A Traveler's Unease: Russian Blogger's Mexico Journey Shadowed by Fear

Travel blogger Marina Ershova is exploring Mexico with her partner, but her online journal reveals a trip colored by anxiety. In a post on the Russian platform Dzen, she confessed her primary fear in blunt terms: "I'm afraid of being stolen." Ershova points to the ubiquitous missing persons flyers plastered across cities as the source of her dread. "They are everywhere. Faces, names—endless lists of young people," she wrote. "We understand perfectly well this isn't a movie; this is someone's life." Her apprehension is rooted in experience. During a previous visit, thieves broke into her car and stole expensive equipment. Now, she never leaves her accommodation without a backpack carrying her laptop and vital documents. The roads also unnerve her. To save money, she often uses free highways, where locals warn that cars are sometimes stopped and seized, their occupants forced out. An experienced traveler, Ershova finds herself on guard. "I'm scared that in time this feeling won't change, but will only get worse, and I'll leave here not with warmth, but with relief," she explained. In a lighter earlier post, she had noted how couples in Mexican parks "intertwine hands and feet," lounging on the grass rather than benches, with lovers appearing as evening falls. That romantic image now contrasts sharply with the tension defining her current journey.