Locked doors, illegal taxi drivers and a happy end - #Anarchapulco

Yesterday began very promising. I wrote an article in no time in our Acapulco AirBnB while the sun was shining and the waves in front of the living room window looked awesome! A perfect day for the beach. I thought...

But as always when it just looks too perfect to be true, something bad happens. Right when I wanted to take a shower to get ready for the beach, the whole day changed for the worse. I put my phone and my music box in the master bedroom shower (it is much nicer than the other bath) along with my bikini and my cloths for the day. I quickly went out and used the other bathroom. While I was out, Marius, my room mate, wanted to be respectful and closed the door to the master bedroom. He thought I was already showering. But, unfortunately, I wasn't.

For some reason the button on the door knob was pressed in before he closed the door. The room was locked! Including my smartphone. And Philipp was arriving the next day with nowhere to sleep. At first, I thought I was simply too stupid to open the door...but then it dawned on me. Fuck, we need to break in!

A couple of years ago I studied lock picking but only made it to opening a cheap combination lock. Doesn't matter, I thought and searched for my hairpins to make lock picking tools. Thanks to the internet we found a tutorial on how to lock pick. After an hour of trying to open the lock and trying to reach the owner of the flat, we gave up. Marius called some carrajeros (locksmiths) but nobody was available. Finally, the owner responded with "I don't have key.". Seriously???

She told us she would call the security. So we waited, and watched Jurassic World after I used the other shower. And waited, and waited.

At some point, we where fed up and went to the portier ourselves. A nice security lady followed us to our flat and tried herself to open the door. Then called, what I suppose was, the janitor. He also tried to open the door lock with my lock picking tools. But to be honest, he knew even less about lock picking than I do... After they were gone, Marius called one locksmith again who spoke English and now he offered us to come the next morning at 7.30AM. Finally, a solution was in sight!

A little releaved and hungry we went out to eat at a restaurant. No, we didn't take a taxi, again. It was dark already and Marius found an even darker shortcut through the woods to Blvrd de las Naciones where he found a little restaurant. Little did I know which restaurant it was! With smartphone flashlights we walked through the sandy shortcut passing small shacks where it seemed that people lived there. It was really interesting to see where Acapulco locals lived. Right in the woods apparently. 

Reaching the main street we headed right. Marius told me the name of the restaurant we were heading to. It is called La Finca and is one of the best seafood restaurants in Acapulco Diamante. He didn't know that but I did, and I was hooked!

The restaurant was so lovely. And the food was delicious! A young boy made salsa by hand directly at our table. My mood lightened up a lot. But have a look at the food for yourself.

After the awesome dinner, we headed back to our flat the same way we came through the shortcut. After a couple of hundred meters though, some dogs started to bark hysterically at us out of the dark. We weren't able to see, if they were inside a property or not. To not get in any danger (yeah, I know, walking that shortcut in total darkness is not exactly safe), we turned around and walked back to the main street with the plan to take a taxi. Unfortunatly, how could it be any different, there were no taxis on the road. Nada! We walked for a while until we reached a gas station where right when we aproached it a car drove by us coming from the gas station. The young driver honked and waved at us and we took the chance by shouting "Taxi?!".

He immidiately agreed. Being a cautious person and reading an article about taxi driving by a fellow Anarchopulco attendee I looked out for the taxi license in the cars window. There wasn't one. But the car looked fine. So, who cares! We really didn't want to walk for 30+ minutes to the flat.

Suprisingly, the young man spoke a little English and knew where we wanted to go. Five minutes and a nice talk with him later, we arrived at our condominio. The car was not exactly in good shape (the speedometer showed exactly 0 mph the whole ride) but everything was fine. We arrived safely. You can't imagine how glad we were to not have to walk the whole way! Being asked about the price for the ride the young man wiggled his head and then agreed to the offered 100 Pesos with a big fat smile.

What I learned from that experience? 

Who the hell needs taxi licenses? The licensed taxi driver the day before didn't even understand a simple "Turn around!". He had a nicer car but as a service provider he was totally unfit!

Summary: Support the local youth on the dark grey market, but be careful in whose car you climb. Please!

And before I forget, the locksmith came today at 8AM (because of the portier he was a little late). He definitely knew what to do but in the end he had to work around the lock. The door is open now and you don't have to suffer from bad quality photos by my second smartphone anymore! The sun rise at 7AM was awesome by the way!