Travelers returning to Calgary from Puerto Vallarta describe ‘unsettling’ and ‘surreal’ scenes
CBC
Vincent LaPointe landed at Calgary International Airport Tuesday evening, on the first flight returning from Puerto Vallarta to Calgary since the violent unrest began over the weekend.
“It was probably one of the most scariest times I've been through,” he said. “We were sitting having breakfast and the bombs started going off and then the fires and the smoke and then the gunfire.”
Violence erupted in the popular tourist destination Sunday after Mexican special forces killed the head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho.
“It was surreal because you're sitting there in your resort and you're having beautiful food, talking to people, and then you realize outside there are people dying and no one's on the streets,” LePointe said.
“It's hard to even explain what it was really like because I've never been through anything like that in my life before.”
Canada issued a shelter-in-place warning Sunday, following widespread retaliatory violence in parts of the country, with gunmen blocking highways and setting cars ablaze in several cities.
On the way to Puerto Vallarta International Airport Tuesday morning, LePointe said he saw several burnt-out cars and buses along with a big military presence in the streets.
The first of four WestJet flights to leave from Puerto Vallarta on Tuesday destined for Calgary landed just after 7:30 p.m. MT.
Three more flights are expected to arrive in Calgary on Wednesday, and another early Thursday morning.
Calgarian Montana Dunn said she was on her way to a bar in Puerto Vallarta to watch the Olympic men’s hockey final when she noticed fires on the street some distance away.
“The Mexicans were telling us to go inside and there was a lot of people running away from where the fire had just started,” she said.
“So I got to [the] bar … at that point they locked down the restaurant, pulled the cages down. We were waiting there for a while and lots of smoke was coming up everywhere. Our place was only about four blocks away, so we kind of made a run for it up there.
“But once we got there, we just watched fires, like, pop up all over the city and then go down and then another one pop up.”
The next morning, Dunn said she left her accommodation and found only a few restaurants open. But by Tuesday, the city had mostly reopened.
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