Costa Rica Adventures - Attempted Extortion!

One of the dangers of trusting anyone in a country not that of your own is the possibility that someone might try to take advantage of you. We almost got taken advantage of while here. Fortunately, Betsy can smell trouble a mile a way and I have a knack of keeping trouble from happening. The combination likely saved us from being out some money and possibly in a hostile situation.

We arrived at the airport last week and met a pre-arranged friend-of-a-friend at the airport, we'll call him Pedro. Pedro appeared to be nice and spoke very good english. He was supposed to help us out the first night find a safe place to stay or get us to our eventual destination of Manzanillo. After claiming that it was High Season and that he couldn't get us an Interbus on such short notice, we agreed to let him set us up at a hotel in town.

After paying for a cab ride and dinner for Bets', Pedro and myself, we arrived at the first hotel. It wasn't that nice, but we were led to believe it was our only option. Little did we know we could have easily taken a cab to somewhere in the outlying area and stayed in a much safer location. Fortunatly, it was only $37 for the night including breakfast the next morning.

The next morning, Pedro offered to get us setup for our second stop, La Fortuna. His uncle supposedly had a place out there. I handed him my credit card, he made the reservation in our name. We left knowing only the name of the hotel and that the Interbus drivers (private charter buses in Costa Rica) would know how to get there just fine.

After spending a few days on the Carribean coast, we scheduled our Interbus to La Fortuna, only to find out that nobody had ever heard of the place we were supposed to stay at. They thought they had it figured out at one point and we paid for our tickets. The next day, we traveled out there (a 7 hour ride in a crappy old bus with broken A/C) only to find that nobody had ever heard of the place.

The driver, not wanting to spoil our travels was kind enough to discover for us that there were ample rooms available at another hotel. We tried in vein to contact Pedro and the Hotel. Pedro was nowhere to be found, the Hotel we were supposed to be staying at had nobody who spoke a lick of English. It was late, we had a safe (and really nice) hotel room - we gave up.

The next day, we got a call from our friend in the states that had referred Pedro to us. She was freaked out as Pedro claimed he had called the police on us for not showing up at the hotel, costing him money. He claimed to have personally made a deposit with them on our behalf.

We made some phone calls and found that Pedro wasn't taking our calls anymore. We now got an answering machine. We smelled a scam at this point. When we headed out the next day to go to our next stop, Quepos, we finally got into Betsy's email and looked at what Pedro had written to our friend in the states.

It was pretty funny - he claimed to have contacted his friend "Officer Mark" to have us arrested - and even included officer Mark as a CC on the email unless we deposited just under $250 into his personal bank account to cover our missed reservation. Oh, and he decided to mention at this point that he has alegedly setup a big party for us and bought wine. Right. Further examination of Officer Mark's email revealed that the domain was for sale. Further investigation discovered that officers do not have emails, only detectives. Officer Mark didn't exist. Nor did his claim to have called the police.

We responeded back, contacted the US Embassy and let Pedro know that we were on to him and he was essentially messing with the wrong people. We emailed the hotel we couldn't find and authorized them to charge my card for a night stay as a cancellation fee. Immediately following, he responded with a plesant "that's fine".

There's a lot more detail, but I figured this is what is palatable for the time I have to write. I might flesh out the details more when I get back to the states.

Pura Vida: Gregsta'