Whomp whomp whomp...

Saturday morning headlines. La Perla is what people call GDL & I'm pretty sure you can figure out the other word on your own 

 Sooo this has been a little bit of a wacky weekend, to say the least. On Friday afternoon, Danny and I returned  from eating a late lunch and were greeted by Moizes at the door who asked us if we would be going out again for awhile. We told him we were in for the afternoon and were probably going to just take a nap. He then informed us that several public transit buses had been set on fire thoughout the city in an organized effort by the cartels to create confusion and fear (it kind of worked)). Apparently, a similar thing happened about a year ago in GDL and there were some shootouts in the evening. Danny and I were pretty freaked out (as were most of the foreigners and a lot of the mexicans) so we decided to stay in for the evening just to avoid any "wrong place wrong time" situations (look at those street smarts, mom!)

Beautiful Virgin of Guadalupe tile art in the cafe's patio

walking in Providenia

 On Saturday, we went to a coffee shop in Providencia--a cool/cute neighborhood in the north of GDL--to get some internet time (no internet at the hostel for 5 days now) and some lunch. We were planning on going to see Avicii's (a european DJ) show at Foro Alterno that evening, but when we got back to our place one of our friends texted Danny saying that he'd heard a rumor that the show had been cancelled due to security concerns related to the cartel violence of Friday afternoon. We were skeptical, but without internet, had no way to confirm. Sooo we headed up to Pig's Pearls, located just at the end of our block, to mooch off their internet. We were sitting on a bench right outside the door of Pig's Pearls, where people wait to be seated, while I frantically used my iPhone to look up any news about the show(CANCELLED). Out of nowhere, two guys on a moped pulled up onto the sidewalk in front of us and the guy on the back reached out to grab my phone from my hands. Fortunately, I had heard the moped coming and thought it was weird they were pulling up so close to us, so I was already on my guard a little. The guy had a good grip on it and almost took my phone right from my hands but I managed to pull it back. Before we even knew what was really going on, the two guys were gone and Danny was on his feet thinking they had the phone. Everyone in the restaurant saw what happened and people came out to make sure we were okay, but it was pretty crazy. Apparently Danny had seen the guys drive by and turn quickly to double back and drive in front of us to steal the phone. In a way, I'm glad it happened because I still have my phone, yet I still learned my lesson. I will definitely be much more careful when I'm in the street with my phone or iPod (same goes for on the bus). Danny and I agreed that we've gotten a little too comfortable after two months without incident and we are going to try to be more aware and cautious of our surroundings. So like I said, it was sort of a weird weekend. Overall, Mexico is great and we love it here, but this weekend it definitely lost some cool points.