If You Go Out in the Woods Today You´d Better Not Go Alone

The U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara warns today (the 26th) in a most urgent fashion that Dawg, as a U.S. Citizen, had better use extreme caution if I travel in or near Tepic or Xalisco, Nayarit or if I should travel to anyplace in Nayarit north of Tepic. Thank God my wife is French so I can send her sorry ass.

But, wait, we are headed instead to the wilds of the high Sierra in Puebla State and then on to Boca Del Rio, Veracruz where they dumped all those bodies on the main thoroughfare there a couple of days ago in broad daylight and found an additional eleven bodies scattered about Metropolitan Veracruz the next day. ¡Whew! Thank God that we are driving to uneventful Veracruz instead of that hellhole Tepic. Tepic, for God´s sake. We refused to consider retiring there ten years ago because it seemed do, well, boring and without interest.

Well, at least our final destination of Chiapas is OK, not because there are no mass murders there but because the victims are mostly Guatamaltecos, Hondureños and Chiapaneco indigenous falling as unrecorded prey to local cutthroats in the jungle and we are Californians living in the city. Maybe we´ll skip that self-guided tour to Laguna Miramar.

....or try Salinas, CA on a Saturday night if you get too bored.

Safe journey, Brigitte and BoB.

Have a good trip Dawg and Dawgette.


Neither the Canadian nor the British Consulates have, as usual, issued any warnings whatsoever, nor has any other consulate to my knowledge. Since the Canucks and the Brits MUST be immune from any danger, perhaps Dawgette can pretend to be French Canadian.

On the other hand, a horrifyingly frightening incident has occurred in Toronto.

http://www.etraveladvisories.com/code/alert/b2b_latest.asp

Toronto
26 Sep Cabbie carjacked at downtown gas station. Details

Good thing you're not headed there.

gringal wrote:....or try Salinas, CA on a Saturday night if you get too bored.

Safe journey, Brigitte and BoB.

Funny and coincidental that you should mention Salinas, Gringal. Just for those of you unfamiliar with Coastal Central California, be aware that Salinas, the town featrured in Steinbeck´s East of Eden [/i], is a medium sized city near Monterey Bay which is a nice farming city with a splendid cool climate but with a notable crime problem.

It happens that Dawg lived in the town of Aptos on Monterey Bay for a few years back in the 1970s/80s and, today, I was sitting on a bench on the Ajijic malecon when I was approached by a young man of Hispanic heritage who was attracted to me because I was walking one of my Xoloitzincuintlis (Mexican Hairless dogs) and, as it turns out, this is a breed he admires greatly so we struck up a conversation regarding the dog and other things in general. As the conversation between strangers progressed, we discovered some common background including the fact that, while he had been born in Watsonville, California, a successful, largely Hispanic farming community on Monterey Bay, he had been raised for a number of years in Ajijic and was then living in Watsonville and working for the Watsonville area distributor for the [i] Santa Cruz Sentinental newspaper which is the most prominent Santa Cruz daily in that region.

Without going into too much detail, let´s just say that Watsonville, a successful middle-class largely Hispanic farming community is within near spitiing distance of the much larger and largely working-class community of Salinas but the communities could not be more disparate. Watsonville is quiet, properous and peaceful. Salinas is also prosperous but a rough-and-tumble city where street violence is not uncommon.

My new-found friend and acquaintance inquired of me as to how expats from the United States could think Lakeside or, for that matter, Metro Guadalajara and its environs could be thought violent and dangerous when Americans live in the midst of extraordinary urban violence in places like Salinas, Stockton and Oakland and a thousand other U.S. sh*tholes and I responded that it is always easier to see the wart on your brother´s backside than the cancer on your own nose.