Our run in with The Law.

A lovely Friday spent in the nearby (larger than expected) city of Zapopan. Following a fantastic fish lunch, fan-tas-tic, we paid a visit to the Museo de Arte de Zapopan, an art museum with a surprisingly large police presence at reception.  We sauntered in a cultural manner around the two downstairs exhibitions, predominantly filled with portraits of patients in a psychiatric hospital, and of dead bodies in a morgue. We proceeded up a very fancy, black staircase to the open second floor exhibition space which was dominated but a strange wooden contraption: a pulley system leading to a crate of coconuts at the top from which extended a long, winding and somewhat unstable slide that appeared to lead to the end of the second floor and out. There was a long explanation in Spanish of what it was meant to represent, but we were too hot to be bothered to read it. But what’s this, some instructions on the wall on how to work this large wooden coconut playground, well, don’t mind if I do. 1) Take a coconut from the bag on the floor and place in the wooden box, 2) pull rope to lift wooden box up to crate at the top (box tilts, enters top crate), 3) watch as this pushes another coconut from the crate into the chute.

We did as we were told and unsurprisingly the second coconut began its long winding journey along the chute, shooting out from the second floor to the police-ridden reception. Good. We cautiously approach the edge to see what has become of our round brown friend. Needless to say he is in pieces. The receptionist and various policemen are staring up at us from a coconut smattered floor. One policeman looks at us and says, in a not slightly accusatory tone, “did you smash this coconut?”, we later discover our reaction to this question had been entirely opposed. Well done team. We fairly quickly vacated the coconut guillotine area in search of more “art”, there wasn’t any. Katy answered a call and Ellie attempted to go down an empty passageway. We were taken aback at the sudden appearance of a suspicious policeman at the end of the passage, he rather insistently requested we accompany him back in the direction of the nameless coconut device. Katy: “Sorry Jonathan, got to go, small problem with the police” – hangs up. We follow him feeling like naughty school girls, trying VERY hard not to laugh, unsure of how seriously to take the situation. We would never have guessed what happened next. He had painstakingly re-set up the contraption 1) Take a coconut from the bag on the floor and place in the wooden box, 2) pull rope to lift wooden box up to crate at the top (box tilts, enters top crate), 3) watch as this pushes another coconut from the crate into the chute. Except somehow he had stopped the second suicidal fruit in its path – the obvious police reaction in suicide situations – he sent us to the edge of the chute to watch the chaos unfurl.  Upon removing his hand, the poor fruit tumbled to join the first casualty, coconut milk puddles abounded.

It took a while for what had happened to sink in – our reaction was to laugh in disbelief, we do not remember if we thanked him. Not got much going on for the police in the SAFEST CITY IN MEXICO (MUM). It seems their time is taken up with showing tourists how coconuts smash onto reception floors. In the future, when sending fruit down a chute, we will run to the end to survey the outcome. Thanks for the lesson.

K and E. Bless em.