Quote:
Originally Posted by motion
Mexico says round-the-world cyclists were murdered - BBC News
My dream is to ride Africa Twin down the African continent to Cape Town, ship the bike to South America, then a final ride home to Red Lodge.
But, I won't do it.
*Everyone* I've spoken to says that my bike and stuff won't make it through South and Central America. Everything will be stolen. Or worse.
This is really, really sad. I feel so badly for these guys' families.
The various North American drug addictions create most of this mess. The Cartels are very active these days. They're supplying the new meth market of California's homeless population, which is booming.
Why would anyone go to Mexico? Even to Cancun to sit on the beach at a nice resort? The entire country is a violent cesspool.
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Dayum. My heart goes out to their families.
I have to say, when I was still working and traveling a bunch, our sternest pre-trip briefings were always about the various South American countries. More so than even the Middle East. It just doesn't get as much press these days.
I always made it a point to buy the local papers, assuming an English language version was available at the hotel (they usually were). Pretty darn telling, when you read a country's own news about itself, be it down there or anywhere else for that matter. As a quick aside, I just returned from Ireland - darn near every article on the front several pages of every newspaper still mentions The Troubles in some context. We never hear about them here anymore... Same thing in Central/South America. Their slow churn of endless violence just isn't newsy news here anymore, so we have kind of lost perspective on how bad it remains.
Anyway, back to South America. We were told it isn't so much the big cartels - they are too busy fighting each other and paying off government officials. It's just the general lawlessness. Any two bit thug sees you and your stuff as worth something. And many of those two bit thugs work for the government, and have badges and things. We were always admonished to pretty much never leave the hotel at all, but if for some reason we decided we must, to go in big groups. And certainly never leave the airport during our shift, like for lunch - like here, the "back gate", or employees' entrance, is usually in from and out to a pretty seedy, gritty, industrial part of town.
So, yeah, the big, busy, well kept touristy parts of those places can be dangerous enough. The stuff outside of there, where you would be riding, and more or less where we often worked? No way. Not worth the risk.