Morning Thoughts

It rained this morning and came into my bedroom a bit before I woke up and shut the door. I leave it open for Chico and Olive but they were sound asleep at the time. I like to hear the rain at night and even the sound of thunder. Since I don't have a car, it limits me during the day. I don't like walking on the slippery cobblestones and not knowing when it is going to rain again. I have broken my ankle once. Don't want to experience that again.

I have been living here over ten years now and I have never liked the rainy season. But at least it was always the slow season. Peaceful. No more. There seems to be no slow season now. Great for the restaurant owners, shop keepers and real estate agents. Not so great for trying to cross the busy Carretera or if you are looking for a rental.  Especially if you are looking for a cheap rental. Also, it isn't much fun going to the Wednesday market anymore. Too crowded. I rarely even hear Spanish unless I have my window open in my Mexican neighborhood. Everyone in the stores speaks English, including the Mexicans. Some days I feel like I am living in the United States instead of Mexico. 

I got out my Spanish flash cards yesterday and realized that I could recognize about half the words. It is hard to learn a language when I can barely remember what I did yesterday and when all the shop keepers speak to me in English. I guess if I get kicked out of this apartment and am forced to move to a small town somewhere else, I will only hear Spanish and I will either speak it or not communicate with anyone.  

One of my readers sent me a site titled: Mexicovacationawareness.com.   It is filled with warnings about Mexico and stories from people about their ill fated vacations here. Most of them involved tainted alcohol and took place in five star, all inclusive beach hotels. Cancun was high on that list. Horror stories about blacking out after having just one drink at a swim up bar, or even about love ones drowning and the hotel not doing anything to help. And being sent to the hospitals and ending up with huge hospital and taxi bills. I have never been to Cancun. I have never been on an expensive all inclusive vacation. So, I have had NO experiences like that. I guess that sometimes being poor has advantages. 

I met a woman on the bus a few days ago and we were talking about Lower La Floresta. That is an area where I lived for eight years, where they illegally locked the gate next to my house and forced me to walk around. I had a bad ankle at the time and had to walk eight blocks extra to get out of there.  (But that is another story.) We were talking about the break ins. She lived there for five years and had five break ins. I lived there for eight and had one....

I think that people who do not know Mexico have the wrong ideas about what is safe. In almost all those horror stories, they wrote that the reason they chose expensive resorts was so they could feel SAFE....  But quite the opposite was true. They would have been safer going to a cheap hotel in a Mexican area. Putting yourself in a gated community or expensive hotel, only makes you a target. Some poor and desperate people see you as an advertisement for money and a solution to all their problems. 

 From the stories that I read on that site, many of them came from the same hotels in Cancun. Recently there was an article in the local paper about tainted alcohol in the beach areas of Mexico. That 43 percent of the alcohol is tainted with different dangerous things.  So it isn't just a problem with desperate people trying to rob wealthy expats but also of tainted alcohol. And many of these stories were about how the police did not help at all, sometimes seemingly involved in the scams.  There was another article in the local paper about those areas having policemen carry around signs that said, Free Hugs. Well sure a hug would be nice. It would be a lot nicer if they would help in case of emergencies. I see that as more desperation. Policemen not getting enough training or enough money. So they are ripe for corruption. 

I remember years ago when I managed to walk into a fancy hotel in Puerto Vallarta and was swimming.  They had set up the breakfast buffet. Flies were swarming all around it and the waiters didn't do a thing until it was getting time for it to open and then they swatted off the flies. 

I have never had a bad experience while living in Mexico. I also don't go out at night. And I rarely drink alcohol. Maybe I am missing a lot of good times but I am also missing bad times like the ones I read about on that site. None of those stories involved this area. Just the beach towns where so many people come and just stay a few days and leave again.  Mexico is many different things. Just as all other countries. Including the United States. 

It made me feel sad when I read those stories and how the writers of them condemned the entire country of Mexico and wrote that they would never return here. This is a beautiful country, filled with warm and loving people. There are also desperately poor people here, willing to do any scam to get money. But isn't that true of all countries?