3.21.14
The Trip to Acapulco
I'm sure Caleb could write this better than I but since you are all dying to know what happened, this will have to do.
Let's start at the beginning. My parents are in town and we
wanted to take them to Acapulco. It's a 4 hour drive from here. We'd talked to
lots of people at church who have gone for weekend trips and loved it. So
Caleb took off work on Friday and we left the apartment at 9am. Not 2 minutes
away from our apartment we get pulled over by a cop. She said we couldn't drive
before 11 (never heard that one before) and told us she would tow our car
unless there was something else we could do a.k.a. pay her off. So we paid her
550 pesos (about $50) and she let us go. So on we went, trying to get to the
right road that would take us to Acapulco. GPS told us to take an exit that was
not there so we had to take a bunch of side roads to get back to where we were
supposed to be. While taking these roads another cop pulls us over for not
having a front license plate. Luckily he was nice and let us go since we were
American but told us to get one or we'd just keep getting stopped (which has happened 2 more times since). So on we
went, found the right road and started again. Then we had to pull over on the
side of the freeway because Coop was about to throw up (carsick). Got him
taken care of and put him in the front so it wouldn't happen again. Not too
long after that we were stopped in traffic for 20 minutes because a semi had
run off the road. We thought we'd be stopped there for hours but it wasn't too
long and we were on our way again. When we were about 1 hour away from Acapulco
we came to the main highway which turned out to be closed for some reason so we
were redirected through the city (about an hour's more worth of traffic) to the
other highway that would get us there. This one was just a two lane road that
weaved through the mountains and little towns. As we started driving this tiny
highway we came to a dead stop. After waiting in our car for half hour we
decide to get out (all the kids included) and walk up the road to see if there
was an accident. Once we got near the "accident" we started to see civilians with
guns and a homemade road block. This was no accident! That's when I started to get really scared. We
turned around immediately and as we did people started running back to their
cars. I thought we were going to get shot but turns out the blockade was about
to be opened leting only a few cars through so people wanted to get to their cars to get them through. We quickly got in
our car and luckily got through. We had been waiting at that blockade for an hour. Not
20 minutes after that we were stopped in traffic again. Another blockade. This time
we were closer to it and could see all the men with guns. They kept walking by
and pointing to our car. We were the only gringos there. We anxiously waited
for 2 hours, not daring to get out of the car. (My mom and I had to go potty so
bad at this point that Caleb went and asked some local villagers to use their "bathroom". They were very kind and let us. The kids followed us
around and told Caleb he talked like a robot :-) Back to the nightmare, they
finally opened the blockade and we got through only to be stopped yet again at
another blockade 20 minutes later (note that it wasn't just us getting stopped,
there were hundreds of cars in line). At this point we were in a
"bigger" town and Caleb asked at the gas station what was going on. Turns
out that the town's themselves were forming their own militias to try and stop
the drug trafficking. They were stopping all traffic for periods of time
thinking that would help. After hearing that, we felt immensely better knowing
that those with guns were "the good guys". We were stopped 2 more
times each for around half hour. When we finally got past the last toll booth
before Acapulco we had only 5 pesos left and it was 10:30pm. We made it to our
hotel in Acapulco by 11. We had been in the car for 14 hours. It was the worst, scariest, most stressful day of my life!! I was worried for the safety of my kids, my parents, my self, Caleb and that was all intensified by the fact that we had no idea what was going on. Luckily I had
packed way too much food and water, thinking we would use it on the way back as
well so at least that wasn't a concern. And the boys just played ipads and
watched movies so they were good. Our main focus was keeping Claire entertained
and occupied since she's not interested in movies yet. That was a job!
Let me end this story with the fact that our hotel was awesome, cheap and
right on the beach. We had a fantabulous time once we were there, so much so that we even talked
about going again (by air) even after our horrific ordeal. We stayed till 1
on Saturday and drove back to Mexico City. All roads were open, no traffic and we
got back to our home in 4.5 hours. To end on a good note, here are some fun pictures of us having a marvelous time on the beach in Acapulco.
All of us working on our sand creatures.
If you look close you can see the little baby turtles following behind.
Heaven for this little girl!
This big group was walking down the beach when they saw Claire. One by one they came over and they just thought she was the cutest thing ever. :-)
Carter would get SO excited when the waves came in.
His excitement about things is my most favorite thing about him.
Body surfing the waves. You can see his shirt helped him float.
Claire would also squeal with excitement with each wave. She loved to sit with me in the water and let the waves hit us.
All tuckered out.
And after seeing this picture, who would have ever guessed the horrific deal we went through to get Acapulco?
And now you know why we will still be going back. :-)
