WARDEN MESSAGE FROM US EMBASSY

[roberb7]

I was in Acapulco for four days at the end of February. I went to and from there by bus. I expected police/military roadblocks going through Guerrero, but it didn't happen.

Acapulco was a much nicer and more upscale place than I expected. I went through quite a bit of the city by foot, bus, and taxi, and had no problems at all. Found the people there very friendly, and a high percentage of them speak English.

My bus trip home left from the Papagayo bus station, which is outside of the State Dept.'s OK area by a couple of blocks. My hotel for the first couple of nights was the Los Flamingos, which is outside of the OK area, but most of the guests there were from the US; they are people that stay there every winter.

Now for the other side of the coin; I remember going by a restaurant/bar called El Zorrito a couple of times. Three days after I got back, I read a story in AM (i.e. a national story) about a Canadian couple who was assaulted as they left this restaurant. The two were 60 and 65 years old. I thought, I'm 63, Canadian, and was at this very same spot three days earlier. [Insert appropriate "when your number's up" cliche here.]

And two more things: I made a couple of trips out to the Fairmont Princess resort, in the Diamante area, on the way to the airport. I was told by several people (some of whom should have known better) that there were no buses to this area, and specifically not to the airport. This information turned out to be false, and I paid for a couple of expensive cab rides as a result. (Acapulco is a much bigger place than I realized.)

Traffic in Acapulco is awful, put a big part of the reason is, there's construction happening on all the major thoroughfares. And the reason for all this construction is, they're putting in a set of rapid bus lines, which are scheduled to be in operation in August.