Puerto Vallarta warning

[bigvalboy]

The view is stunning, but that looks like a common area for all hotel guests. The kitten would prefer to have the whole terrace for herself.

 

I would never let the Kitten stay in a "common area"

 

Edited March 29, 2018 by bigvalboy

[marylander1940]

So for purposes of putting all this in perspective, let's talk about the relative safety of PV and SF, both of which I know pretty well. And in order to not make anyone sound like an insensitive jerk, for purposes of this post I'll simply refer to two people who post here as my liberal friend and my conservative friend.

 

My liberal friend, who lives in SF, tells me regularly about how bad the drug problem is, and how unsafe he feels walking on the streets. And how there are needles and broken glass everywhere, like from cars being broken into by drug addicts. My memory sucks, but at one point I recall he went off on a rant about how sick he is of the cops having to show up when people are overdosing, and how much money it costs, and how it might actually make more sense to just let them overdose and die. It was kind of funny in a dark comedy way, and kind of sad.

 

So then I go down to PV with my conservative friend, and we are sitting on the balcony of an oceanfront condo, and I ask him to read the special issue of TIME that was dedicated entirely to photos and text about the nationwide opioid epidemic. A lot of the photos were of addicts in San Francisco. I mentioned that my liberal friend was at the point of feeling like we spend so much time and money rescuing the same people who are addicts and who keep overdosing - which is what TIME talked about as well - that maybe we should just let them overdose. And my conservative friend went into a rant about how he agrees with with my liberal friend. Maybe we should just let them overdose and die.

 

So it's interesting that two people I know well, who have very different political orientations, are both fed up enough with the day to day manifestations of the nationwide opioid epidemic that they basically seem to be able to agree to something that seems inhumane - just let addicts die on the street, instead of trying to save them so they can overdose again. The numbers about what it costs to treat the addiction are horrific. Except for the fact that the numbers about what it costs to not treat the addiction are horrific, too. It's a nightmare.

 

I don't want to turn this thread into one on opioids. But I lived in SF for over a decade, and I loved it. Given what I hear and read about the way it is now, if I was given a choice between a week in my friend's condo South of Market in SF, and a week in the oceanfront condo in the Zona Romantica of Puerto Vallarta, I would take Puerto Vallarta in a heartbeat.

 

sounds familiar...

 

[+ stevenkesslar]

sounds familiar...

 

 

Paul is only half right about the churches being able to do the job of providing for a sick 30 year old guy without health insurance.

 

If the example Wolf Blitzer gave was taking care of a 16 year old boy who wrestles and got addicted to opioids, I'm pretty sure most priests would be up for that.

 

http://www.barrycrimmins.com/images/news/crimmins-9159-3.jpg

 

But a 30 year old? I'm not so sure. We may have to let him die.

 

Of course, I'm only talking about Mexican priests. That kinda shit never happens here in the US.

[TruthBTold]

I would never let the Kitten stay in a "common area"

 

 

Not sure if that is Mexico, but even if it is I would be more than willing to die there.

[+ FreshFluff]

I had

I would never let the Kitten stay in a "common area"

 

 

Now that's more like it! But I'm a flexible kitten, so if Mexico is risky, you could always take me to Big Sur instead.

 

[+ stevenkesslar]

I had

 

 

Now that's more like it! But I'm a flexible kitten, so if Mexico is risky, you could always take me to Big Sur instead.

 

 

It's not safe. Too many Californians.

[bigvalboy]

I had

 

 

Now that's more like it! But I'm a flexible kitten, so if Mexico is risky, you could always take me to Big Sur instead.

 

My dear Kitten, Big Sur it is then. Dine at Big Ventana and lay your head at Post Ranch...There are some Mexican's, but mostly they clean the rooms and tend the grounds...

[Guest]

Most of the murders in Mexico are related to gang and drug trafficking trade. Gay-bashing attacks can occur anywhere, even in West Hollywood, Florida, etc. I feel very safe in PV. Lots of extra tourist police as well. I also went to Los Cabos last year. It's very rare to hear of American murder victims. Might be more dangerous in the U.S.

[Epigonos]

The way things are going with this thread it just might go on ad infinitum nauseam. When all is said and done it simply comes down to the fact that we should live and travel where we feel comfortable and safe.

Over the last fifty years I have traveled all over the world from Canada, Central America, Europe, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Mexico, Nepal, North Africa, Singapore, Southeast Asia, to South America. A year ago in Paris two different people, with tears in their eyes, stopped me on the street in the Marais and thanked me for visiting despite the recent terrorist attacks the city had suffered. They added that tourism had dropped off markedly since the attacks. I absolutely refuse to give terrorist or cartel member that type of power over my life. In none of the above places have I ever been threatened or accosted. I absolutely refused to limit my travel options by what I see as perceived fears of others including the United States State Department. I have no plans to visit Iran, North Korea, or Syria anytime in the near future which is my choice. However, I am definitely considering a visit to Petra, in Jordan and Saint Catherine’s Monastery in the Egyptian Sinai.

Each one of us must make our own choices and then abide by the consequences. When it comes to Puerto Vallarta I’ve made mine.

Edited March 30, 2018 by Epigonos

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

The way things are going with this thread it just might go on ad infinitum nauseam. When all is said and done it simply comes down to the fact that we should live and travel where we feel comfortable and safe.

Over the last fifty years I have traveled all over the world from Canada, Central America, Europe, India, Mexico, Nepal, North Africa, Southeast Asia, to South America. A year ago in Paris two different people, with tears in their eyes, stopped me on the street in the Marais and thanked me for visiting despite the recent terrorist attacks the city had suffered. They added that tourism had dropped off markedly since the attacks. I absolutely refuse to give terrorist or cartel member that type of power over my life. In none of the above places have I ever been threatened or accosted. I absolutely refused to limit my travel options by what I see as perceived fears of others including the United States State Department. I have no plans to visit Iran, North Korea, or Syria anytime in the near future which is my choice. However, I am definitely considering a visit to Petra, in Jordan and Saint Catherine’s Monastery in the Egyptian Sinai.

Each one of us must make our own choices and then abide by the consequences. When it comes to Puerto Vallarta I’ve made mine.

 

St Catherine's is beautiful. Go. You won't regret it. Egypt, with a little planning and perhaps a guide, is worth exploring.

[+ WilliamM]

Each one of us must make our own choices and then abide by the consequences.

 

I suggest you avoid St. Petersburg, Russia unless you have some magical way to replace a lost passport.

 

You also left Sarajevo, Brasilia, Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City off your list as well as much safer cities such as Tokyo, and all the cities in Australia and New Zealand

[bigvalboy]

I suggest you avoid St. Petersburg, Russia unless you have some magical way to replace a lost passport.

 

You also left Sarajevo, Brasilia, Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City off your list as well as much safer cities such as Tokyo, and all the cities in Australia and New Zealand

 

http://www.fifa.com/

 

http://img.fifa.com/image/upload/t_l3/tfdxtdt3n1ecxlwfztpb.jpg

[+ WilliamM]

http://www.fifa.com/

 

 

Russia had closed the American Consulate in St. Petersburg. I have only visited the city once on my own (for 8 days). It would not be a good place to

lose an American passport.

[bigvalboy]

Russia had closed the American Consulate in St. Petersburg. I have only visited the city once on my own (for 8 days). It would not be a good place to

lose an American passport.

 

Or anywhere in Russia I would guess...

[+ WilliamM]

Or anywhere in Russia I would guess...

 

But for the very long winter with very little light. Petersburg would be the best place in Russia to live.

[Otto]

I have never been shaken down for bribes from the Police while driving a rental car in the United States.

I cannot say the same for Mexico.

[+ José Soplanucas]

I have never been shaken down for bribes from the Police while driving a rental car in the United States.

I cannot say the same for Mexico.

 

Are you Black or Brown?

[+ Charlie]

I started this thread, then immediately signed out and left the site for a couple of weeks, so I was not aware of how it developed. I was NOT trying to warn anyone that PV was any more dangerous than PS, where a gay married couple was also assaulted on the street not long ago, and one of them died as a result. What I was attempting to warn travelers about was the attitude of the Mexican police toward the incident, which was very different from the way the police in PS handled their incident. The PS couple in PV were accustomed to the PS police and local media taking a gay-bashing incident for what it is, and were not prepared for the local police and media in PV distorting the incident to make it appear not to be gay-bashing.

[+ glutes]

More than a dozen people have been killed in the Mexican resort town of Cancun this month in just 36 hours, multiple news reports say.

 

Noticaribe.com reported 14 people were killed and five others were injured in the popular vacation destination, located on Mexico's southeastern tip, between April 4 and April 5.

 

The deaths were the result of six violent events and nine of the deaths occurred on April 4, according to Noticaribe.com.

[Guest]

More than a dozen people have been killed in the Mexican resort town of Cancun this month in just 36 hours, multiple news reports say.

 

Noticaribe.com reported 14 people were killed and five others were injured in the popular vacation destination, located on Mexico's southeastern tip, between April 4 and April 5.

 

The deaths were the result of six violent events and nine of the deaths occurred on April 4, according to Noticaribe.com.

How many of them were tourists? The hotel zone of Cancun is quite separate from the main city of Cancun; there are almost no private houses in the hotel zone.

[+ glutes]

Even if the killing field is just out of my 'hotel zone', I don't wanna go.

[bigvalboy]

[caliguy]

More than a dozen people have been killed in the Mexican resort town of Cancun this month in just 36 hours, multiple news reports say.

 

Noticaribe.com reported 14 people were killed and five others were injured in the popular vacation destination, located on Mexico's southeastern tip, between April 4 and April 5.

 

The deaths were the result of six violent events and nine of the deaths occurred on April 4, according to Noticaribe.com.

I went to Cancun last year. Beautiful Resort. This is how the cops all travel in and around the resort. Hell no would I travel around at anywhere in Mexico by myself.

[+ stevenkesslar]

Even if the killing field is just out of my 'hotel zone', I don't wanna go.

 

That's fine. Would you also take New Orleans, Baltimore, and St. Louis off your list of cities to go to? They are among the 50 most dangerous cities in the world in 2017, according to the list I've seen. Cancun is not.

 

Amazingly, Chicago is not in the Top 50. Since 2016 the Republicans and Trump have talked about Chicago like it is the epicenter of all murder in the world, partly to argue that handgun control is a worthless policy and partly to blame it on the Democrats. Of course, averages are averages. So the fact that some neighborhoods in Chicago are particularly deadly doesn't mean the entire city is deadly. But if you believe what we've heard, O'Hare should be a ghost town, right?

 

I searched 5 different articles to see if there was anything specific about who was murdered in Cancun, and where. The closest I could find is this:

 

"Luckily for tourists, the murders appear to be gang-related and it is very unlikely any holiday goers will be caught up in the violence - but visitors are still concerned.

 

The gang violence, mainly driven by the thriving drug trade, has cast serious doubt over whether Cancun is a safe, family-friendly holiday destination.

 

The violence is not only isolated to Cancun. Earlier this year, the Mexican city of Los Cabos was named as the world’s most violent city."

 

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/945749/Mexico-murders-2018-is-Cancun-safe-right-now-people-killed-FCO-advice

 

Here's another interesting factoid:

 

"The figures surpass Cancun’s previous record of nine killings in a day, which was set on Nov. 25, 2004."

 

https://nypost.com/2018/04/11/streets-of-cancun-run-red-with-14-murders-in-36-hours/

 

I stated the second part because since 2004 I've been in Cancun repeatedly, and nothing about it felt unsafe. I was in Los Cabos a few years ago, and that felt entirely safe. As the article above mentions, where the murder rates are high in Mexico it is driven by: 1) gangs, and 2) drugs. Shockingly, where murder rates are high in the United States it is driven by: 1) gangs, and 2) drugs.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

 

That chart says that Mexico is safer than the US, if you look at gun deaths in general. In Mexico it's 8 per 100,000, in the US it's about 12 per 100,000. Either way, something like 99,990 out of 100,000 people in both Mexico and the US don't die because of guns every year. In Mexico almost all the gun deaths are homicides. In the US the majority of them are suicides. You could argue you should go live in Mexico, because you're less apt to commit suicide.\

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_guns_and_homicide

 

This list probably does a better job of describing the dangers of death by drug gang in Mexico, since it measures "intentional homicide." If you only look at that subset, Mexico is more dangerous - about 16 per 100,000 in Mexico v. 4 per 100,000 in the US. I think that speaks to what is happening in places like Los Cabos and Cancun - it is gang members involved in drug trade intentionally killing each other for control. It certainly doesn't sound tourist friendly. But it actually is, because it is the tourists who make the trade - whether they are buying in Mexico, or once it's imported into the US.

 

If you know Cancun you know the hotel zone is like a Fantasy Island that is separate from the town. So my guess is that saying a lot of people died in Cancun is like saying there was a gang slaughter on the South Side of Chicago while I was staying with my brother in Albany Park. A lot of the statements made about Chicago during the campaign just seemed to reveal a lot of ignorance about Chicago, not wisdom about drug or gun policy.

 

I have no problem with these kinds of statements about Cancun or Cabo or even Puerto Vallarta, as long as people also say that you should never, ever, ever walk into a Gay bar in New Orleans at night - not to mention a lot of other places in the US. Because if you do, you are putting yourself in as much or more risk as you do when you go to Mexico.

[caliguy]

Except in New Orleans and other US cities you can call the police and expect a certain level of protection. I'm sure in the resort areas you could do the same. However Outside of that I wouldn't expect much.

 

The only time I ever got robbed in Mexico was by the police. They pulled us over in my rental car and literally went through our pockets. Warned us if we said anything we'd go to jail.