Playas and Grenades

I just had one of the most fantastic beach vacations of my life. I realized one of my life long dreams (to sleep in a cabaña directly on the beach) and spent six days lounging in a hammock reading books, eating fresh fruit, and drinking beer.

Beach vactions just don´t get any better than that. Indeed it seems that the Pacific coast state of Michoacan has everything a guy could want. As I drove back to Zihuatanejo this morning thinking about Mexico, the lack of tourism (the violence is keeping the numbers down this year) I thought "Man, I am glad all these people are too scared to come down here this year, it´s great having the place to myself." Then I arrive in Zihua and pop into an internet cafe to see what´s going on in the world and I see the headline in the N.Y. Times, Gunmen Attack Federal Forces In Mexico.

Yesterday as I lay on the beach all around me in Michoacan attacks were being carried out on federal forces. Grenades were thrown into police headquarters, police were ambushed on the roads I drove through today, and the "coolest place I have ever been", as the LP calls Morelia, turned into a war zone as a convoy of heavily armed "hitmen" opened fire on police headquarters. I was there last Saturday.

Yo doy papaya, I am naive. And I´m lucky. I wasn´t in the wrong place at the wrong time, luckily I stayed on the beach yesterday instead of getting on the highway, I´m lucky that this war isn´t affecting me. I sit on the beach drinking beer and 50 miles people are being blown the fuck up in a drug war. I´m lucky though. I get to leave. I wonder what that says about me.