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Makes me want to go back to Mexico City! There was so much I wanted to see and do that just didn't fit into a weekend.
Mexico has been all over the news this past week up here in Canada... I have no doubt this will impact many travel plans given the amount of cheap travel destinations to warm resorts in various other countries (cuba chief among them). Mexico resort beating victim emerges from coma - Calgary - CBC News
I personally have been to five vastly different Mexican cities (none of them in the North) and felt completely safe wandering around off the beaten path. Mass poverty does drive criminal behaviour though as human nature goes, and Mexico certainly has it's share. I've heard various stories from friends over the years, and in many of them, some degree of common sense would have prevented a bad situation.
Guadalajara, Puebla, Cuernavaca, Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende?
Those are probably my favorite cities in Mexico.
Or was it a resort like Cancun, Cozumel, Playa del Carmen?
Now on to that unfortunate incident involving that poor Canadian woman.
Not to make excuses...because yes...crime is rampant in many parts of Mexico...like you said...poverty, drug cartels, etc...it makes for a potential explosive situation at times.
However...there were 1.6 million Canadians who visited Mexico last year.
That's a lot of Canadians...so one was bound to experience something horrible...it's just the law of averages.
And people tend to forget that Mexico is a large country with a large population (the 14th largest in size, with 112 million people)...so it's not like it happened in a little Caribbean Island or something.
For example, traveling from the northern industrial city of Monterrey to Cancun...is like traveling from San Francisco to Nebraska, 1500 miles, lol.
Yes, it becomes big news if a tourist gets murdered...but how about the 45,000 or so Mexicans who have been killed because of the drug wars? Non-Mexicans often overlook that side of the coin.
Overall...tourists are pretty much safe...just follow common sense...avoid the border towns, don't venture into off touristy spots, don't stay too late at night, and the odds are that you'll be fine.
Like I said, very unfortunate what happened to her...I hope she fully recovers.
Check this out:
New Orleans:
The new year started bloody, with 12 people murdered and 47 wounded by gunfire in the first 12 days of January. Murders in New Orleans jumped 14 percent in 2011 to 199, making the city's homicide rate the highest in the nation at nearly 58 murders per 100,000 residents, or 12 times the national rate...
The Miami Herald went further still. It cited that, while Mexico, as a whole, had a murder rate of 11.5 per 100,000 people, Washington DC has a rate of 31 per 100,000 people, while New Orleans has a rate of 74/100,000 (different number from the previous article). Despite the news headlines, the homicide rate in Mexico has dropped significantly during the past ten years; while modern day murders tend to be 'concentrated in a few cities, mainly in Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Baja California'.
14 violent homicides registered for every 100,000 Mexican residents...the ratio in the whole continental USA is 5 per 100,000.
Mexico...while overall more violent than the continental USA...it's murder rate is much LOWER than New Orleans for example (as a stand alone city).
Although Mexico’s violent homicide rate exceeds that of the United States in terms of homicides per residents, countries such as Brazil and Colombia, the murder rate per resident is much higher than in Mexico.
The state with the lowest murder rate is Yucatán, the Gulf of Mexico state known for its beaches and Mayan ruins. Its murder rate of 2 per 100,000 was comparable to Wyoming and Montana.
Juarez takes the cake though, that Mexican border town is the deadliest on Earth. Juárez has seen more violence than anywhere on Earth, battlefields aside. The murder rate last year was over 200 per 100,000 people, more than ten times the national average and 200 times the rate in El Paso. Juarez makes New Orleans look like Sesame Street...
Guadalajara, Puebla, Cuernavaca, Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende?
Those are probably my favorite cities in Mexico.
Or was it a resort like Cancun, Cozumel, Playa del Carmen?
Now on to that unfortunate incident involving that poor Canadian woman.
Not to make excuses...because yes...crime is rampant in many parts of Mexico...like you said...poverty, drug cartels, etc...it makes for a potential explosive situation at times.
However...there were 1.6 million Canadians who visited Mexico last year.
That's a lot of Canadians...so one was bound to experience something horrible...it's just the law of averages.
And people tend to forget that Mexico is a large country with a large population (the 14th largest in size, with 112 million people)...so it's not like it happened in a little Caribbean Island or something.
For example, traveling from the northern industrial city of Monterrey to Cancun...is like traveling from San Francisco to Nebraska, 1500 miles, lol.
Yes, it becomes big news if a tourist gets murdered...but how about the 45,000 or so Mexicans who have been killed because of the drug wars? Non-Mexicans often overlook that side of the coin.
Overall...tourists are pretty much safe...just follow common sense...avoid the border towns, don't venture into off touristy spots, don't stay too late at night, and the odds are that you'll be fine.
Like I said, very unfortunate what happened to her...I hope she fully recovers.
Check this out:
New Orleans:
The new year started bloody, with 12 people murdered and 47 wounded by gunfire in the first 12 days of January. Murders in New Orleans jumped 14 percent in 2011 to 199, making the city's homicide rate the highest in the nation at nearly 58 murders per 100,000 residents, or 12 times the national rate...
The Miami Herald went further still. It cited that, while Mexico, as a whole, had a murder rate of 11.5 per 100,000 people, Washington DC has a rate of 31 per 100,000 people, while New Orleans has a rate of 74/100,000 (different number from the previous article). Despite the news headlines, the homicide rate in Mexico has dropped significantly during the past ten years; while modern day murders tend to be 'concentrated in a few cities, mainly in Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Baja California'.
14 violent homicides registered for every 100,000 Mexican residents...the ratio in the whole continental USA is 5 per 100,000.
Mexico...while overall more violent than the continental USA...it's murder rate is much LOWER than New Orleans for example (as a stand alone city).
Although Mexico’s violent homicide rate exceeds that of the United States in terms of homicides per residents, countries such as Brazil and Colombia, the murder rate per resident is much higher than in Mexico.
The state with the lowest murder rate is Yucatán, the Gulf of Mexico state known for its beaches and Mayan ruins. Its murder rate of 2 per 100,000 was comparable to Wyoming and Montana.
Juarez takes the cake though, that Mexican border town is the deadliest on Earth. Juárez has seen more violence than anywhere on Earth, battlefields aside. The murder rate last year was over 200 per 100,000 people, more than ten times the national average and 200 times the rate in El Paso. Juarez makes New Orleans look like Sesame Street...
I'm not trying to be rude to you here so please understand that is not my intention. This is just coming from a good place. Perhaps it is that every post, no matter what the subject is, it always comes back to the monster cafe. I'd love to hear more about you and other stuff. Again i am not trying to be a jerk towards you so please don't take it that way. And that is how i see it. I might be way off.
Guadalajara, Puebla, Cuernavaca, Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende?
Those are probably my favorite cities in Mexico.
Or was it a resort like Cancun, Cozumel, Playa del Carmen?
off the top of my head
Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas.
Mérida, Yucatán.
Cancun.
Mexico City.
and a great deal of travel with overnights within the vicinity of those particular cities. Hated the resort culture in Cancun (although there were some really nice parts of the Mayan Riveira, including terrific dives, climbs and ruins), although once I did manage with great effort to get out into the "real" part of Cancun on the bike... loved finding the public beach where the local families go.
Each city was so vastly different and regional. It would be like comparing New York, San Francisco, Cleveland and Austin. Or Toronto, Vancouver, Yellow Knife and Halifax.
The racing circuit also had me living in close proximity for a two week span with people from all over Mexico, although I have no illusions that folks who have the money to train and compete in sporting events are generally the upper class in Mexico. Still, it did give me a pretty good perspective on the diversity of the country within our conversations.
My favourite snack were these little teeny tiny dried fish, drowned in hotsauce. My teammates couldn't even look at them when it was offered to them (teeny tiny eyes on them and everything). I ate 'em like goldfish crackers. I also loved that you could get fresh mango and grapefruit on every street corner in Merida... again with chilis and hotsauce. Missed that the most when I went to the cities further north. Loved all the street markets wherever I went... particularly the ones in the non touristy places like in Tuxtla. Hand made artisan products designed for local consumption are quite astonishing and something we've really lost here in the upper parts of North America it seems. Not that there aren't Mexican Walmarts (the Canadians decided to buy toilet seats for everyone to use in the dorms we were staying in... they all thought we were nuts).
Got to see some Deigo Rivera murals up close... could have spend hours staring at them.
Climbed to the top of the Teotihuacan ruins.
Although my favourite ruins were Uxmal, which was the endpoint for one of the road races.
Also huge irony in the fact that one of my top three highlights was seeing the Ashes and Snow exhibit in Mexico City... featuring the work of a Canadian artist. Also nothing beats the day when they block off the streets of Mexico City for bikes. Awesome stuff.
Man, thanks for sharing, Samurai...your accounts and pics are awesome.
Yeah, I also love those little dried up fish...it has that salty lemony flavor, yum, lol.
I love those regions of Mexico...with heavy Mayan/Lacandon influences.
That Rivera mural is amazing.
Did you try Cochinita/Puerco Pibil? One of my all time favorite dishes...
You race?
Would like to know more about that...
P.S. One thing I don't miss about Mexico...is their inferior toilet paper...and their awful sewer system...that stuff gets clogged up all the time...big time kudos for the mighty USA for having the world's best sewer/plumbing system...and awesome 2-ply toiler paper...
Thanks for sharing. I would love to go down for a vacation someday. My in-laws have been multiple times. They are pretty well traveled and have said that Mexico is by far their favorite country (Not only great sites but very reasonable). My only experience was visiting Tijuana when I was in 8th grade (my family made a big trip to visit my aunt in California and we drove down to Tijuana for a couple of days). I know that isn't really seeing the best side of Mexico so would love to go back for real this time. I have always wondered why Tijuana is so poverty stricken considering it is right over the border and would think that the area receives a lot of cash from U.S. vistors like us who decide to go over the border for a few days.
"The farther we go, the more the ultimate explanation recedes from us, and all we have left is faith."
~Vaclav Hlavaty
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