The Police

Among the many misperceptions gringos bring to Mexico is the notion that all police are corrupt and Mexican police are hopelessly so. It's odd to me inasmuch as a great deal of the corruption that does exist here as much as it does anywhere, is caused by drugs. The trade brings with it so much money, cocaine will corrupt anybody given enough time and money.

And ironically the consumers of the trade in cocaine and marijuana live north of the Rio Bravo del Norte, making the traders down here unconscionably wealthy. So much so the cartels are struggling to launder their money in agricultural products boosting the price of avocados and limes. They don't just trade in fruit, they hold a gun to your head and unless you pay their inflated prices you die. Everyone suffers from their interference. That's one way to run a business I suppose, terrify your buyers!

However if you come to Mexico as a tourist you will be warned all cops are on the take and will stop you for any reason to put their hands out. It just isn't so in our limited experience.

We have been through 44 checkpoints, local police, Guardia Nacional, Army and Navy road blocks, Agricultural Inspectors and Federal Fiscal police, not to mention one road block set up by the Zapatista rebels, and at none of them has anyone asked for money. Two in Chiapas and one in Tabasco State stopped us to chat about where we were from and where we were going to and do we really live in the van, and asked for nothing. One Border Patrol check next to the Guatemalan border in Chiapas did a very professional job of checking our papers just as the Border patrol in the US does along the Mexican border.

I like to be intercepted by people selling fried plantain chips wherever traffic is backed up, on topes (speedbumps) and Caseta de Cobros (toll booths) but of the police I have no fear and I expect nothing and indeed rarely do we old folks attract their attention. I suppose this has to be said too: Mexicans aren't lying in wait to murder, kidnap or rob you. Most people have lives and they live them.The consequences of violent crime, especially against foreigners will bring down all kinds of hell on their heads and they know it. There are thugs, and they are armed and as unpredictable as they are in the US, and of course there are the cartels who are violent business people who have no interest in tourists enjoying their stay in Mexico. If you come here expecting an armed camp you will be disappointed. Many a true word spoken in jest:

Bearing all that in mind let me tell you a little story about our drive to the coast on Maundy Thursday. No awful dog stories are involved in this incident but the police are. The photographs are not of first rate quality but they will I hope illustrate what actually happened and it is a story worth telling.

It was another cool morning in Pátzcuaro and we packed dup to leave. The kindly but inarticulate Mandarin speaks tin the pick up truck waved us away and all I felt was regret that I couldn't learn his story. To emigrate to Barstow California and not speak a lick of English is a story worth hearing. Never mind we had a drive to undertake.

If you think Mexico isn't suitable for large RVs take a look at our other neighbors, a reclusive mother and daughter who are ready to settle in Mexico and put traveling in a box behind them. They've chosen a pleasant town for their settlement so they have great taste, that I know! My wife too has excellent taste and before we left she wanted to pay a visit to a first class bakery on the zocalo in Pátzcuaro, forgetting that downtown was in the throes of the busiest week of the year. She jumped out of Gannet 2 while I paused ina. flow of traffic and went to buy the damned bread and forgot her phone. We were separated with no means of communication. 

To cut a very long story short Rusty and I ended up driving some hellish back streets in Pátzcuaro as I struggled to find my way back to the main square. The photo above was an easy alley, where I had a moment to snap a picture, the deeper I got into the neighborhood the more lost I got and found myself turning with no room to spare, backing into ditches and waiting for parked cars to move the spaces were so narrow. It was the most stressful driving I've done in Mexico and I came away knowing I can drive the Promaster pretty much anywhere in an urban environment. But I was stressed out and using all the rude words in my vocabulary. The old guy seated on the sidewalk who had to lift his legs out of the street not once, but twice as I got progressively more lost evinced no surprise at seeing me pass the first or second time. He was a gentleman and I thank him.

We got on the open road with a lot of delicious whole wheat bread (the onion bread of Layne's dreams was already sold out again so there was that small satisfaction). "You and your offing damned bread," I ranted in that vein for a while, relieved I hadn't scratched the Promaster or got inextricably stuck in pursuit of a banal loaf of bread, and we settled into a three hour drive to meet Layne's sister on the coast.

And then we met the backed up traffic. We were listening to a Michael Connolly lawyer story, corrupt police and prosecutors (in the US!) and secret FBI shenanigans and so forth. The traffic ground to a halt. Layne went to the toilet and made me a cup of tea and we ate the whole wheat as we sat in the line motionless. 

"Ohh," I said as I peered into the back shelf of the Prius stuck in front of us. "I wonder if they'd share their croissants?" I wondered out loud. The chaos in Pátzcuaro had caused us to miss breakfast at our favorite coffee shop which serves delicious French pastry with big foaming cappuccinos...The Prius family were armed for Holy Week festivities with a tray of flaky pastry sitting on the back shelf of their hatchback car, right under my nose.

We nudged forward making no real progress but cars were coming toward us so if it was an accident we had hope things were getting better and clearly it wasn't another citizen road block. We listened to the book and cranked the air conditioning. Rusty laid don on his cushion under Layne's feet. I finished my tea. 

Cars passed us in-between oncoming vehicles and the driver of the Prius gave them the bird until he gave up and joined in taking my pastries with him. But all was not lost. At a certain point I saw a couple of large trucks winding slowly down a dirt road next to a bridge over the toll road. They were, of all things, loaded car carriers and they inched their way down to the highway and took off heading the way we had come.

"Shall we give it a try?" I said to Layne figuring we could do no worse that try the Libre (the free highway that sort of parallels the toll road and winds slowly through towns and villages). So when we reached the spot where the trucks came out I turned across the road and scrambled our Promaster up the incline. A Michoacán Highway Patrol pick up was in the dirt by the side of the track giving directions and I stopped to ask the way to the Libre and he said go over the bridge and take a left. Okay then.

I drove around and up onto the bridge over the toll road. That was what we escaped, the back up to pay the toll several miles down the road.

And bear this in mind: the road we were about to take had been driven by at least two fully loaded car carriers, and that thought blew my mind once again. I'd like to see a US trucker take on these dirt roads and narrow bridges:

I found myself leading half a dozen cars through the dirt which Layne thought was hilarious, the foreigner  showing Mexicans how to get lost. We did reach the paved Libre highway despite our worst fears and it was at this point that my story takes a very weird turn. The police drove up and pulled alongside. 

"Follow me" the driver said, stretching his knowledge of English to the limit. I followed and we ended up in one more weird road trip to add to all the others. 

Not only did we follow him but so did a mixed assortment of other cars behind us and we became the Pied Pipers of the diversion. We paid a thirty peso toll on the bridge which I suspect included a gringo tax of ten extra pesos (50 cents US) for us. I saw the car in front hand over a blue note (20 pesos = US$1) to the toll taker and his wife but he told us it was thirty pesos which we cheerfully paid, hardly feeling like blaming them for taking advantage of the Semana Santa chaos on the highway.

The police car led us to the Libre and down the Libre barely a half mile and then abruptly turned off the pavement back into the dirt, waving at us to follow. So we, and the line of cars behind us promptly did the same. Imagine sitting in 96 degree heat in the back of a pick up truck serving as the village charabanc to take you and your family to the beach for the holiday. I looked at those people from the comfort of my air conditioned van and took my (imaginary) hat off to them. There was another informal toll booth at the road back to the Cuota (toll) road. The cops stopped and chatted and when it was our turn we paid another twenty pesos, with no gringo tax.

Rusty found this extraordinary caravan through the desert to be as fascinating as I did.

We wound through the scrub and saguaro and dust and made our way back to the horrible highway in a long line of cars. 

The police stopped and waved us on. I kept driving after thanking them profusely and followed the more heavily traveled road when we came to a junction in the dirt. It led to a white wall and I paused. Sod it, I said to myself, by now a self styled expert in the vagaries of Mexican roadways, I'll bet there's a way through. And indeed at the top of the hill, up which Gannet2 scrambled valiantly, we found a gap and drove through it. Down the incline on the other side (how did the car carriers drive this, I asked myself...) and we were back on pavement, on the ramp just past the toll booths!

The highway was open and off we went. The whole saga lasted maybe twenty minutes but it was a typically Mexican affair. Had we stayed put no one would have done anything other than watch us nudge forward slowly, but by taking an initiative and looking for a different way someone unexpectedly and uninvited stepped forward to give us a hand. No bribes, no tips no nothing but a big smile of friendship.

We are at the beach now with the family parked alongside the beach mansion they have rented for the next week. Lucky for us we drove Thursday as I suspect traffic will get progressively worse the closer we get to Sunday but we are tucked up with small children and supplies for the next few days. Not without incident I might add, as I have lost one shirt to a dog attack on the beach, so if this is Paradise it has it's own issues...

PS: If Bruce is reading this please check your e-mail as we only have a form of WiFi here and if you don't get an iPhone like all sensible people I can't text you. There is no phone signal in Paradise either it turns out and I hope the WiFi at the mansion stays working.  For Bruce I have this news, an improvement suggested by him for our water siphoning has arrived with the family (as have more Yorkshire Gold tea bags and just in time):