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Story: Mark Donohue Williams
Photos: Barry Hathaway

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Mexico is at war. Before boarding a plane to pick up the Ford Focus RS in Mexico City, I check the news for red flags along our planned route from Veracruz, on the Gulf Coast, to Acapulco, on the Pacific Coast. The first article is about nine bodies that were found in Acapulco with multiple gunshot wounds. According to some sources, the killers left notes with the remains, threatening the police. Maybe inland to Morelia is a safer destination. Based on past experience 
racing in the Unlimited Class of La Carrera Panamericana, I know Morelia is a beautiful town. Checking the news on our alternate destination is not encouraging. Morelia’s chief of police was murdered two days before we left, and a severed head was found in a park. According to the University of San Diego Trans-Border Institute, nearly 10,000 people have died in Mexico in drug-related violence since the beginning of 2007, when President Felipe Calderón declared a war on drug traffickers. That is more than twice the number of U.S. fatalities in the Iraq war. Apparently the North American war on drugs is equally as inept at keeping people off drugs as it is at keeping people alive.

Deciding the risks are outweighed by the opportunity to flick the turbo Ford through some of Mexico’s mountain roads, I board the plane in jeans, a blank shirt and old shoes, with a small backpack and $10. At my connection in Los Angeles, I’m reunited with Barry Hathaway, the photographer who accompanied me on a mental 2,000-mile jaunt in a T-Rex last October (Winter 2010). We discuss what is waiting for us in Mexico and agree “at least this time we get a car with a windshield and doors.” Landing in Mexico City, we hear the word policía muttered from multiple rows in the aircraft. I figure I’m not the only one with safety on my mind. Then I see the plane in the gate next to us: a 747 with 10 Policía Federal vehicles surrounding the men unloading the cargo. Off to a good start.