Most tourists in Panama don't ride the buses, but an increasing number do. If you're in the capital and plan to see Chiriqui without driving, you can pay a little over $10 to take the bus to David, or you can fly for about five times the price. Each of these options has its terrors and attractions.

We set out a little after 10:00 on a Sunday morning and got delayed for a 40-minute tire repair in San Jose. It wasn't a big problem --- they kept the air conditioning on and The Scorpion King video running.

After The Rock got done beating on ancient heads, Wesley Snipes came onto the screen and massacred vampires. It seemed at first glance that Panama-David bus movies are selected by criteria much akin those used for Colon buses. (On the way back I saw a pretty good World War II movie and a medium-awful former Navy SEAL vs. evil drug dealer flick.)

We stopped at Santiago for a half-hour to stretch or eat. Going the other way, the stop is generally in Penonome.

And then the bus arrived at the David bus terminal, where a colleague and I needed to get onto another bus headed to Boquete (a half-hour ride, more or less, for $1.20). I always like to travel light and keep moving in such places, but he had checked a bag underneath the bus.

While I stood behing my colleague as he waited for his bag, someone zipped by and grabbed my cell phone out of my basket, and someone else stepped in the way of any hope of pursuit. I could hardly believe it, but for the third time in the little more than nine years I have been back in Panama, I had been the victim of street crime. I felt violated, and I felt like an idiot. I had broken a number of my own rules --- I hadn't hidden something of value from sight, I had presented a stationary target, I took my eyes off of the basket I was carrying for that split second. (And yes, beyond such tactical considerations I do go places that a lot of other gringos won't, so run a higher risk of such things.)

There was no police presence at the bus terminal on this Sunday afternoon. The only security guard was outside at the bus entrance to direct traffic.

The next Tuesday morning, again no police presence but this time there was a security guard patrolling within the terminal. The next morning, there were no cops and no security guards at the David bus station. On each of those occasions, there were a few foreign tourists passing through the terminal.

I don't believe that what happened to me was an isolated incident. I don't know the statistics. In the absence of government transparency, the word on the street is the best we get and the bochinche has it that petty crime is a growth industry in David. It would be nice to know that the police as well as pickpocket teams would be working the bus station there.