Checkpoints are a way of life when driving in Mexico but 99% of the time we are waved on.  There are agricultural, federal police, and army checkpoints and only once have we been stopped and that was an agricultural check a few years ago.

Today was different.  There was an army checkpoint where trucks and cars were funneled to one lane and it was slow stop and go for quite some time.  Then, while Steve was in the bathroom, two soldiers came walking towards me, moved a barrier next to Tulip, and motioned for me to drive to the right and then pull over.  I could see that no other vehicles had been pulled over……just us.  Panic!

One of the soldiers started talking to me but I couldn’t understand a word.  Usually I can make out a few words but he had a machine gun staccato way of talking.  By then Steve had come out of the bathroom but couldn’t understand him either.  The soldier motioned that he wanted to come into the RV.  Steve got up and opened the door and the soldier stepped inside and looked around.

The other solider stood guard at the door so that we could not escape.  Oh boy, how were we going to get out of this?

Hostage negotiations ensued, and although the soldiers spoke no English,  I finally understood he was after the name of my Facebook page. Whew!  We were then released.

*****I received an email about this post and the person took the incident as a serious threat.  It’s a joke. We never for even one minute felt threatened.  It was all fun and we all laughed ourselves silly.