“Shakedown in Acapulco...”

I hate Acapulco. It’s a shithole and it smells like urine, pardon my Spanish. We had just spent two mediocre days in Playa Azul, a dirty little town on the Pacific, and decided to head towards Zihuatanejo, next to Ixtapa to try the internet. We left fairly early in the morning in case we wanted to keep going to Acapulco, about a 6 hour drive in total. We stopped in Zihuatenejo, found an internet cafe after about an hour or so and Denielle sent a brief message to let people know we were still alive. Internet has been fairly sparse.
We decided to keep on trucking towards Acapulco, a city of 1.5 million. Unfortunately we came upon the city at 3:30 in the afternoon, somewhat of a rush hour. Although I’m not entirely convinced the streets are ever empty. There is no sense of lanes, order, or anything remotely resembling how traffic should go. It was the most stressful driving experience of my life. We found a hotel and splurged for 70 dollars for the night. As you can tell by the views, it was a rather nice place, but fairly run-down. The next day we slept in, planning only on travelling as far as Playa Ventura, about halfway to Puerto Escondito.
On our way out of the city we got lost. Acapulco is comprised of steep hills along the coast, with very windy roads that snake in no particular direction. We did a complete circle and managed to get yelled at by the police for running through some kind of checkstop. We found our way to the main road by the ocean, our ticket out of this dirty city, when not even ten minutes later we get pulled over by the municipal police. Denielle thought it was a taxi at first. Apparently we were changing lanes too fast or some other trumped up thing, even though it’s very apparent that the rules are only meant to be followed by the tourists.
This fat policemen proceeds to tell us that we are getting a fine, and that we’ll have to go to the police station to pay it, but if we want we can just pay it here and he’ll forget about the whole thing. So I said fine, I’ll pay the fine at the police station, let’s go and talk with your supervisor. So he pretends to make a call on his cell phone, and then returns and tells us how to get out of the city. No fine. So I’m pretty happy, having just called his bluff, and we are on our way again.
We almost make it out of the city when once again some greedy Mexican police see our car and pull us over, this time for speeding. It’s funny because we are purposefully going very slow, getting passed by anyone and everyone so as not to get another pull over. These cops don’t go for the routine and will not give back my driver’s license. I’m getting really mad and arguing, and he tells us that we can get our license back from the station in 5 days once we have paid our 300 dollar ticket. No joke. I tell him he’s not going anywhere without me getting my license back, but he won’t budge. So I talk to the other guy, and we barter for 150 dollars so we can go.
Mexicans appear to be getting quite greedy. Not all of them, but a healthy proportion now seem to rely upon taking advantage of tourists. I will never go back to Acapulco, and if anyone is thinking of visiting there, then hit yourself in the head with a shoe and smarten up. Whether it’s the police, or greedy hoteliers trying to extort full prices from an empty hotel, these people will all get a big wakeup call one day when the tourists stop coming. I told the first policeman when he asked how long we were here that I hated his city because it was dirty, implying both the police and the condition of the city, and had too many people. But now we have made it to Playa Ventura, and will be off to Puerto Escondito in a couple of days. We may spend Christmas there, as they should have more reliable internet.

Tyler.