Translation of kreuzigen

In the beginning it looked brutal but it worked. He brought my wallet back to me and asked me to count the bills in it. I was stunned and could not believe what just happened. He repeated his order.
I took my backpack and looked for a minibus that would take me a little outside of the town to a small settlement called El Panchan. I arrived there very early and no rooms were available yet.
We could not find a nice hotel so we just took whatever we found in the center of town. We were a little upset with the entire stress, so that we had left our bags in the cab when it drove away.