14/01/2023
https://bbqboy.net/on-travel-to-mexico-why-im-sick-of-the-ignorance/?fbclid=IwAR1-U4wC_X3BhTNzXh5O89pr-CeHhe3R5Sm6dwMIFhQ4AVmGaZW2g4A2BJo
We also get this a lot: is it safe?
Here is our experience. We've never felt safer on a daily basis than we do at our house in La Mision. We know our neighbors and they know us. Our dogs bark every time someone passes on our road (fortunately not that often) so we get to greet our few neighbors.
People are friendly and nice - strangers and familiar faces, even the teens riding horses past will nod when they look up from their phones.
Guns are rare - in the two years we've lived here we've gotten the impression only actual criminals and military carry guns, and we have never yet seen or had any interaction with any criminals, nor do we have any reason to think we ever will. That impression people have that Northern Mexico is full of narcos? We've seen no evidence of that at all. Our neighborhood is full of ranchers, surfers, artists and farmers. Have you ever noticed how many tv shows on netflix that show Mexico are about drugs? That's TV, not reality. And that kind of TV has given Mexico a terrible and absolutely undeserved reputation. Yes, there are addicts, narcos, drug trade, crooked politicians and for real being a journalist who writes about any of that is an incredibly dangerous profession. But every bit of that exists in the US, as well, and every other country, and our experience is that if you aren't involved with that stuff, it's only barely more real than the vampire s**t *we* like to watch on netflix.
We got pulled over for running a stop sign and didn't get shaken down - we got a warning from a nice cop willing to speak spanish slowly (and now we're super careful because TBH sometimes the stop signs are hard to see). Lesson learned.
To be completely transparent, *one of us* (me) hates driving in the city of Tijuana. Its crowded and the streets are narrow and the traffic is almost always hair-raising. But more than 2 million people live in Tijuana - it's a massive city! - and driving is just awful in big cities! Generally! Well, maybe that's the country person talking. But it's easy enough to cross back and forth without getting caught in TJ and alta SoCal traffic if a little effort is put into it, and there are highways through the city that take people from the border straight out to the beaches if you're equally reluctant to drive crowded urban streets. Generally speaking, driving in Northern Baja is a breeze because there are just a few highways and the escenica (the main one to our place and along the coast) is kept in perfect condition.
Is Mexico safe? I don't know, it's a huge country. But Northern Baja feels just as safe as San Diego if not more so. It really feels like southern ca with just a lot less people.
On Travel to Mexico – why I’m sick of the ignorance. “You probably heard this before, but I'm concerned about travelling to Mexico and..."
