Robbed at Gunpoint

Awesome night. Made a G on the grind, had an amazing meal at Praha, and then got robbed at gunpoint.

Myself and 4 other poker players go to this really nice restaurant to eat called Praha.  After dinner we walked to the road just 20ft from the restaurant with tons of people everywhere behind us when two guys on a moped stop and ask us if we know where Del Rey apartments are. As we're telling these guys that we have no idea where these apartments are, the guy on the back of the bike inconspicuously pulls out a gun, demands our phones and our money, snap grabs everything out of our front pockets and they take off.

This literally happened in a matter of 10 seconds in front of an open air restaurant with people everywhere.

When he demanded my phone I told him "No tengo". I don't have a Costa Rican cellphone yet and I usually never take my iPhone out with me. Lucky for me he didn't check my back pockets, I forgot that I had brought my iPhone to the restaurant to take some pictures. Unfortunately, I knew we were gonna play credit card roulette at the end of dinner for the bill so I had $200 cash on me.

The funny thing is that whenever I walk to the grocery store here, I always keep $20 in my pocket and put my large bills in my cigarette pack. If I was on the way to the store when this happened the robber would have pocketed $20 and then handed me back a cigarette pack full of large bills. I woulda had a good laugh at that.

Unfortunately, that didn't happen.

So after all this, my friend's girlfriend (a Costa Rican girl) came over to his place and we told her what happened.  We also spoke with our security guard and after listening to them tell stories and asking them if it was safe just to walk 3minutes down the hill to the grocery store, we found out just how insanely dangerous Costa Rica is.  Even where we are in Escazu, the NICEST area of San Jose (it would be like Alpharetta, Georgia), you shouldn't be out at night.  This motorbike style robbery is totally normal and it's not uncommon for people to get shot if they have no money or refuse in any way.

Apparently, earlier this year, my friend's girlfriend took a cab with her boyfriend and a couple of our other friends to her place to get some things from her house before heading back to his place. As she walked inside a group of guys pull up in a car and wait for her to come back outside. As she comes outside they hop out of the car and start quickly walking toward her to rob her then they stop because they see that the cab is full of guys and I guess they didn't have guns and didn't want to get into a brawl.

Keep in mind that this is Escazu. This is THE NICEST AREA of San Jose!

I found out that even our regular cab driver, Tomas, got robbed while jogging during the day a few weeks ago. A Tico jacked him for his iPod and whatever else he had on him.

We live in a complex with just 4 houses and our place is gated with razor wire all around it, we pay for a 24/7 armed security guard who regularly patrols the grounds with a flashlight, and all of our neighbor's complexes are the exact same. I used to think it was overkill on the security, but not after hearing stories from these locals. And like I said, we live in the nicest area in San Jose. There's a Maserati dealership nearby and we see Ferraris when we walk down to the shops! That's how nice of an area we are in! And it's still not safe to walk outside your complex at night! There are other stories that I could share but they aren't nearly as common and I don't want to scare the hell out of my parents.

There's a saying the Ticos have here:  "The good people live in houses that look like prisons (because of the bars on the windows, gates, fences topped with razor wire, metal doors, alarms, padlocks, etc) and the criminals roam the streets freely." I can tell you from being here, that is completely accurate and not an exaggeration.  At least the weather is nice.