Warwick abroad: murders, snow and a tuna sandwich

Travel. It’s a word that invokes excitement, nostalgia, hysteria, maybe a tingle of trepidation. But rarely danger. Or does it?

According to The Guardian, on 24 November last year, 26 corpses were found in three white vans in Guadalajara, a western city of Mexico. Victims of the major drug cartel that is so rife in Mexico, it is believed that the bound and gagged bodies had been subjected to gunshots and asphyxiation .

A few weeks later, The Daily Mail affirms that five bodies were unearthed near the University of Guadalajara. The murdered bodies were those of a food vendor, Armando Gomez, his son and three of his son’s high school friends. Rumour has it that the five had gone to the Federation of Guadalajara Students’ headquarters to complain about the amount of money Gomez was expected to pay in order to sell food on campus .

Shocked? Distressed? Or has the relentless onslaught of horrendous news coverage made us immune to such atrocities? Not because we are pitiless wretches, I hasten to add, but simply because we have no other choice if we are to prevent despair and insanity from hijacking our lives.

But this story, and others like it, aren’t stories to be read casually, flicked through and quickly forgotten. These are stories that affect Warwick. These are stories that affect us.

Warwick students were on their year abroad in Mexico when these murders took place. One has dutifully responded to Warwick’s advice to relocate somewhere safer. Dom Naish is still out there, refusing to react in ways that, according to him, might add to the ‘perverse kind of exoticism about living in a place where that sort of stuff happens’ .

‘Take out a map. Mexico is rather large. To avoid all of Mexico because you fear drug violence, is like cancelling your trip to the Napa Valley because you hear that people are flying airplanes into towers in New York City. ’ Douglas Anthony Cooper’s observation in his blog for the Huffington Post, How Not to get Beheaded in Mexico, is a wise one. It’s easy to get wrapped up in hyperbolic hysteria. But at the same time, we do need to be vigilant.

By keeping an eye on the Foreign Office’s travel advice, for example, we would be reassured that ‘the Mexican government makes efforts to protect foreign visitors to major tourist destinations.’ As such, areas ‘such as Cancun, Playa del Carmen, Cozumel, Los Cabos and Puerto Vallarta have historically not seen the levels of drug-related violence and crime reported in the northern border region and in areas along major drug trafficking routes.’

Less seriously, but still far from desirably, The Boar’s very own TV Editor remembers getting herself into a little bit of a pickle on a school trip to America. As she was waiting for her suitcase in the arrivals lounge, a Beagle came bounding up to her.

The dog was afforded suitable affection from a cooing Mel, who openly admits to becoming blinkered when a dog comes onto the scene. That’s presumably why she failed to notice the security guard towering over her.

‘Excuse me, Miss. Are you carrying anything you shouldn’t be?’

‘Um… No?’

‘Are you carrying anything for anybody else?’

‘No…’

‘Where have you flown from today?’

‘London…’

‘Can I ask you to open your bag for me?’

Innocently violating the ‘no fish or meat is to be brought into the US’ (or words to that effect) clause, it transpired that Mel had a tuna sandwich in her rucksack. Had Mel perhaps thought to research the laws and customs of her destination beforehand, she might have saved herself various visa checks and scans. Only after these was she returned, distraught and humiliated, to the not-so-sympathetic folds of her held-up school party.

Then, more recently, there was Cicely Batstone’s skiing disaster. Cicely went on tour to France with Warwick Snow last Christmas. On the first slope of the first day she was cut up by a snow-boarder. (And that, my friends, is why you will never catch this writer on the piste.) Thankfully, however, Cicely was covered by travel insurance. Had she not been, she might have been crying over more than just a broken leg…

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. It is true: prepared or not, things go wrong. Nonetheless, thorough preparation before going abroad is key. If you research your place of destination – its laws and its customs – and take out comprehensive travel insurance, you will significantly reduce the risk of running into trouble.

For more information about student travel, you can go to:
www.fco.gov.uk/travel
For up-to-the-minute travel advice, sign up to Facebook and Twitter feeds: www.facebook.com/fcotravel or twitter.com/fcotravel

Watch out for the new Channel 4 documentary “Our Man In” which highlights how the Consular staff at the British Consulates in Spain help British nationals in trouble. The program looks at a wide range of issues which FCO staff deal with every day, from helping British nationals caught up in the drug scene in Ibiza to assisting a young Brit who is run over by a drunk driver. The three-part series will air on Channel 4 at 10pm on Thursday 1st, 8th and 15th of March. Go to http://www.channel4.com/info/press/programme-information/our-man-in for more information.