Travel Warning

Excerpted from 4/22 U.S. Consulate message:

Nayarit and Jalisco: Official U.S. government employees are prohibited from traveling to Colotlan, Jalisco, and Yahualica, Jalisco, both near the Zacatecas border, because of an increasingly volatile security situation. Concerns include roadblocks placed by individuals posing as police or military personnel and recent gun battles between rival TCOs involving automatic weapons. You should defer non-essential travel to these cities. In addition, the border areas between Jalisco state and the states of Zacatecas and Michoacán, as well as southern Nayarit state including the city of Tepic, have been sites of violence and crime involving TCOs. You should exercise extreme caution when traveling in these areas. Due to recent TCO-mounted road blockades between the Guadalajara airport and the Guadalajara metropolitan areas, U.S. government employees are only authorized to travel between Guadalajara and the Guadalajara Airport during daylight hours.

We just came back from a 2 day road-trip to Guanajuato and Leon and didn't see nary a roadblock. If fact I commented that it was weird that there was not a Federal or Military presence anywhere along the way.

Hmm...... I'm thinking that's kind of a good news bad news thing. No bad guys...but no good guys either?

Bobby did you ever make it to Uruapan? I'm not sure what the narco situation is there now...but it's gorgeous..avocado capital and the trout they serve at the restaurants near the amazing park right in town...are to die for!

Nope haven't made it there yet. It will have to wait until we return next year at this point.

I was there 15 days ago and i did not find any problem because we were on the All inclusive holidays packages.

Geez Steeve, you seem to be really hooked on "All Inclusive" Holiday packages. You wouldn't happen to know where we could buy any would ya?????

Steeve must really enjoy those all inclusive cruises. It is really exciting to be issued that stick on name tag that says: "please return me to (ship name) if I am lost"!

yuri wrote:Steeve must really enjoy those all inclusive cruises. It is really exciting to be issued that stick on name tag that says: "please return me to (ship name) if I am lost"!

Which reminds me of the old story about why all Italians not conversant in English arriving by ship in the U.S. back at the turn of the 20th Century were named Tony.

Back in the 60s, I lived for a while in the port city of Mombasa, Kenya and generally speaking, in those days, except for the Dawg who was playing at being a vagabond backpacker, any foreign faces seen there from day-to-day were either Peace Corps volunteers, Christian missionaries, Communist Chinese laborers imported to construct infrastructural projects on behalf of Chairman Mao for the benefit of Julius Nyrere´s socialist government or, maybe, U.N. relief workers. However, from time-to-time, cruise ships would pull into the harbor to let their passengers get what they thought was a "real" taste of Africa and those passengers electing to come ashore could be seen traipsing around downtown Mombasa in their pith helmets and Jungle Jim safari attire with their chaperones pretending they were privileged to be among the few visiting deepest, darkest Africa. Prices in retail stores and among street vendors would immediately at least double until the throng of suckers had passed. Dawg also observed this phenomenon in other ports of call such as Dar es Salaam, Bombay and other such "exotic" places and I have never since been able to bring myself to ride into some touristic port on a cruise ship and pretend that the offered port and adjacent "wild game park" or "primitive village" or "local religious shrine" tours were anything more than charades. At least, back in the 60s, cruise ship passengers would get a taste of some dreadful East African mystery meat stew and a sip of local brew whereas, today, no doubt, those same streets are filled with beckoning Burger Kings and KFC Outlets. Such is progress.