I’m still getting a lot of comments from people who think that I’m crazy to be in Mexico what with all the drug gang violence going on.<\/p>\n
Hands up. How many of you would write off the entire country of Canada because of our recent terrorist attacks in Ottawa and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu? How about the entire United States because of the events in Ferguson? Yes, there is bad stuff going on in Mexico right now, but it’s nowhere near where I am and I am not going to write off a whole country for events happening in a specific area.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, I was in Surrey, B.C. in early 2009 when there was rampant drug gang shootouts in broad daylight in places I frequented. I was paralysed when I was there, afraid to leave the RV park. So I know what it feels like to be somewhere unsafe. Mazatl\u00e1n just doesn’t have that vibe.<\/p>\n
In just about all the cases of violence against tourists in Mexico over the last few years, there has been a drug connection. When there hasn’t been, it’s just an unfortunate case of random violence that happens anywhere. I lived through the biker gang wars in Quebec in the ’90s where innocents lost their lives. It was only a gut feeling that kept me from a movie theatre in Surrey at the time of a shootout in 2009. The odds of my getting mixed up in something like that in Mexico, especially in such a highly touristic area, are slim. Or, at least, no worse than in Canada and certainly much better than in the U.S.<\/p>\n
Would I wander around Maz at night? No. Would I wander around most large Canadian and U.S. cities at night? No. The exception in all cases being if I was going somewhere specific and had my transportation lined up. Dale and I are still thinking of going to a club to listen to her friend play music one night and we’ll take a pulmonia from the panga to the club and back.<\/p>\n
Wandering around Maz’s downtown today, I was struck by the lack of panhandlers and gang youth hanging around. I strongly suspect that the area is kept ‘clean’ because of the local economy being so dependent on the tourists. I found myself walking in circles holding my iPhone and didn’t have that gut feeling I get in the States or Canada that someone is going to try to snatch it.<\/p>\n
After a year and a half in deep rural Saskatchewan, it is wonderful to be living so near to a large, vibrant, accessible, and clean city that I feel so comfortable exploring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m still getting a lot of comments from people who think that I’m crazy to be in Mexico what with all the drug gang violence going on. Hands up. How many of you would write off the entire country of Canada because of our recent terrorist attacks in Ottawa and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu? How about the entire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[815,14,635,814,3],"tags":[853],"class_list":["post-1379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mazatlan","category-mexico","category-north-america","category-sinaloa","category-travel","tag-accommodation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}