MM Sticker Found Under A Bus In Switzerland

[JPolen01]

I have a co-worker that goes to Mexico at least 3 to times a year. No one understands why he loves it so much. A couple that my wife and I are friends with spent more going to Mexico for their honeymoon than we spent going to Turks and Caicos. Turks was stupid expensive but worth it. So many other Caribbean islands you can go to they are way nicer and safer than Mexico.

[Apoc]

I have a co-worker that goes to Mexico at least 3 to times a year. No one understands why he loves it so much. A couple that my wife and I are friends with spent more going to Mexico for their honeymoon than we spent going to Turks and Caicos. Turks was stupid expensive but worth it. So many other Caribbean islands you can go to they are way nicer and safer than Mexico.

I have a friend who really has no desire to travel beyond North America that goes to Mexico every year. I kinda get it because the only tropical direct flights < 8 hours from SEA are Mexico or Hawaii... but I'm going to Hawaii 10 times out of 10.

[JPolen01]

My boss doesn't even have a passport. He lives in York, PA (which might explain his oddness) and has only ever been to Atlantic City and Orlando for vacations.

[Apoc]

My boss doesn't even have a passport. He lives in York, PA (which might explain his oddness) and has only ever been to Atlantic City and Orlando for vacations.

If people don't like to travel, that's cool. My point was that he's not really a travel guy but has no concerns about Mexico. I get resorts are resorts, but man, dem drug cartels...

[ScottyB]

He lives in York, PA (which might explain his oddness)

having spent 7 years living in Lancaster aka Amish Paradise, can confirm York people are wackadoo nutballs

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so i spent 8 days in Costa Rica in '10. loved it. never looked at stats like these before we left. drove a suzuki jimny 5 hours across the country from the rainforest to the pacific. the people were amazing. however....it was well known even then that you don't F around in San Jose (the one main city) and the popular surf towns had a lot of drug runners.

i'd be willing to be 20 of those deaths were in San Jose alone. outside of that the country is mostly tiny villages, coffee, and soccer balls.

[Apoc]

I actually thought the best part of DR was the one day we got off the resort compound. Everyone was super nice and the food was awesome. I'm sure we were still on a well worn path, though.

[G.Irish]

The whole 'Mexico is dangerous' thing get's a little blown out of proportion. Yes, if you're trying to hang out in Juarez, that might not be a great idea. But something like 30 million US tourists go there every year and as far as I know, not many of them end up getting murdered. Supposedly over a 1 year period (2017-2018), only about 75 out of 35 million American tourists died via homicide.

In the end, the 76 American homicide victims are a drop in the bucket in terms of Mexico's overall total: 33,341. Moreover, a good portion of those murders occurred in border cities in which there are active cartel wars, such as Tijuana, Juarez and Reynosa. In contrast, just four occurred in tourist hotspots like Cancun, La Paz in Baja California Sur and Puerto Penasco in Sonora.

https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/m...an-tourist

[V1GiLaNtE]

He lives in York, PA (which might explain his oddness)

having spent 7 years living in Lancaster aka Amish Paradise, can confirm York people are wackadoo nutballs

---

so i spent 8 days in Costa Rica in '10.  loved it.  never looked at stats like these before we left.  drove a suzuki jimny 5 hours across the country from the rainforest to the pacific.  the people were amazing.  however....it was well known even then that you don't F around in San Jose (the one main city) and the popular surf towns had a lot of drug runners.

i'd be willing to be 20 of those deaths were in San Jose alone.  outside of that the country is mostly tiny villages, coffee, and soccer balls.

Doing the same thing in October however not staying in San Jose at all. Driving a 4runner from Arenal to the Pacific and camping. I've heard some warnings about CR being dangerous, but inversely TONS of people have commented how amazing of a place it is.

[WRXtranceformed]

I'm also on the "don't visit Mexico" bandwagon even though that's where we've been to on our last 2 "out of the country" trips (because they were free). Punta Mita has the best weather of anywhere I've ever been but the resorts there are staggeringly expensive (we saw Jerry Springer in our pool at the St. Regis and Chris Tucker on our flight to stay at the Four Seasons). I'm also pretty sure the security guards stationed around the peninsula had caches of weapons just in case (they didn't openly carry them but never strayed far from hidden watch posts). Resort shuttles and buses literally took us directly from the airport to the hotel and they were constructing a special highway the last time we were there just to go straight to the peninsula and avoid the small towns.

The big problem with Mexico is the cartels have started to get more brazen in resort towns, and I specifically heard their activity was working its way up north into Puerto Vallarta

[ScottyB]

I've heard some warnings about CR being dangerous, but inversely TONS of people have commented how amazing of a place it is.

i think i told you this earlier but we did a similar trip. Arenal (La Fortuna specifically) to Playa Conchal. we flew into San Jose and out of Liberia.

Everything i've heard about the dangers are based on gringos basically screwing around where things get touristy and/or party atmosphere. any part of San Jose is shady. Quepos, Jaco, and Tamarindo are popular surf towns with a lot of drug and prostitute activity and the associated crowds that go with managing it. i've heard Limon on the carribean side is a bit like San Jose. avoid hostels. generally good idea to stay off Highway 1/InterAmerican Hwy because the drivers are crazy. stuff like that.

get out in the country and everyone's cool. Costa Rica's economy is very eco-tourism based and they know who butters their bread. their people make it a point to try to keep a good thing going. learn some spanish, have a plan, know your maps, etc and it'll be a great time. my wife and i still talk about that trip all the time to this day, it was something else.

[Apoc]

Generally, I'm not big on countries where the purpose is to be bused to a resort and sit by the pool/beach for a week. I think that's why I didn't really care for DR that much - my family just wanted to bake in the sun for hours on end. Getting out and seeing actual people living their lives is the good stuff and I'm a little bit jelly of an road trip in CR.

[JPolen01]

Another person dead after vacationing in the DR.

[.RJ]

Another person dead after vacationing in the DR.

My boss' daughter had something strange happen last week there - she went to the ER there, they cut their vacation short to get her home and they went straight from the airport to the hospital and she was there for 3 or 4 days.  They never found out what the cause was.  What the hell is going on there?

[JPolen01]

From what I have read most scientists believe they are using toxic chemicals to fumigate rooms for insects. The Daily Beast had a good article with comments from a forensic toxicologist.

[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]“I’ve been watching these incidences and they’re very odd,” says John Trestrail, a forensic and clinical toxicologist who headed a major hospital poison center for 32 years, was an FBI consultant, and now runs the Center for the Study of Criminal Poisoning in Los Lunos, New Mexico. Among the many cases about which he has been consulted in the past: the poisoning of Kim Jong Un’s half-brother at the Kuala Lumpur airport in 2017.[/color]
[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]Speaking of the Dominican Republic incidents, Trestrail told The Daily Beast, “The tough part is trying to figure it out from so far away. What’s most troubling are the people who die together at the same time from the same symptoms. You first think carbon monoxide poisoning, but this doesn’t fit that. I keep hearing that the victims’ lungs were filled with fluids. So I think, OK, how about organophosphate pesticides?
[/color]
[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]Organophosphates and phosphine from aluminum phosphide are lethal chemicals used for, among other things, hotel room fumigation. They’re not always regulated in developing countries and accidental poisonings involving humans are thought to be a serious, although underreported problem, especially on the Indian subcontinent. They’ve been mentioned only rarely in connection with suspicious deaths of tourists and others around the world in recent years, but it is troubling that there is little transparency, awareness or accountability about their use.[/color]

[WRXtranceformed]

If that's what it is, you all saw I called it first ~

[Steve85]

This just in from the global risk people:



Never good for your touristy country to be mentioned in the same breath as KSA border towns. 


On a different note, I have a new co-worker who recently moved back from Greece, his wife and kids still there. He's from US but has lived overseas a lot. He was telling us that when he's planning multiple stops, say, flying to Greece to meet with the family, then to Morocco for vaca, he gets much cheaper flights by going through a VPN that puts him in the country he's flying out of to purchase the flights. Not sure if valid, no reason to lie, but just seems that the Expedia's of the world would make that not a thing. 

Friends of ours managed an early retirement and moved to San Miguel, Mexico. It's not a resort, but certainly beautiful. He and his buddies go for long MTB rides checking out the surrounding towns and historic places. There is always some sort of parade or celebration of something going on. There is a solid expat community so you can get by with little Spanish. Looks and sounds like a really nice, non-resorty, place to visit and experience the locals without fear of death.

[ScottyB]

Tell Me About Alaska.

spousal unit and i are heading there for 7-10 days next year.  timeline is late May/early June.

looking to stay someplace cool like a ranch or cabin experience.  priorities are salmon fishing, hiking, glaciers, scenery/wildlife.  down for good food but not really looking for a town/shopping experience although the hunt for that may bring us to those places.

figure we'll probably fly Delta out of ATL (its their hub) and then Alaska into...Alaska?  

we'll be hopping in via Seattle (heyo Derecola) and staying there for at least a day while i drive at Dirtfish.  so Chris we need to find some Weihenstephaners to drain.

[Apoc]

Tell Me About Alaska.

spousal unit and i are heading there for 7-10 days next year.  timeline is late May/early June.

looking to stay someplace cool like a ranch or cabin experience.  priorities are salmon fishing, hiking, glaciers, scenery/wildlife.  down for good food but not really looking for a town/shopping experience although the hunt for that may bring us to those places.

figure we'll probably fly Delta out of ATL (its their hub) and then Alaska into...Alaska?  

we'll be hopping in via Seattle (heyo Derecola) and staying there for at least a day while i drive at Dirtfish.  so Chris we need to find some Weihenstephaners to drain.

Both Delta and Alaska Air fly to Alaska, but they aren't partners anymore because Delta decided to open a mini-hub in Seattle and steal Alaska's customers. Alaska does non-stop ATL to SEA, but it's probably cheaper to fly Delta as they'll likely have more non-stops in a given day. I recommend pricing each leg individually and then together for each airline.

We went as part of a cruise about a dozen years ago - http://derecola.com/archives/cruise05/index.htm

Take a look through there to see what piques your interest and I can answer any specific questions you have. Alaska is freaking huge, so you have to decide if you want to do the interior and/or the coast. We did some killer salmon fishing in Talkeetna (my wife below with a king), but Skagway or Ketchikan are decent coastal cities with access to glaciers that aren't *super* overrun with tourists. We drove Wrangers off-road into Canada from Skagway and I rode a Harley into Tongass National Forest from Ketchikan, so there's plenty of cool things to get in to at both places. Talkeetna is near Anchorage and Denali, while the others are near Juneau and Glacier Bay. I think you'll be happy in either (or both) part of Alaska - it's just a matter of what's important to you. It's a 90+ minute flight between the two, if you wanted to do both.

[ScottyB]

Take a look through there to see what piques your interest and I can answer any specific questions you have.

thank you! gonna have fun digging through all this.

[Senor_Taylor]

Switching it up. I'll post more but I've spent half of this week in Erie, PA and I'm really amazed by how nice it is. The food/drink/bar scene blows anything in VA out of the water. Beaches, lake, state parks, amusement park. So many attractions. I'm sure it's hell in the winter though.


Anyway, what I wanted to ask was if you wanted to spend a day in Harrisonburg and want to give them a taste of the things that make JMU great, what would you do? Please no "go hiking" suggestions and I'd like to keep it limited to things semi near JMU since that's the reason I have any connection to the town.

I figured I'd come down and hit flag pole or Reddish Knob for the views, then come into town and hit a place to eat, tour campus, hit Kline's then ????

Probably just want to kill one full day

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