Narco-tours in Mexico

Yesterday Brenda wrote a post about the safety of traveling in Mexico. Here's another travel option for Mexico if you like to flirt with danger just a tad. See if your taxi driver is a narco-tour guide. A narco-tour is when a taxi driver in places like the beach resort town Mazatlán drives you past the homes and hang outs of the famous drug cartel folks. You know, to see how people with drug money wealth live. Some of the places are of the drug big shots of days gone by since they've been killed. Hey, it's not easy being a drug lord.

According to the New York Times article, there are more than one narco-tour destination. Taxi drivers in Matamoros and Culiacán have also jumped into narco-tour action. So far mostly Mexican citizens have taken these tours that the Mexican government isn't too fond of--not because of the danger, per se, but because it puts Mexico in not the best light.

Reading about the narco-tours reminded me of the taxi driver led Anna Nicole Smith tours in the Bahamas. With a taxi, a person can come up with all sorts of ways to entertain a country's visitors.

One of the taxi drivers interviewed for the narco-tour article sees the tours as similar to the ones you take in the United States to see sites such as Al Capone's hangouts. Think of all the Wild West gangster types who draw tourists to places in the U.S. like the Billy the Kid Museum in Ft. Sumner, New Mexico. He has a point.

Filed under: Arts and Culture, History, Business, Stories, Mexico, News