The dangers of Mexico

Before coming travelling on this trip there are lots of warnings about how dangerous Mexico is and to be so careful. There is a drug war on and there a certain areas that are very dangerous, with lots of people getting killed every day. The general public read the media and then the whole country is portrayed to be dangerous and unsafe. I´ve read a lot on CNN about things that have been happening here lately and yes I was originally worried and was hoping to skip though these areas or avoid them totally. But not avoid the whole country. Since I´ve arrived here I´ve met nothing but nice friendly people who´ve gone out of their way to help us. And I´ve seen how much the tourist industry has been effected by both this and by swine flu(which has also spread to most other countries). Apparantly the tourist industry revenue here has dropped 15% in the last year due to these both reason.

To be honest we have felt perfectly safe here and as yet have experienced no problems and have seen no other tourists who have gotten into any trouble either(touch wood). I still keep my wits about me while travelling though. A lot of the violence is in certain border regions but Mexico is a big country with a lot more to see. The rest of the country the people are as friendly as ever. We´ve travelled through a number of tourist towns that just appear to be empty. We might be the only gringos around in some of them.

Ciudad Juarez is the one place thats getting a lot of attention by the media but apparantly there are a dozen towns along the border with the USA that are very dangerous at the moment, Tijuana possibly been one of them. We skipped through TJ within a few minutes and went further south. I didn´t go to any of the others so I have no opinion on them but from what I´ve read Juarez is very dangerous at the moment. On the other hand I´ve also read about the amount of shootings in Detriot. It is still a very high number. But this doesn´t mean the whole of the USA is dangerous.

I remember hearing about 15 years ago that some people were afraid to come to Ireland because of stories they´d heard on the news about Northern Ireland. I actually remember a priest who´d worked out in south america or africa or somewhere saying that the people he met had been shocked that he was from Ireland. They had considered it such a dangerous place due to what they heard on the news. More recently I´ve heard of people afraid to travel to Thailand because of troubles in Bangkok. Other friends of mine that have been in Thailand at the time had no problems and didn´t even notice what was going on. At the same time there is many other cities in Thailand and plenty of tropical islands that of course have no troubles. And even in my second year of university, some students were afraid to come to Uni in Limerick because of gang warfare and I remember in the first week of Uni that year some of the first years were afraid to go out in the city centre because there mothers had told them how dangerous Limerick was. Walking into a night club in Australia chatting to a bouncer and he heard one of us was from Limerick, he made a joke about how it was stab city and made a fake pass at him. I´ve realised that everywhere you go, can and can´t be dangerous and you just have to be careful. Obviously it´s stupid to walk into a warzone but the majority of people and places seem to be trust worthy and countries with problems are also big countries that might only have the problems limited to certain areas.