I had in incedent once while walking down the street with my wife and step daughter in San Jose. (This is not to bad mouth San Jose, it is by far the most pleasant and safe capital in centroamerica). We were walking from a shoping district to our hotel in the early evening when accosted by, in my instant opinion, a street crazy caryring what looked like a box of wedding flowers. he approached and said he wanted to show us his ``baby`` in the box. I kept walking but my wife got panicky and stopped to tell him he was being impolite and making her nervous. My stepdaughter, who is very petite, also stopped, probably not knowing what else to do after her mother had stopped.
At this point he was covering ground and i new things were not going good. Comments to my wife to keep moving weren`t working because she was confused and listening to the nutcase babble about his baby. Running was not an option because my 2 family members would not have gotten the big picture. So i took 2 or 3 big quick steps towards the perp, raised my fist up over my head and told him I was going to break his ********head if he didn`t go away. I guess we communicated because he got a look of incredible fear in his eyes and ran away, as in ran away quickly. If not I was fully prepared to break his head and anything else I could get to.
Lessons learned:
1. Don`t walk down that street at night. the office buildings are locked up tight and the one business, an icecream parlor, that used to be there is now closed. One block east is a street with plenty of open stores.
2. Don`t talk to street crazies. Don`t stop. always be prepared to run, especially if you are just a half block from a major commercial street full of normal people.
3. Try to teach your relatives some street smarts. In a crunch, the people with you can be a major liability or a major asset depending on their actions.
4. if all you have with you to fight is your fists, go for it. Hopefully your companions will either jump in or run.
pS. in any other central american capital you always take cabs at night.