Before we get into what happened today, we want to start off by calming people down about us being in Mexico. We have gotten a flood of email from concerned friends and family warning us about how dangerous and crime ridden Mexico is. Apparently, Fox News ran a news report warning people not to go to Mexico for the upcoming spring break because innocent people are being shot dead in the streets as casualties of drug shootouts. They also told of people randomly being kidnapped, particularly when crossing the border into Tijuana from San Diego. We didn’t see the story, but we get the impression it claimed tourists are in danger and it is making our friends and family panicky.
We discussed this issue at length with some Mexican-American friends of our that live in Southern California. They all have family that lives in Tijuana, and they have all had at least one family member kidnapped, so they know better than anyone else how dangerous Mexico is right now. Christi’s friends assured us that tourists are indeed safe.
It is true that many innocent people have died in drug war shoot outs. However, everyone in Mexico knows that tourism is an important source of income for Mexico’s economy. No one wants to hurt the tourist industry. Any crime that involves tourists will face angry reprisals from “connected” people who profit from the tourist industry. So, the locations of these shoot-outs that are being reported on are always in areas where tourists simply don’t go. We know there was one “innocent tourist” who was shot, but, what was he doing in a known drug dealer bar far, far away from where tourists normally go?
It is also true that people are being kidnapped in shocking numbers, but the kidnappings are definitely not random. Christi’s friend explained in detail the different groups that are being targeted and why. We’ll only get into the Americans crossing into Tijuana since the rest is moot regarding tourism. The people targeting this group are poor people who are trying to extort money from people they perceive to be rich. It is a form of class warfare. Kidnappers watch selected upper class neighborhoods for American plated cars, since they know Americans can access cash more quickly and easily than Mexicans can. The kidnappers note the plate number and the address at which the car is parked. The kidnappers call their friends at the American Department of Motor Vehicles, who give them the name and address of the car’s owner. It is usually easy to figure out if the person is a relative of the people residing at the noted address (there are many methods, including checking Facebook). Then they target someone from the family, whether it be the American visiting or one of the Mexican family members being visited. So, while it is incredibly dangerous for our friends to go to Tijuana to see their families, it is perfectly safe for us white people to go on a vacation, as long as we use the same common sense precautions that one should use everywhere in the world.
So, onto our bizarre experience”¦ Eric suddenly awoke at 0200 to a strange banging noise. He looked outside and was appalled to see that we had drifted away from the dock!!!! Of our 6 lines, only one seemed to be still attached, the very front one. Kosmos’ nose was banging against a concrete pillar located near the line, while her whole back end was drifting towards the construction site to our right.
Eric couldn’t believe it. How could 5 lines have possibly broken? A surge big enough to do that kind of damage would surely have woken us up, wouldn’t it have? Wait”¦ there was no wind at all and it was flat as a pancake inside the marina. There couldn’t possibly have been a surge. What the heck???
He woke up Christi. He then turned on the engine and started to guide the boat back towards the dock. Christi went to the cockpit and positioned herself to jump onto the dock. She grabbed the two ropes that were back there, expecting them both to be broken. She had been worried that they wouldn’t be long enough to be able to get Kosmos re-tied again. So, she was taken aback when she realized that both ropes were completely intact, neither damaged in any way.
When Kosmos was close enough to the shore, she jumped off and tied up. Eric turned off the engine and went outside to re-tie the lines. His thumb was killing him, but he did it anyway. Christi isn’t very good at getting the ropes properly positioned, so he likes to do it himself. While Eric was tying, Christi carefully inspected each line. All were intact.
There is no way that 5 lines all untied themselves. Someone deliberately untied us. We couldn’t figure out who or why someone would do such a thing. And we wondered if they meant to untie all the lines, sending us drifting into the big rocks in the construction zone, and just didn’t see the front line in the dark. After all, it would be easy to overlook the line since it was partially blocked from view by the pillar. Did someone deliberately try to damage our boat? Or was leaving the one line tied someone’s idea of a joke?
Eric again spent a long time getting us perfectly situated. This time we tied half the lines looped back and tied off aboard Kosmos. This way, if someone wants to untie us, they have to actually come aboard the boat to do so.
We reported the incident on the radio net this morning. No one has ever heard of such a thing happening before. Eric went to the office to check in about 0845, right after the radio net ended. The marina staff called the officials right away, then proceeded with the check in paperwork.
The first official, the Immigration Officer, arrived to Kosmos literally 10 minutes after the marina office called him. Eric was in the middle of the marina paperwork, which he immediately set aside. (Only the Captain is supposed to do all the check in/check out paperwork. In some countries, they have let Christi do some of it, but she technically wasn’t supposed to). The Immigration paperwork took about 30 minutes to complete. He is a nice guy and we enjoyed talking to him. While the immigration officer was still on board, the Customs Officer blew in and out in less than 10 minutes. He needed to get to the airport to check in a flight, and had decided to stop by our boat first, which we thought was incredibly nice. He was professional and pleasant.
Eric went back to the marina office, finished checking in with them, and told them about what had happened. No one at the marina has ever heard of anything like that happening before, either.
Then we moved to a slip. We feel better about being hidden in the middle of the marina instead of being the very first and most accessible boat in the entire marina. We had a whole slew of fellow boaters come out to help us tie up, along with one of the marina staff. We pulled in nose first, which turned out to be a mistake. We hadn’t realized how short the slip was until after our diligent team had us tied up. We probably should have asked them to untie us again so we could back in, but we didn’t bother. We’re not going to be here for very long. We have climbed on and off the sides before and it isn’t that big of a deal.
One of the boaters told us that they saw a group of adolescents drinking in the parking lot last night. They suspect it was a drunken prank by teens who didn’t know better. Being that we were literally the closest boat to the parking lot, we were certainly the easiest target for pranksters.
To be continued”¦