Thursday, January 27, 2011

Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard

Ack! By the grace of Sweet Mother Mary, I have made it back from Mexico! Unfortunately, I literally have nothing to show for it, as we were robbed by the Mexican Army, or one of the drug cartels posing as the Mexican army. It's hard to tell the difference, since they both have access to the same uniforms and weapons. Luckily for us (as we were vastly outnumbered and they were all heavily armed), all they wanted was our stuff, so nobody was beaten, raped, kidnapped or killed.....they stuck to plundering....but among the many things they took, they got my SLR, 400mm lens, and my Leica binoculars. I loved those binoculars, I feel like I should hold a funeral for them. So gone are my pictures of Azure-crowned Hummingbird, Great Black-Hawk, Ivory-billed Woodcreeper, Bare-throated Tiger Heron, Groove-billed Ani grabbing army ants off the side of a temple, etc. etc. etc...those were the truly irreplaceable things. So, no new pictures for a while, you understand. La vida es dolor.

I'll go into more detail about all this in the near future. Aside from getting rolled by those fuckers, its remarkable the van we were in made it the whole way. The birding was top notch, but it's good to be back!

7 comments:

  1. This just hurts me. Glad no one was hurt but shhiiittt! I'd want some sweet vengeance there. Sorry man :(

    On the plus side, congrats on the new birds!

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  2. That sucks! Glad everyone came out in one piece though.

    And you should be very glad that they were not armed with a catapult because things might have gotten ugly if they were.

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  3. Holy man, sorry to hear all that sh . . . er, stuff went down. Congrats on the birds, but wow. Where were you (I may be heading down later this year and would like not to meet your acquaintances)?

    Now that you're back, as John Candy so famously said during the "truck scene" in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, "Wow! I mean, that was close. We can laugh about it now. We're all right." Hope it's not too soon."
    -Mike

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  4. Thanks for the kind words ya'll. Just bought some Leicas on Ebay. Hopefully that all works out. @noflickster - we were about 30 minutes south of San Fernando in Tamaulipas, about 200km out from the border.

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  6. That's the worst! Glad you all made it back unhurt.

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  7. Holy craaaaap! That sucks in the worst way. As you say, of course, at least you are back here and not down there in a cell, but heysoos that sucks so much. =( I'd def. cry if someone took my camera. And Leicas? OUCH. But, wow, glad you're back and SO looking forward to the future invenctive. =) arrrrrrgh. (ps I have to say post title is from song I think has GENIUS lyrics re: the magic that the right word SOUNDS can make. Amazing.)

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