A Car Chase in Bacalar Taxista #29

Taxis are an essential to life in Bacalar and Mexico in general. You can travel from one end of Bacalar to the other for about two dollars. When considering the cost of insurance, gas and maintenance on a car, you can’t beat it. That is why, when our friends from Austin, Roberta and her sister Mary where visiting a few weeks ago, we thought nothing of hailing a cab to head to breakfast and the best view in town, Hotel Laguna Bacalar.

The food is good and the view is no extra charge.

Looking south toward Chetumal.

Upon our return to town and exiting the taxi, I knew within minutes that my cell phone was missing. I returned immediately to the taxi stand and told my woe to the taxistas. Note to self and all of you – always note the number of the taxi you ride in.

Roberta and Mary visit Bacalar.

The remainder of the day was spent backtracking, getting the phone turned off and trying not to spoil our guests’ final day in Bacalar. We made no further progress on finding the phone and left two days later ourselves, for our trip to Austin.

Teaching Grandma Lisa how it’s done (target shooting)

Halfway through our vacation, we got a message from our good friend and neighbor that his velador Carlos (property manager) knew who had our phone! Carlos used to drive a taxi. And as stories go in a small town, his wife’s cousin saw a taxista with a phone that wasn’t his. Given an opportunity, the cousin looked in the phone and saw Carlos’s phone number and that of our friend.

Now before you get all hopeful, as we did, this story doesn’t have a happy ending. Upon our return, we went to the central office to report taxista #29. The manager said that he would look into it. The fun started when two days later, we spied #29 and Lisa decided to give chase . Now you cannot really have much of a car chase in Bacalar and when the taxi pulled over, we blocked his exit and got out of the truck. He had stopped for the manager who was also looking for him. And then another supervisor showed up. There were neighbors standing in their doorways craning their necks to see what was going on with the crazy gringas. I wish I had thought to take pictures.

A car chase in Bacalar would require avoiding hitting the goats.

It came down to “he said – she said” and #29 vehemently denied everything. Without someone willing to testify, we had no proof. Upon further conversation with Carlos, we decided to drop the issue. #29 is a known bully and he knew who had accused him. We were not concerned for ourselves, but the young cousin who would be asked to testify. Our only hope is that the management knows and #29 will be more careful in the future.

This morning’s sunrise.

So we’re off this week to buy another phone. As many great stories as we’ve heard about people going out of their way to return lost items, I suppose there will always be a #29 who will show up, an unfortunate fact of life anywhere.

Tags: Adventure in Mexico, Bacalar MX, living in mexico, vacation safety