Me and Martina travel a lot from Austin to Aquismon San Luis Potosi. In our many travels, we have seen a grand total of zero dead bodies on the side of the road. No bad experiences in the border towns, absolutely no trouble at all. We cross at Matamoros, one of the supposed bad places. We have seen nothing to get alarmed about. As a matter of fact, Mexico sems better than it ever was. In the past, the occasional mordida, or pay off, was the norm. We have not had to pay a bribe of any kind in several years. The only people who seem scared, are foolish Texans, Everyone else seems happy to be in Mexico. If you listen to people who want to spread fear, then go ahead and be scared. If you want to have fun and travel in Mexico, then come on down. Mexico is better now than it has ever been in my many years of experience. We had over thirty cavers in the Aquismon area this christmas and the only problem was running out of beer. They all had a good time, and yes they drove down through Matamoros in the state of Tamaulipas. No problems at all. Mexico is a lot better now than it was twenty years ago, even considering reports from people like David who have spent a grand total of a few hours there in the last several years. If you want to be afraid, then please keep it to yourself. Otherwise, if you come to Mexico you will probably have the best time of your life, contrary to reports from people who judge the whole country from a two or three hour visit in the border towns.
--- On Sun, 3/17/13, Nico Escamilla <[email protected]> wrote: From: Nico Escamilla <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Texascavers] Mexico border news To: "David" <[email protected]> Cc: "Cavers Texas" <[email protected]> Date: Sunday, March 17, 2013, 12:45 AM David, please go back to your corner and think about what you just did. Nico On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 11:42 PM, David <[email protected]> wrote: I don't know how many cavers north of the border are venturing south these days to go caving. I can say that they should not cross the border near the border-town of Reynosa ( south of McAllen ). I was there about a month ago, and made a faithful effort to act like a normal tourist for 24 hours. I did not go anywhere near any cantinas, and only went to an upscale restaurant and a corner cafe where families eat tacos de trompo late in the evening. Just a few hours after I left town, there was a gun-battle with "alleged" bad-guys being gunned down. The locals I spoke too were all too terrified to talk about the situation, and those I spoke to in private said the town was under complete control of the cartel, and that every businessman carried a receipt showing their dues were paid up. My inside sources tell me that this week has been a very violent one in Reynosa, and the military style officers are having gun-battles all over town, and have set up blockades all over town. The news media is totally unreliable. YouTube seems to be a reliable source of info. The tabloid news, www.lapoliciaca dot com seems to have useful info, but it is hard to tell how much of it is false, or exaggerated. I am guessing that if Reynosa is too dangerous, then any border town south of Laredo is probably just as dangerous, and the roads between them and Ciudad Victoria even more dangerous, especially after dark. As many "alleged bad guys" ( aka, sicarios ) as the gov't has killed in the past year, I would think they would have run out of bad guys by now and everything would be peaceful. I am guessing there will be something in the news in a few days about a lot of people getting gunned down in Reynosa this past week, as the rumors I am hearing are numbers higher than normal gun-battles. Also, Reynosa is not the only place to be careful. I have seen several dead bodies lying on the roads of Houston this past month. So I would not recommend driving in Houston between the hours of 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. I would bet the area around Harris County has more traffic deaths per week than the average cartel related deaths in the region around the town of Reynosa. But the victims of these tragedies are different. David Locklear --------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
