As foreigners we are warned about wearing expensive jewelry, carrying around in public costly cameras and having bags of money on our person.’ Do not carry your wallet in your back pocket. Avoid purses and bags strapped over a shoulder etc.’  You know the drills.

When you get golden, you will find yourself taking better care of your things than during your seed money producing years. We bought our Jetta here in Mexico four years ago. It was an almost new car belonging to Volkswagen. One of their middle level employees out of Puebla was using it as a company car for a short time prior to our ownership.

Adding to a somewhat more careful time in life in terms of caring for one’s things, here in Mexico there are few exchanges, returns, or guarantees; and even less police protection and legal recourse.

We have cared for that Jetta quite carefully realizing we will not have the resources going forward in retirement to readily buy another.

Anita has always been one of those people that is very careful with their things – me not so much; until like I wrote – getting golden.

So when we watched the Agua Marina water truck pull away from impacting our little red car our hearts sunk just a little. Of course having your car damaged right before your eyes is not fun at any age.

Dark Black windows prevented getting a photo of the driver – hmm.

We reached out on the local Forum for help in terms of suggestions on how we might handle the fact that Agua Marina rather corruptly abandon any responsibility even while their driver at one point admitted hitting our car as well as myself and two other witnesses seeing the truck as an only vehicle on our street leaving the scene just after the loud impact.

A few suggested we have deep pockets and should just pay for the repair not jeopardizing the driver’s job. We and another suggested that this behavior that included bad driving (it was a wide space to get by) and the Agua Marina trucks historically speeding in the neighborhood should be brought to task perhaps avoiding a more serious event, like running over a child. This is after all a suburb with little children playing near or in the road.

We could write several Blog entries on how unaware some Mexican mothers seem to be of the cautions required for their children’s safety in the streets here. Like caring for your stuff – how much greater is the importance of watching out for our children? Couple that with heavy laden water trucks racing around the streets – and well you get the idea.

After some discourse on the Forum one person suggested my inquiries and ‘conversation’ regarding this issue was “whining” – we gave up interacting about all this. Sad really because we have benefitted many times from the experiences of others on that Forum.

I started receiving a few encouraging emails and a few informational inquiries. In an effort to be journalistic about Agua Marina Water Company I want to bring some evidence to the fore relating to this statement I made when we first wrote about the hit and run:

“We had read a story about this particular water company’s employees allegedly robbing a customer while the delivery guys were in the customer’s house waiting for the owner to find change.  It was reported a laptop and wallet were discovered missing. Thus we had made it a practice to not have them bring the bottles in the casa, “Leave them there at the gate, por favor.” Another heavy lifting task that I had taken on to protect ourselves from a potential theft or home invasion.”

The source for this was found yesterday. This is from the aforementioned Forum:

Copied from TomZap Puerto Escondido Forum March 2012

Some have asked why we used Agua Marina water having knowledge of the above. We had been using Agua Marina water for about a year prior to reading about the alleged thievery by their employees. We actually liked the two hombres that delivered water (not the driver of the hit and run). We felt the caution we were taking by not allowing delivery beyond our gate was sufficient – it was for everything except for our car.

This is the second time our Jetta has been damaged while parked in front of our casas here in Mexico. We decided to put off repairs until we return to Xico where we know a good ‘body man’; since the local Volkswagen dealer here in Puerto had no mechanics available – apparently their only employee for that was in training for the week (or more?).

I made some temporary repairs and buffed out the scratched as well as possible.

Waiting for Real Repairs

Obviously there are some lessons to be learned from our experience. We will try to not park our car in front of our house. It was only there so I could more easily transport heavy buckets of cement for my Beach Bodega project. Ironically I did not want to scratch the car.

We have stated this could happen in any country and neighborhood. But a little caution and good judgment about whose services one engages might save another from such an experience.

Back to pouring posts on the project. Stay Tuned!