Everyone in Brazil - from taxi drivers to beach coconut sellers - tells you to mind your phone.
The message was repeated so often, it sunk in good and proper.
In my first week in Rio, my iPhone barely left our apartment. We were two streets from the beach and ate locally so I didn’t really need it. It was refreshing to be without it; I’ve long longed for a digital detox. Careful what you wish for…
My travel buddy Marco took his to the beach once or twice, but I never did. I took mine out maybe three times in seven days - including once on a glorious beachside jog, strapped to my arm - and that was only three days in once I’d plucked up the courage, in full daylight. After the jog, it stayed locked in the apartment for the day and night.
When we got to Sao Paulo, it was a different story. We weren’t so close to everything. Arriving at our Airbnb, the porter, approximately 103 years old with zero English, wouldn’t let us in.
We had the jitters. We’d been warned so often that Brazil is the phone theft capital of the world. Motorcyclists phone snatch, thieves pickpocket and gangs rob people - especially obvious gringos like us - at knifepoint and gunpoint on the street.
So, we were reluctant to loiter. We’d even been shown a terrifying video of an attempted gunpoint robbery by our bike tour guide in Rio which put the shits right up me.
It was night and this area of Sao Paulo felt a bit dodgy. The 103-year-old porter wasn’t letting us in despite us repeatedly using desperate, broken Portuguese explaining we were Airbnb guests. He just hung up on us every time, leaving us standing on the street. Two nervous gringos; obvious targets. We kept looking over our shoulders.
I started to wish we’d booked a hotel instead of an Airbnb, longing for the comfort and customer service of a safe reception. Marco lit a cigarette and sucked the shit out of it. I needed a drink.
Eventually a tenant left the building and I, now both impatient and scared, barged in, up to the centenarian porter’s office and typed a message into Google translate asking how we get into our Airbnb.
His shaky hand unsteadily held my iPhone and, peeking over half moon glasses, he looked at the device as if I’d gouged out my own kidney, leaving it dripping in his hands. ‘Type here’ I gesticulated with my fingers to Google Translate. He looked like he was about to change TV channel with it. Marco stifled a giggle. I needed a strong drink.
It took the best part of an hour for us to eventually get in - the centenarian increasingly confused and I increasingly impatient. We’d been sent the wrong instructions to the wrong floor and, after a wild goose chase to the eventual right floor and right apartment, we were in. But we spent the next hour asking the management company how on earth we’d get back in once we left.
“Let’s get a fucking drink,” I said. Marco agreed, lighting up another cigarette on the way out. God knows how we’d get back in. We prayed for a change of porter on the night shift.
Then the trickiest of questions: do we take our phones out? It felt too dangerous to leave it to chance to hail a cab on the dangerous street when we didn’t know there’d be any. After much deliberation, we decided it was only fair we both took our phones - one get the Uber there, the other get the Uber back.
We headed to Sao Paulo’s gay village, I necked a pina colada and we wandered to the next pub. Sao Paulo was a totally different vibe to Rio - colder, somehow darker and everyone seemed to be wearing black. Even walking along a 50m stretch of road to the next gay pub, we were both nervous and hyper-alert.
We arrived at the next stretch of gay bars and immediately a man on the street began pleading with us in Portuguese. He was pleading, and grabbing at my pockets, side and back, like he was patting me down. I grabbed Marco and we darted into the nearest gay bar for safety.
Phew. Inside was gay disco music, a mirror ball, cocktails and a bunch of friendly seeming gay men dancing. Not too packed. I sighed and ordered a caipirinha. Then another.
A man walked in I felt instantly attracted to. He had a tattoo on his neck; my weakness (am willing to reassess this). That tattoo might’ve well have read: I will rob you.
We got chatting, his English wasn’t so great, so we used Google Translate back and forth, using his phone and mine. I bought him a drink - we’d been warned about accepting drinks from people. We had a bit of a kiss, headed back to where Marco was and continued to chat, again, using Google Translate.
Next thing I know, in breakneck speed, he has seen an opportunity to grab my phone, stolen it and legged it. Marco suddenly asks me where he is and where my phone is. Both are gone.
I chase down the street of the gay village screaming THIEF! CUNT! THIEVING CUNT! He’s nowhere to be seen. I look unhinged.
I trip and fall and scrape my leg. A kind man helps me up, seeing my distress and takes me back to Marco. I’m mortified and just want to go home. Thank God Marco is here. He calms me down a bit.
The next day, I cannot log into my Google account; it has been hacked, the password changed.
My phone has a Face ID / passcode lock but the thief was professional and quick, changing my password before the phone had chance to lock and while Google was still open via the translator.
I spent the next two days trying to recover the Google account. For that I need a recovery phone number / email. Luckily, I’d set both up.
I discover my recovery (Australian) number was disconnected just a few days ago due to six months of non-use. I contact my old phone supplier to see if my friend in Australia can set up a SIM with that same number. Or if I can buy the number back. No, no and no - the number has gone, permanently.
Next, recovery email. My heart sinks as I discover it’s the email of my former workplace - Change.org - which I left in 2017! Marco tells me I’m dreaming if I think they’ll reopen a long retired work email just to send a former employee a Google recovery code.
Miraculously, they do. The lovely head of IT support for Change.org (thank you so much Peter in San Francisco!) senses the sheer desperation in my emails, gets me on a Zoom call, asks me some identification questions and kindly spends the morning digging my old work email account from the digital ether. I press ‘send code.’ Peter sends me the code. It worked!
Except, it didn’t work. The next step is ‘click yes on the Google Authenticator app’ and that app is device specific. It was on the device that was stolen - my iPhone.
Google tells me I will never recover the account. I barely sleep for two days with stress.
I’m not sure how long I had nunngary@gmail.com for. 15 years? 20? Let’s say 15.
That’s 15 years of journalist contacts, lost. 15 years of emails and all their containing information, gone. Pitches, stories, data. Every single email contact gone. And all my Google documents gone. I did every single piece of work on Google docs. There is no backup. Google was the backup. I have lost every piece of work I’ve ever written for the last 15 years.
One of the those pieces of work was something I spent the last four months working on - the first chapter of my new book, the final part of my new book proposal.
I’d sit in a cramped little library in Buenos Aires on weekends writing it, and sometimes during the week, when I had time around my journalism. Around 5,000 words. Gone.
As this was all happening, I received a panicked call from my flatmate. The thief had also attempted to remove all the money from my mortgage - hundreds of thousands of dollars - by transferring it into another account we jointly have with the same bank. Luckily he was unsuccessful.
I spent a lot of time changing every bill, every bank, every account linked to my Google (pretty much everything from Spotify to Skype). I battled dodgy phone reception and endless identity Qs and admin.
I bought a new iPhone the next day - you can’t survive 24 hours without one in the modern world really.
Our next stop was Mexico City. I promised Marco I’d put all this stress behind me and not mention it again - shit happens - I got really unlucky. I also need to stop necking pina coladas ans talking to men who literally look like criminals. Lesson learned!
But I guess my one safe space in the world is usually a gay bar. My guard went down for a minute and he, having won some of my trust, took advantage of it. Phone stolen is almost a rite of passage - so goes the joke of travelling Latin America. But the Google hack was way worse. It feels like such a violation.
Vowing to come back stronger, I told Marco: I’ll rebuild the contacts, probably quite quickly. I’ll rewrite the chapter, which will take discipline and graft, but I’ll do it. I’ll work hard to recreate my digital / professional life. Life’s all about coming back from adversity, right? And I still have all four limbs! The robbery wasn’t violent. It was a crime of flirtation - cringe.
So, we’re in Mexico City and on the hop on/hop off bus. Here are some pics
I love the touristico bus. I’m smiling. Marco sees it and smiles back from the seat across. “Do you know,” he says removing a headphone. “This is the most relaxed I’ve felt on the entire trip!” I sigh and smile at him.
Suddenly, there was a WHACK around my neck and on my forehead. Low hanging tree branches attacked us on the open top deck; we’d missed the warning to duck in Spanish! We fell about laughing. What also can go wrong? Marco joked.
Just two hours later, he was under arrest.
We got off the tourist bus and Marco was craving a can of beer. He bought some from a shop and asked “do you think I’ll be alright to drink this in the street?”
“Yeah!” I said without even thinking about it. “Way worse things must happen in Mexico!”
Oh how I wish I could change my answer to that question now!
Within minutes, a police officer was on us.
He told Marco he was under arrest because drinking in the street is illegal in Mexico. I kept saying in my broken Spanish, it's our first time here, we didn’t know, we only got here yesterday, please let us off with a warning?
No, he said. Follow me. He walked us a few streets away, saying to Marco, you are under arrest. I continued to plead. He radioed for another police officer. Then a third. All three had guns in their back pockets. They surrounded us. It was fucking intimidating.
He sent the other two to get the police car, which drove around to take us to the station. We later discovered they could’ve detained us for up to 48 hours.
As they did, the first officer said: Pay me $8,000 Mexican pesos ($654 AUD / 341 quid) or you will stay under arrest.
We don’t have the money, we told him. Can we go to a cash machine?
No, he said, you cannot. He consulted the other officer. “Pay us half - $3,500 and we’ll accept.”
We didn’t have that either. I began emptying all the money from my wallet to help Marco. “We have cameras,” the officer said. “Come away from the cameras.”
They frogmarched us away from the cameras, the police car pulled up and they instructed us both to empty all our money discreetly into the front seat, which we did.
They then chucked Marco his beer back(!) and drove off. Marco quickly shoved it in his little gay tote bag. It leaked everywhere so all his stuff reeked of beer for days.
I honestly thought I was a bit worldly and streetwise before this, but travelling through Latin America has made me realise: I probably wasn’t anywhere near as worldly as I thought I was. Our safe places and sanctuaries - a gay cocktail bar; the police themselves - turned on us.
Pure corruption. Pure bribery. Pure thievery. And an elaborate hack. We faced it all!
By the time we got to Puerto Vallarta, our final stop, we truly relaxed. Phones stayed in the apartment. Beers stayed indoors. We found a nearby margarita bar to steady our nerves, and barely left!
PS - now you know why this email comes from a different address
PPS - I’ve set up a Patreon to help me get back on my feet a bit. If you’d like to support my writing and journalism work, you can do so at: patreon.com/GaryNunn
xx