Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico

God Blinked. I was on my way to Hidden World Cenotes to scout out the activities for the shoot tomorrow when it started to rain. It is the rainy season down here in Tulum you know. Anyway, traffic slowed and I past an emergency vehicle crumpled and bent like a cheap beer can. It had plowed into a vehicle trying to beat it on a turn. There’s a risky game for you. It seemed like every cop and ambulance driver from Tulum was on the scene. I glanced at it as I moved on.

Five more minutes go by and I see another crash. This time it’s a bus and lying on its side like a beached whale on its dying breathe. “Shit. I have to stop and shoot it!” I thought. When I got on the scene and started to work, it was pandemonium. Most everybody was screaming. I looked down and found a younger man cradling his wife’s head and sobbing quietly behind the bus. She had been thrown from the bus and then crushed to death. Her head and shoulder were visible from beneath the rear of the vehicle.

“MY WIFE IS DYING! SOMEONE GET HELP!” bellowed a man from the interior. He waffled between screaming these words and sobbing uncontrollably. His wife’s left arm was cut to the bone near the elbow. She had been partially thrown through a window. Her legs were trapped under the bus while she was still inside it. Once she heard him scream that she was going to die, she started to scream she was going to die. I thought she was going to die.

The bus driver was in the front of the bus dead. He died instantly when they hit the telephone pole. One gal that the locals extracted was really fucked up but as time went on she became more coherent. I thought she was a goner at first. Several victims more were outside waiting for immediate attention that would be VERY late. All of the local emergency workers were busy down the road. About 25 minutes later help started to arrive. I drove two couples that escaped this nightmare unharmed back to their hotel near Cancun later.

I found out from Drew at Teetotum that the locals call this road from Cancun to Tulum “La Carretera de Muerte” or “The Road of Death”. Drew told me that buses wreck in this manner all the time. The odd thing is that there are no wicked turns or 500 ft deep gorges. This highway is just straight and flat. Here’s the kicker. All the tourists were either honeymooners or on an anniversary. God blinked. He seems to do that a lot.