A harrowing true story about an Adidas adorned serial killer, I think.

xxxx Dolling

The Full Adidas Bandit

Loki and I had reluctantly left Brasil and embarked upon the world’s most disastrous bike tour on the Ruta 40, destination – Patagonia.

After ten million flat tires and one extremely tiring tantrum we found ourselves at a hostel in Bariloche. At the communal breakfast table some Australian travelers asked me, ‘have you guys had any incidents while you have been traveling?’ We had just been regaling them with the horrors of our bike trip told so we guessed they were probably wondering if we had been scammed or robbed or seen anything a bit full on.
‘Well, in Belo Horizonte I bought a pair of denim shorts that I thought were going to be $20 AUS but they were like $45, that was devastating. I was in a black mood for hours.’

Bleak.

If someone were to ask us that today we would tell them the following tale.

 

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Loki and I had been in El Bolson for a week and it was our first day as a gang of four now that Ruby and Johnny had joined us. We were feeling fine and the weather was glorious, the sun was shining and we wanted to walk to the river for a swim and to discuss our route to the deep south of Argentina and Chile. Ruby and Johnny had just put a deposit down on a Combi, the first stop would be Puerto Varas, Chile to collect the fabulous yellow beast.
Loki and I had already checked out the local mirador as recommended by the tourist map as well as the nearby overnight hike to the glacier. On our first venture into these woods we had seen cops armed with AK47s wandering in the bushes.
As the four of us walked up the road to the Rio Azul we passed two heavily armed police who smiled and pleasantly greeted us ‘Que tal?’

We strolled down the bush path running alongside the dirt road and played ‘who am I?’ in Spanish. We heard someone running down the road, as we looked to our right we saw a sweaty, wild-eyed guy dressed in a dark blue adidas tracksuit zoom past us. Ruby noted that it looked like he was carrying a big knife, ‘that’s a bit worrying’ someone said, but we carried on.
The path came to a little clearing and I decided I wanted to walk on the road again, the grass was itching my feet. As we filed off the path I noticed the man in the tracksuit approaching us on the bush path several metres ahead.

 

Suddenly we were all standing on the road. The wild-eyed man was brandishing a machete in one hand and a small glinting knife in the other. Whenever I reflect on the image of the small knife in his hand I can hear Johnny’s words in my head, ‘That small knife is the one you want to look out for, the machete is all for show.’ Despite having a clear view of his face minutes earlier when he trundled past us, he had opted to cover his face in a bandana. I imagined how I might try to describe him to the police,

“Uhhh… ele tem pelo negro, y ele e um moreno. Tem piel moreno y olhos locos! Y ele veste roupas todas Adidas azul!”

Not only would I be speaking a very basic and muddled version of both Spanish and Portuguese, I would also be describing a large proportion of the Argentinian population.
The Adidas Bandit was terrifying, like a martial arts character out of a 90’s playstation game come to life. He made some kind of demand I didn’t understand and seemed to be gesturing with both knives that he wanted us to lie on the ground.

‘I think he wants us to lie down?’ I asked no one in particular.

It occurred to me that he was probably going to murder all of us because he was clearly a sporty psychopath. I’ve always loved reading true crime stories about nutters who bonk around cutting folk up, and in this moment I realized that it was my time to face a crazed serial killer and action one of the hypothetical escape plans I had been working on my whole life.
He just wanted our mochilas.

Loki had obviously done some quick calculations and with his knowledge of my physical abilities had recognized that not only was I a fairly slow ‘sprinter’ at the best of times, I was also wearing thongs and on a gravel road.
I heard the instruction,

‘Alice, run.’

Terrified and overwhelmed with images of this fashionable Adidas Bandit brutalising my friends with a machete, I kicked off my pink flip flops and trundled away. I felt like I’d never run so slowly in my life. As a child I came last in the 100 metre sprints every single year, except one time, a lanky, flat footed type called Briony Walkman managed to out-slow me and I proudly crossed the finish line second last.

I kept waiting for an adrenaline rush to turn me into a super human but it never seemed to come. Every time I turned around to see what was going on/check that no one had been butchered yet Loki would notice the seconds wasted and shout some encouragement,

‘Keep going little fella’.

Ruby was trying to negotiate with the bandit and I could hear the boys yelling in panic, they were throwing money at him and urging Ruby to run. Meanwhile, I plodded up the hill maintaining a steady cry of ‘yyyaaaarrrrrraaaaaaaagggggffhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!’

 

Johnny recalled that by the time he had turned around to run I was already so far up the road, staggering up the hill barefoot in my citrus patterned bike shorts. He seemed to find the image quite comical despite the danger. Loki, Ruby and Johnny caught up to me and overtook me with ease. I stopped panicking about being the last person to be murdered and realized I might actually be the first victim!

 

In primary school, after the Port Arthur shootings happened I developed my first strategy for escaping murderers. In this particular scenario, I’d always felt it would be wise to lie on the ground as soon as gun shots started happening and pretend be dead already. Flawless. So far, my painfully lethargic ascent of the hill inspired had only one escape plan other than ‘outrun the bandit’. I peered over edge of the road where the earth dropped suddenly and there were brambles everywhere. Worst case scenario, I would leap off the edge and roll a couple of hundred metres down the hill, land deep in the brambles and hide. Flawless.

 
We made it to the top of a particularly steep hill and the bandit finally seemed to have given up on the world’s slowest pursuit. He stood at the bottom of the hill making a big show of pretending to sharpen his knives.

 
We all collapsed through the gate of a local family’s yard. As they came out to investigate the gringo situation on their driveway they seemed to know immediately what had happened. Johnny started giving everyone water from his water-sack backpack. As I sat in the dirt wheezing and coughing up dust I considered purchasing a water dispensing backpack. No wonder the bandit was so keen on our backpacks.

 

We discovered EVERYONE in El Bolson seemed to know about that notorious stretch of road. The guy who ran our campsite was horrified that we had even ventured out that way,

‘Everyone gets robbed on that road!’

Great, thanks everyone.

Why did the folk in the tourist centre never mention it?

Why did the cops we passed fail to pass on a warning?

What the hell El Bolson?