Didn't I just praise the Mexican drivers? Forget about it.
I just had entered the outskirts of Merida on the main road, when the traffic light at a crossroads turned yellow. A good german as I am, I stopped. Bad idea: The usual instinctive glance in the rear view showed a car approaching me at high speed and at the very same moment I heard its wheels squeeling on the pavement.

I swerved the bike a little to the right to avoid the impact - but only almost succeeded: I heard and felt a crash, saw my left pannier overtaking me, but did not fall. I yelled angrily under my helmet described an elegant U-turn with the bike and parked it on the roadside. I put it on the sidestand, got off, took off the helmet and greeted the culprit who had also gotten out of his car with a handshake. My pannier was a mess but the car - a VW Polo looked even worse - probably due to the pedestrian-protecting soft crush-zone at the front. The police showed up some 20 seconds later, since they had been waiting a few hundred meters back.

So what do you expect? Well-informed policemen? Swift formalities? Helpful insurance agents of both sides, showing up quickly and coming quickly to the agreement that it was 100% the car driver's fault? The pannier repaired quickly, maybe even the next day? A compensation cheque from the opponent's insurance company? Next day? Are you kidding? In Mexico? That's not even possible in Germany!

Well, I expected none of this - but this is actually what happened. Everything was done within 30 hours, i.e. Pannier beaten out (didn't even expect that this was possible at all), pannier floor riveted, rack straightened and 250 Dollars cash in my hands. Who told you funny stories about Mexico??