What we learned is although our insurance requires us to have a tracker installed, that is the first thing that the thieves do, they rip it out and throw it on the ground...sure enough the tracking company sent someone to locate the tracker and it was laying right next to where the car was parked.
We also learned that Toyota Fortuners are the #1 stolen vehicle here as everyone shares our opinion that Toyotas are reliable and will run for a long time. Also in other parts of Africa the roads are terrible and a 4x4 is a necessity. Most stolen Fortuners get driven out of SA and into other places in Africa like Mozambique, Angola. We were sure that by the time our police report was completed that our car was already a good distance North!
We are not excited about the long process ahead to replace the car but we are happy that no one was hurt and that we didn't have any hard to replace items inside (like school backpacks, sentimental toys). We did lose our good Garmin GPS that we had programmed all the Africa maps into, however we had also followed the Embassy advice and programmed home as the Embassy, so at least the thieves weren't going to come pay us a visit at our house too.
What I am most mad about is that Friday night I filled the gas tank completely so I ended up paying for the bad guys to get all the way to the border crossing! The only good news is one tire had a slow leak so maybe that will fail them along the way!
Tomorrow morning we'll begin our paperwork nightmare with the insurance company, what fun!
Sorry to hear this aggravating news. Hope the leaky tire does stop the thieves.
ReplyDeleteGlad everyone is OK.