Lessons Learnt while in Spain

Saturday June 20^th

Today was a day I will not forget in a hurry, lessons were learnt and prayers were answered but it was certainly a roller coaster of a day.

It started out fine as we were looking forward to our next trip along the coast of Spain, we were not going far, just about 3 hours down the road to Calpe not far from Benidorm so we didn’t have to rush about and leave to early.  About 20 miles into our journey, down the AP7, we stopped at a services to put some fuel in the car and Rob noticed one of the car’s wheels was a bit down so we pulled across to where the air was, a bit of a performance with the caravan on the back but we managed it. Rob got out and turned off the ignition so I decided to get out as well as it was very hot and wandered around to watch Rob put the air in. Lesson one don’t both be on the same side of the car when stopped and leave the car unlocked. A chap came up to us and started chatting, fairly smartly dressed, Spanish we think, but good English, asking all sorts of questions and telling us  how bad some Spanish people can be by putting nails in tyres, the whole time telling me to come and look as well. All of a sudden he stopped talking and was gone, Rob told me afterwards that he began to think something was not right when this chap started running the Spanish down so he ran round the caravan and saw a car taking off and quickly memorised the number plate. He noticed my door wasn’t closed and asked me where the camera was, I looked in the car and it was gone as well as the camera bag with the zoom lens in it. We then realised that our other bag had also gone with our passports, car and caravan documents, our glasses, my phone and my purse. Before this happened when we were still at the pumps a group of young English lads had pulled up in a couple of cars and one of them was a Ferrari, a grey one with a private number plate, which we had admired. So as we were devastated and not really knowing where to start with reporting it we told them what had happened and amazingly one of them spoke fluent Spanish so he came into the shop with us and helped us get hold of the police. It was really good of them and we are really thankful for their help. Lesson two would probably be to learn a bit of Spanish.

We had to wait a little while for the police to come, probably about 40 minutes, but when they arrived we had quite a difficult time because they couldn’t speak English and we couldn’t speak Spanish. In the end I went with them to the hotel nearby hoping that the receptionist could understand us all but she was on lunch. However I discovered in the end that I could fill in the forms as they were in both languages and also a hotel guest arrived and he could speak both languages so that helped too. He also told a similar story about his son, amazingly they had found there bag abandoned at the next Services Once that was done there wasn’t much else to do but go back to Rob and decide what to do next. We were very impressed with the two young Guardia Civil as they genuinely seemed sympathetic towards us and helped as much as they could even with the language barrier, so we shook hands and they left.

We decided the best thing to do was to go back to Bonterra Park, as they had copies of our passports and they knew us, we phoned them and they said we could certainly come back. As we were on the motorway we had to make our way to the next off ramp, but we carried on a bit just in case they had thrown the bag out and just past the next on ramp I shouted to Rob that there was our orange bag and the camera bag. So we just stopped on the side of the motorway, a bit dangerous I know, and Rob ran back to where they were and as he got there another police car pulled up behind us. Rob told them that these were ours and he showed them the copies of the forms that we had filled in, they said something to him about a ‘blanco landrover’ and Rob said that was us, so they let us go on. We still can’t believe how lucky we were as the camera was intact and everything was still in the orange bag, although I expect everything had been looked at. The only thing missing was about 60 euros that was in my purse. Luckily in the morning we had paid our account with my debit card and Rob had put it in his wallet which was still in his pocket having paid for the fuel. I forgot to mention earlier that they hadn’t taken Rob’s phone, either because they hadn’t seen it or they thought it wasn’t fancy enough so we had already phoned to block my phone and phoned the family, so now we had to phone everyone back again to tell them the good news and cancelled our rebooking with Bonterra Park. Lesson three, prayers do get answered as I was praying hard that at least some of things like our passports would be found.

We could now continue our journey on to Calpe both feeling rather emotionally drained but very happy at the outcome of this part of our adventures. The journey from there was fine and we travelled through some lovely scenery. When we finally got to Calpe we followed the directions we had for the campsite and came across a few roads that had been blocked off by barriers, at one point we could see the site but couldn’t find another way round. Then at one point we did a U-turn (yes with the caravan on the back) in front of a police station, and there was a policeman getting on his motorbike and we asked for his help, we showed him where we were going and he said ‘follow me’, he could speak some English. So we followed him around the barriers to the site, there had been a market on and that was why the roads had been closed. So once again we were very impressed with the Spanish Gardia. Unfortunately at some point in the town Rob had clipped the kerb and when we stopped he noticed one of the tyres on the caravan had been damaged so before we went into the campsite he had to change the wheel. Eventually we managed to get booked into Camping CalpeMar and got our caravan sited onto a pitch.

I don’t think I want to ever have another day like that but I suppose it is something we will always remember. The main lesson here is that wherever you are travelling you must be careful and vigilante, this can happen anywhere in the world as there will always be people around who will take a chance and want what isn’t theirs. We must also be grateful though, that there are people around who are willing to help and for that we are really thankful.