So, in December Boyiancé and I went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for a week long vacation. I was definitely looking forward to a relaxing and romantic vacation after a few months of dealing with my broken ankle. The thought of relaxing on the beach and soaking up the sun made me all tingly inside. So after days of searching for a vacation destination, a Facebook friend of mine suggested Puerto Vallarta. We did some research and ended up booking an all-inclusive adult only resort right on the beach. So, when the time came, we packed and off we went! Well, I packed … Boyiancé threw a toothbrush into his pocket. I actually had to FORCE him to pack underwear.
We arrived in Puerto Vallarta, picked up our rental car and headed off in a vain attempt to find our hotel. We got onto the main drag and about two minutes into our drive, Boyiancé asked me, “What’s the speed limit here?” I looked up and saw a speed limit sign that said 60 km. So I said, “It’s right there. 60 kph.” Less than one minute later we saw the Mexican police lined up along the right side of the road. There were about 20 of them just standing on the side of the road with whistles next to a digital radar display that shows how fast you’re going. The first thing both of us did was look down at how fast we were going on our own spedometer. Boyiancé had it right at 60 kph. Next thing we saw was the digital radar reading of 61. Three policias blew their whistles and pointed us over.
ME: What did you do? BOYIANCÉ: I have no idea. ME: Oh, God. Here we go.Now, let’s be clear here. I took 4 semesters of Spanish in college. Do you think I can remember ANY of it now? Oh, hell no! We were 5 minutes into our vacation and we were being pulled over by the Mexican Federali. Shit. So we see an officer walking up to Boyiancé’s side of the car. Boyiancé rolls down his window and says, “Good Morning! How are you doing today?” But he says it slow, as if he’s talking to a fucking 95-year-old man who can’t hear properly. He might as well have rolled down the window and yelled, “Hello! We are Gringos! We do not speak your language and we want you to screw us in every manner possible!” So the rest of the conversation goes something like this:
POLICIA: You no speak-a Spanish? BOYIANCÉ: (smiling) Nooooo. English. POLICIA: Ok. You go UN KILÓMETRO mas rápido. BOYIANCÉ: (Stares at the officer like he’s a fucking alien from outer space.) POLICIA: Comprende? Un kilómetro mas rápido (holding up one finger). ME: One kilometer too fast (to Boyiancé since he clearly had no clue what that meant). BOYIANCÉ: Ok. POLICIA: You have license?Boyiancé starts pulling out his license as I reach into the glove box of the rental car to look for a registration. I find it and we hand the paperwork over to the policia. He waves another officer over to the car. He hands Boyiancé’s drivers license to the second officer who slips it into his shirt pocket. Boyiancé looked at the cop like he just walked off with his penis. The second officer then begins taking off one of the license plates to our rental car. What the fuck is going on!?
POLICIA: (writing on a ticket) Here is un kilómetro mas rapido. (He hands us the ticket the says “1800 pesos”) ME: It’s only 18 pesos (thinking it’s 18.00) Pay him and lets go. POLICIA: No. Es mil ochocientos.Suddenly my spanish numbers came flowing back to me.
ME: What!? 1800 pesos!?! POLICIA: Sí. You pay the next day at office. We give you license. Sí? You pay next day at office. Comprende? ME: No! No Comprende! BOYIANCÉ: Can I pay you now? POLICIA: You pay now? BOYIANCÉ: Yes. I pay you now. The officer waves to his buddy (the one who took Boyiancé’s driver’s license). POLICIA: Ok.Boyiancé pulls out his wad of pesos (which we got in the states before we left) and pays them 1800 pesos. We weren’t entirely sure at that point how many US dollars we just handed over or exactly how fast 1 kilometer was. The second policia says something in spanish to the first officer and hands him Boyiance’s license. The first officer hands the money to the second officer who sticks it into his pocket.
POLICIA: Your license here. My friend say you have no more ticket. (He rips the ticket up right there in front of us.) BOYIANCÉ: Good! Have a wonderful day!As we pulled away, we were both still kind of like, “What in the fuck just happened?” So I pulled out my cell phone and Googled what we just paid and how fast we were going. Turns out we paid roughly $300 for going .62 miles per hour too fast. That’s LESS THAN ONE MILE PER HOUR!
ME: (Yes, I started to cry) OH MY GOD! Seriously! We just got raped by the Mexican Police! BOYIANCÉ: What are you crying for? It’s only money. I got plenty of pesos. That’s just a big fucking racket. ME: I just want to get to our hotel! We don’t even know where the fuck we’re going! And I want a fucking cigarette! BOYIANCÉ: Okay … stop crying. You’re in Mexico. I’m sure you can smoke in the rental car. Just roll down the window. ME: Ugh! Can we please just get to our hotel!? BOYIANCÉ: I’m trying! I have no fucking clue where we are! And why do I have to get into the right lane to turn left?So we eventually make it to the hotel and get our room. It ended up being an AWESOME vacation. In fact, we really want to go back again this year. It just started off really bad, that’s all. And I didn’t cry anymore. And I kept smoking the car everytime we went anywhere. And we didn’t have any more run-ins with the Mexican Police. But we did learn a valuable lesson. After talking to others who have been pulled over, we discovered that if we HAD gone back to pay them the next day, the fine would have only been about 50 pesos. We also learned that if we had just handed the cop a $20 US bill, we would have been sent on our way without any questions asked. We’re such fucking gringos.
