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Hey again!
We arrived in San Cristobal de Las Casas just an hour ago from Palenque. Since I last wrote we´ve been in Villahermosa with my friend Karen, her boyfriend Wilbert and his family. Hanging out with them was awesome, they took us places and we got to experience things that we never would´ve experienced without them! We did everything from watching ancient ruins to getting into trouble with the police and playing football with locals. The plan was to stay in Villahermosa only for two nights and then continue to Palenque alone, but we ended up staying there for three nights and then they came with us to Palenque where we all stayed in cabins in the middle of the jungle. The night was full of exciting sounds of the jungle, and even more exciting cocktails of Mexico (whiskey, mineral water and energy drink!), so we have been quite tired today. But we still managed to do a really nice tour at the famous Palenque ruins, which were worth all the hype. At 2 PM we took a bus to San Cristobal, and after very curvy and mountaineous journey we are finally here.
Oh yeah, I am sure that some people might be interested in hearing more about the above-mentioned police incident. It was nothing too dangerous, but we tasted the corruption of Mexican police for the first time. After making a day trip to the Maya ruins of Comalcalco, we came back to Villahermosa at 7 PM. We used Wilbert´s cousins car for the day, but as he had a night shift coming in his work as a doctor, the first thing we did was to drive him home to catch some sleep. On the way to the bus station to change our tickets, Wilbert passed traffic lights when they showed yellow, which in Mexico in certain circumstances seems to be a crime. After a brief look to the mirror, Wilbert noticed the cops following us, and pulled the car on the side.
After a brief chat with them it appeared that something else was also wrong. In Mexico you have to register your vehicle every year, and as we had experienced 14 days of 2009 already, the new register paper was needed but Wilbert´s cousin didn´t have it yet. According to the police, we should have paid 1000 pesos (around 100 USD) for the traffic light mistake and 2000 pesos for not having the right paper. But the worst thing was that they wanted to take the car, and that would have meant that Wilbert´s cousin could not have gone to work.
After hearing this we decided to ask kindly was there any other way to solve this problem, and the police officers were happy to let us go with some paternal advice of obeying the rules - after receiving around 30 US dollars. (Which apparently was too much in a situation like this)
The funniest and most ironic thing regarding this incident happened on the next morning. While sitting on our hotel lobby we read from the local newspaper that exactly the same police patrol was involved in a car accident just a few minutes after stopping us. They had crashed with another car - after running a red light!!! They of course tried to blame it all on the other car, but after the people who witnessed the accident rushed to defend the other driver, they had to give that up.
Talk about obeing the rules...
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