When to listen to warnings and
when to ignore them
If warnings come from someone who
is native to the area would you listen? What if the warnings come from
someone who spent a good few months in the area, would you listen?
Most
people gasp when I say I’ve travelled alone, but I blow them off because they've
never been anywhere. But I’m getting cautions from people who know what they are
talking about.
Mexico is hit and miss--if you go to the big tourist areas
and the big cities (excluding the border towns), you probably won't have
problems. But there are parts of Mexico that are dangerous.
I work for
the Social Security Administration, and we have Mexican nationals who work for
us as field representatives servicing beneficiaries in Mexico. They come into
our border offices (like El Paso) and sometimes central office here in Baltimore
for training. They continually caution us not to travel alone outside the big
cities and tourist areas, and to be careful of the police everywhere as they are
terribly underpaid and it is tempting for them to shake down foreigners for
money. I learned the hard way in Juarez that this is true.
Some
areas of the country still have outlaw gangs that roam the highways and byways,
especially at night. Our field reps are often stopped in their travels;
fortunately even the gangs don't mess with the Social Security field reps as
many people have relatives receiving monthly checks.
My parents have
lived in El Paso for over 30 years and frequently go into Mexico along the
border and into the interior, but not into certain areas and not at certain
times. They rarely drive a car beyond Juarez based on very bad situations that
friends and acquaintances have experienced. When they need to go further into
Mexico, they use buses and trains, or their Mexican friends drive.
That
said Mexico is a very interesting country and culture. It is big and varied
geographically. By and large, people are friendly, though there are some who
really resent the US and US citizens.
Read Graham Greene's "The Lawless
Roads" for his personal glimpse at some of the not so terribly distant (1930s)
historical influences that went into the development of today's
Mexico.
I've got a pretty sensitive danger radar. There are places
in London I won't walk at night alone. I sometimes get the jitters before going
somewhere new by myself, and this can definitely magnify peoples' warnings to
me. This sometimes makes it difficult for me to sort out what I maybe
shouldn't do from the things that are probably fine. I don't make any firm plans
until I get to a place, so I can scope out the situation and decide what fits
within my comfort level.
Many people talk about "travelling alone" as if
they are wandering around in some vast wasteland with not another person in
sight. Just because I don't have friends or my partner with me doesn't
mean I'm alone. There are lots of other people around at any given time
and that tends to make me feel quite safe. Most people are quite friendly and
just because we grew up on opposite ends of the planet doesn't mean we don't
have loads in common to talk about.
I'd never dream of driving around the
countryside in Equatorial Africa by myself but I'm quite happy to travel
squashed into a little bus with lots of other people. Being the only
foreigner in the lot could single you out but in in my experience and in the
places I've travelled this usually work in the favour of the travellers rather
than against them.
This could be different in Mexico but it's worth
remembering that if the annual murder rates for Florida were applied to many
other (especially Third World) destinations, most people wouldn't dream of
travelling there but they'll quite happily live in Florida! Targeted
attacks involve only a very tiny percentage of foreign travellers in Africa, for
example, so I don't worry about that much but I don't go to political rallies
either.
Ultimately I think projecting a confident yet friendly attitude
and looking like you know exactly what you're doing and where you're going tends
to deflect most unwanted attention. Most dodgy people want an easy mark
after all.
I always make sure I have some extra cash in reserve if I feel
like I need to take a taxi instead of walking or want to find another room if
I'm uncomfortable with the first one I've chosen. Most of my best
information about the safety of travelling around and doing things comes from
other travellers once I've arrived at a new location. Once I've armed
myself with as much info as I can get from home I just hold my breath, dive in
and see what happens. After all, if the situation turns out to be bad, I can
just confine myself to well travelled tourist haunts. That's never happened,
though.
What I'm trying to say is that:
1) safety is pretty
relative, so factor in that what feels safe for you based on your past
experiences might be different from the people giving you the
warnings;
2) you don't have to make all your decisions about what
you do on your trip right now. Figure out the things you'd like to do and
scope out the situation once you're there.
Although I've never travelled
extensively in Mexico, I've heard about the kinds of things. They wouldn't
keep me from travelling there, but they would definitely keep me from renting a
car there. I'd go out planning to take public transport, with a few ideas
about where I wanted to go and would make firmer plans once I'd arrived and had
a chance to assess the situation for myself. That's just me though; everybody
has their own way of doing things.
I'm a bit of a radical. I say
ignore the travel warnings almost always. If you're constantly on your toes,
aware of your environment, and keep a low profile, you can travel almost
anywhere on earth without having problems.
I had a fascinating trip
through Israel and the West Bank which if I had have listened to most western
governments around the world I would never have seen due to travel warnings.
