiction. I'd prefer it do be the whole bravery thing. Drugs are bad.

So I wake up the next day. Life is good, the sun is shining. I still had that just-woke-woke-still-a-little-groggy air about me when i noticed my passport in a box next to my bed. "Hm..." i thought to myself, "Who left their passport out. That's just foolish." So i picked it up and checked it. "Oh, it's MY passport. That's weird, I keep this in my back..." at that exact moment, i realized what had happened. My heart sank through the floor of the house and landed in the sand under my feet. I went absolutely nuts. My computer, my camera, my iphone, my watch, some notebooks, my sunglasses, and all my chargers and cords were gone. Just like that. Like they had never been there. The conscientious thief did leave my passport, so I had that going for me. Immediately, the roommates and I hatched a plan.

We immediately assumed that the brass-balled thief was none other than Kkleyton, a rastafarian who Brian employs to do various work with the jetskis and stuff. Yes, that's really how he spells his name. With all the ruckus going on, the neighbor, a panamanian guy with at least 14 kids took notice and came over. He said that he was sorry he didn't say anything before, but the other day, he saw two black rasta guys (kkleyton [from now on I'm going to call him clay, get over it] and one of his many many many cousins) passing a computer bag through the bathroom window. Interesting...Tim, the surfer guy that hangs out here, had his computer stolen a few days before. So now we pretty much knew that clay was in on it. We figured that even if somebody had woken up mid-robbery, they would have seen him, and probably not thought much of it since he's here sometimes anyway and it wasn't too unusual for him to crash here occasionally. So, we went through the scenarios in our heads, like Tim Curry in the Clue movie, and decided that we should: A) Go to the cops. Tim, Josh and myself would go to the police, fill out reports, and do shit the right way. 2) Brian and Joe would go find clay, and just keep an eye on him to make sure he didn't leave with a nice new backpack.

On the way to the police station, we ran into Rosanna, a chef at the restaurant and Juan's wife. I informed her of my predicament and she volunteered to come to the police station to serve as a translator. Double awesome. Three hours later, two reports had been filed and the police said they'd meet me at my house in an hour to take finger prints.

After a quick lunch at subway (yes, one just opened in bocas town last week and I never thought that Subway would represent comfort food. Plus I was hoping that they might have dr. pepper. They don't) we headed home to find clay, brian, and joe chillaxing like nothing had happened and nothing had been burgled. Then, the police showed up and shit got interesting. They came in and fingerprinted the bathroom window, took a shit ton of pictures and talked to everyone about what happened in both my case and tim's. Then, they took clay to their boat, which is an awesome drug-running boat that they confiscated from, well, drug runners. As they walked him out, he looked at me and asked me why they were taking him to jail. I said, "dude, I don't know if you did it," (p.s. that was a lie) "but I just want my stuff back. If you know where it is, tell me or tell them and get it back to me." They walked him to the boat, took some more pictures and left just in time for me to have to go to work.

At this point, I had pretty conceded that would never see any of my shit ever again. The most I could do was hope that some young children would learn to read using my computer, or donate my camera to charity or some nice thing. So, I'm at work for, I don't know, an hour, when clay walks in and asks me to go outside with him. Of course, i shit a brick and just knew that I was going to get stabbed in the eyes and even if i got my shit back i'd never see it again. So I asked Juan to join me, mostly because he's a boxer and I'm pretty sure he wouldn't hesitate to punch a bear in the ovaries. So we walk out to talk to clay and he shows me a dollar bill with a phone number on it. "Aye men, Aye tall yoo wat. Dey let me owt da jell hasta six dirty and de tall me aye nee to fine yoo stoff o they gon' thro me back in. Somebody tell me if yoo kawl de nomba ayn yoo ask fo yo shit, day kno where it be."

So I call the number on the dollar, and a guy answers. Before he has a chance to say anything, I tell him I want my stuff back, and I want it back now. He told me he didn't speak english, and for some reason I turned into Ricky Ricardo. My rage boiled over and for a few seconds I spoke fluent spanish. I told him that I wanted my stuff right now, or he and Clayton and everyone is going to jail. The guy on the other side of the phone said he'd give it back to me for $850. Instinct took over. "Go fuck yourself," I said. In retrospect, it probably wasn't the smartest thing to say but it go things moving. I told him "I can't possibly pay you that much money. I can't make any money without my computer anyway. You're completely insane." After some quick negotiation, I got the price down to less than a third of what he asked for. At this point, clayton was about 15 from going to jail, and even though he obviously wasn't the one on the other phone, it was pretty obvious that he did it, or had direct knowledge of who did and knew exactly where to find it. So anyway, I ran into town, got some cash from the ATM, and came back. I handed clay the money with Juan standing next to me and told him to get my shit right now. He said he'd be back in ten minutes with the backpack and the stuff inside. "You'd better be back in 5 minutes or I'm calling the police." he was back in four minutes.

I opened the bag to make sure the stuff was there. For the most part, it was there: my camera, hard drive, camera cord, computer charger and most importantly, my computer. The iphone was missing, but i was so relieved that i really didnt care. It's replaceable and now I can get a new one. I was really tempted to hug clayton but then I remembered that he was the one that did it and that hug became stab. Then, he asked me to sit down and call the police and tell them that i had my stuff back so he wouldn't go to jail. I made the call with him sitting next to me, and the inspector asked me to come in the next day. I told him over the phone that I didn't recognize the guy that I had done the deal with, but only because clay was sitting right next to me. Then clay left, and I went back to work, relieved but still mad that it happened in the first place.

Today at the police station, i had to fill out another report, but I told them all about clayton being the "middleman" and how it all went down. They told me, and please, keep this to yourself, to tell him that as far as i'm concerned the investigation is over and they're no longer actively pursuing him. It is, of course, bullshit. I'm pretty sure that they're going to set up some kind of sting operation with Tim's computer and haul clayton off to jail. The sooner the better.



Not everything has been bad though, in fact, i was having a great week.

Joe's dad and stepmom came into town the other night from their island. We all hung out and they invited me out to their island the next day and night. So the next day I called in dead to work and took off.

It was about a 45 minute boat ride out to their island. I was a little skeptical of the whole situation, to be honest, because there are a lot of islands. I figured they had a little piece of land that stuck out of the water a little bit and there was a house on it. I was mistaken.



As you can see, for the most part, i was right. It really is just a piece of land that sticks out of the water a little bit, but it's AWESOME. Joe's dad, Keith, burnt the whole thing to the ground five years ago to get rid of the snakes, bugs, armadillos, plants, hippies, and everything else that they didn't want there, and then he planted golf course grass. I mean, this is some high quality stuff. They're one step away from having to hire Bill Murray's character from Caddyshack. Then, after the grass got going, they put in a few buildings, one's a bedroom, one's a kitchen, one's a living room/bedroom, and another grass-hut type building with yet another bed in it. That's where I slept, here's a picture.



So basically, this whole island is like a big treehouse. If Gilligan and co. had been here, they wouldn't have wanted to be rescued, not that they really seemed like they did anyway. That professor should have just built a raft or something. Crazy Gilligan. Anyway, the island is kind of remote, so they don't get a lot of boat traffic nearby. In fact, when this guy drove by, keith said it was the busiest he'd seen it all week.



yes, there's a canoe out there. Yes, that was the only boat that went by all day.

But the best part of the whole island...well, let me show you.

Yep, MONKEYS. Well, just one monkey. He's their pet, and he's awesome. as you can see, he liked my camera, but he also liked my sunglass my shoes, my hair, chairs, food, bugs, water hoses, grass, ropes, hammocks and the dogs. Check it out.

Why yes, as a matter a of fact, that monkey is riding on a dog. But that wasn't even the cutest thing on the island.
This little guy was.

No, not the human, that's Joe by the way. I'm talking about his pet kinkajou, Bradley. Bradley is awesome. He's like a monkey, but without Ebola or AIDS. It's like the best of both worlds. Also, he has little hands and feet that look and feel like human hands and feet. Ha ha, nature is hilarious.

Bradley liked me:

Probably because I'm so damn awesome. That must be it.

Here's a picture of one of their dogs, Jack, keeping an eye on his domain.


And the sunrise was beautiful.

Keith and his wife came and woke me up so I wouldn't miss it and although it was really early, i really appreciated it. Words don't do it justice.

Speaking of sun events, I just had to take a picture of the sunset the other day, it was absolutely epic.


When my camera was stolen, I was really worried that I wouldn't be able to see all this stuff again, thank goodness I got it back. Shit sucks, but life is good.

adios.