crime shmime

OK, I’m back from Mexico City and ready to stop milling around for a while—I need to hunker down and make some money.

I, of course, have read and heard much about how big Mexico City is but nothing prepared me for the sight of it from the airplane window. (“View from the airplane window”—travel writing cliché #237...) It’s breathtaking, a blanket of city draped over the valley and climbing the mountains. It just goes on and on and on.

I didn’t get to see nearly as much as I would like to in this whirlwind weekend but I saw enough to know the city bears a repeat visit or three. Unfortunately, it’s a tough sell. When I told one editor I was going, he said, “We wouldn’t send our readers there—too dangerous.”

I never felt the least bit threatened, but I didn’t go out alone at night and evidently my companion and I lucked out when we hopped into a cab on the outsized Zocalo—our driver didn’t know where our hotel was but he studied our map carefully and took us directly there without robbing or raping us. Generally, though, tourists are advised not to jump into any old taxi, since taxi crime is a big problem.

This companion was convinced that the city’s reputation was simply Hollywood hyperbole, but a quick Lexis-Nexis search confirms the city’s rep. The U.S. State Department website also warns about street crime ranging from pickpockets to kidnapping.

OK … forewarned, but it’s still a cool city—bustling and metropolitan, as European-feeling as Latin American, chock full o’ art and culture and history and fine dining.

I contend that the greatest danger in travel is not necessarily because one place is more dangerous than another (although of course, in reality, this is true) but that we don’t always recognize danger in new-to-us cultures.

During our first days of a two-week trip to Thailand, my companion and I felt perfectly OK walking around Bangkok at night. Call me racist, but the men were mostly slender and so pretty, we couldn’t imagine that they were capable of doing us any harm. When we returned to the city at the end of our trip, more accustomed to the country and less starry-eyed, we realized that a city with a huge sex tourism industry—which Bangkok has--couldn’t be half as benign as we imagined. We exercised more caution on those last days than we had at first.

I have been mostly fortunate in my travels and can think of few places I wouldn’t go because of crime. However, I am cautious and, when traveling alone in some places, dine early and don’t traipse around at night. It’s kind of a bummer. I’ve often said that the only time I wish I were a man is when traveling alone. Sometimes I’d love to just pop into a bar for a nightcap but in many cases, that’s not wise.

(I said this once among a group of travel writers and a gigantic Southern dude insisted I was being silly. “I took my girlfriend to a rough backwoods bar once and within minutes she was surrounded by barflies having a GREAT time,” he said. “She wasn’t afraid.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You were right there, keeping an eye on her.”

He looked startled. “I never thought of that,” he said. Der.)

Anyway, Mexico City’s crime problem may be a sad reality—but the happy reality is that it’s one hell of a city. I’d go back, crime or not.