CHASING MY STOLEN PHONE THROUGH COLOMBIA'S CARNIVAL

I was travelling through Colombia alone, but I had reunited with my best friend in Santa Marta, where she was studying at the time. Together with another friend, we decided to travel to Barranquilla for Carnival, often described as the second-largest carnival in the world.

Even before we arrived, people warned us to be careful. Pickpocketing was common during Carnival, they said, and organized groups used the enormous crowds to steal from as many people as possible.

We listened, but we weren't overly worried. We knew the usual precautions and assumed we would be fine.

Then we arrived in Barranquilla.

It became one of the wildest celebrations I had ever experienced. The streets were filled with parades, colours, music, and people dancing everywhere. Roads had been closed to traffic, and the entire city seemed to have turned into one enormous party.

We joined the main parade, and I spent the afternoon taking photos with my phone. At some point, I unexpectedly ran into someone I had met a few months earlier in Colombia. He joined us, we met more people along the way, and eventually our original group of three had grown to seven: four travellers and three locals.

As we walked through the crowd, I started talking to one of my friends about how I had been experiencing the north of Colombia. I told him that I sometimes felt as though tourists were seen as walking ATMs rather than people - as though every interaction was simply another opportunity to make money from us.

The timing of that conversation could not have been more ironic.

A young man suddenly pushed against me. At first, I didn't think much of it. People were pressing against one another from every direction, and accidental contact was unavoidable.

Then he pushed against me again, harder this time.

"What the fuck?" I thought. "He's probably drunk."

I turned around and looked directly at him. I saw his face clearly, but a few moments later, he pushed against me once more. By the time I turned around again, angry and ready to confront him, he had disappeared into the crowd.

I continued walking.

I had watched people get pickpocketed in Medellín before, sometimes almost every day, but I had always believed it wouldn't happen to me because I was careful.

About three minutes later, I reached for my fanny pack.

It was wide open.

My phone was gone.

Panic hit me immediately. My photos, contacts, accounts, travel information - what felt like my entire life - was stored on that phone.

As soon as I told the others, all seven of us stopped. We immediately understood what had happened: the young man hadn't been drunk. He had repeatedly pushed against me to distract me while opening my bag.

One of my friends handed me his phone so I could sign into my account and track mine. His battery was at five percent, and it was the only device we could use.

The location appeared.

My phone was still nearby, close to a bakery just around the corner.

All seven of us immediately started moving towards it. We were angry, full of adrenaline, and convinced that we might still be able to get it back.

We followed the location into a side street and found around twenty young men gathered together. They were dressed similarly, appeared to know exactly what they were doing, and were clearly working as one group.

The moment I saw them, I knew we were looking at an organized gang that had been moving through Carnival and stealing from people in the crowd.

Then I saw him.

Among the group was the same young man who had pushed against me. I recognized his face immediately.

My phone was right there.

One of my Colombian friends stepped forward.

"You have my friend's phone," he told them.

Another man approached us and made sure we could see the handle of a knife.

"What exactly do we have?" he asked.

I immediately stepped between him and my friend.

"No, no," I said. "He doesn't have anything of mine."

My friend repeated that the group had taken my phone. As soon as he said it, more of the men began moving towards us.

I grabbed my friend and pulled him back.

"We're leaving," I told him. "Let's go."

Walking away was incredibly frustrating. I could see the person who had stolen from me, and the map showed that my phone was only metres away. But there were too many of them, they were armed, and getting closer would have put all seven of us in danger.

Once we were far enough away, I asked my Colombian friends whether we should go to the police. They told me that unless we could prove exactly who had taken the phone, the police were unlikely to help us. Accusing an organized group without sufficient evidence could even create more trouble for us.

I remembered the thief's face, but I didn't know his name, had no proof of what he had done, and had no safe way to single him out from the gang.

I had bought the phone only three months earlier, but no device worth five or six hundred euros was worth risking our lives.

We tried to return to Carnival, but the mood had changed. After staying a little longer, we eventually decided to travel back to Santa Marta.

That was when we discovered our next problem.

The bus company required every passenger to show identification so that the name on the ticket matched the passenger list. I hadn't brought my physical ID because I normally carried a photo of it on my phone.

The phone I no longer had.

Without proof of my identity, the woman at the ticket counter refused to sell me a ticket. She quietly explained that there was a camera behind her and that she couldn't openly make an exception. However, she suggested that if we could show her a picture of an ID on another phone, she might be able to help us.

What followed was a desperate and admittedly questionable piece of travel improvisation. One of my friends created a rough digital ID image with my photo on it and showed it to the ticket seller.

It was certainly not our proudest solution, but she accepted it.

Finally, we were allowed onto the bus.

As we travelled back to Santa Marta, I thought about how much more complicated everything would be without my phone. I had lost my photos, access to important information, and a device I had bought only three months earlier.

But I was still alive. I wasn't hurt, my friends weren't hurt, and nobody had risked their life over something replaceable.

The experience also taught me something about the people we meet along the road. Our group consisted of four travellers and three Colombian locals. Some of them had known me for a long time, while others had only recently joined us. Yet the moment something went wrong, everyone stayed together.

One person lent me his phone despite having almost no battery left. Another confronted the gang for me. The others followed the location with us, kept one another safe, and helped me find a way home when I had no identification.

Nobody simply said, "That's your problem," and walked away.

Difficult moments can turn a mixed group of locals and travellers into a team surprisingly quickly. It matters less where people come from or how long they have known one another than whether they choose to stand together when something goes wrong.

By that point, I had also been travelling for so long that caution had started to feel like background noise. After months of handling unfamiliar places and difficult situations, I had quietly started believing that nothing would happen to me.

That day reminded me that confidence and carelessness can look very similar.

I left Carnival without my phone, but with two lessons worth keeping: travel experience does not make you untouchable, and the people who stand beside you when something goes wrong can matter far more than anything that was stolen.