News and Features
Trapped in a Mexican Jail
By Pavel Kulisek with Gary Stephen Ross published Aug 2, 2012
As a child, I dreamed of living in Baja. It was paradise until I made friends with the wrong guy and wound up marooned in a Mexican prison
When I was a boy in Czechoslovakia, there was a globe in my classroom. One day I spun it, and when it stopped, my finger was pointing to Baja. I knew right then that I would learn English and go to North America and travel to Baja. It became my dream. I didn't realize Baja was part of Mexico. I thought it was in California.
Years later, in 1988, my wife Jirina and I escaped from Czechoslovakia and settled in Vancouver, as a good friend of ours, Josef, had done. I'm good at making things, and I worked installing cable and then in construction. In 2006 and 2007, as the market was rising, my business partner and I built a luxury home in West Vancouver that we sold for a nice profit. I said to Jirina, "Here's our chance. We have money in the bank. Let's take the RV down to Baja and live there for a year before Isabella and Annie start school." So we packed up the girls' old toys and outgrown clothes and gave them away to poor families each time we stopped in Mexico.
At first we lived in an RV park. Then we found a house in Los Barriles on the east coast of the Baja peninsula that needed a little TLC. It was listed for $450,000, but the market was soft and we got it for $350,000. I figured I could renovate it and the resale would pay for our trip.
I love dirt biking, and Baja is great for that. One day Ron, who rented quads and dirt bikes, introduced me to a dirt biker named Carlos. In December 2007 there was a race from La Paz to Cabo San Lucas. Carlos said they needed one more rider on their team. I said no thanks, it was only 330 kilometres-I'd do it solo. Jirina and the girls were waiting at the finish line. I came sixth out of a hundred riders. Carlos finished way back, but he saw I was a good rider and said he wanted to learn from me.
Carlos was in his 40s, spoke perfect English, and had four children. He was a good father-he didn't drink or smoke or do drugs, didn't keep women on the side. He invited us to his place for dinner. I knew he was building a home, and I wanted to see how the trades worked in Mexico, how the tiling and stucco work were done. It would be good to know when I fixed up our house.
It was a palace he was building! A huge place up the coast-12 bedrooms, a swimming pool, even parking for a small airplane. His nephew, Antonio, was one of half a dozen men working on the place. I joked about how rich he must be. Carlos overheard and laughed. It was his wife who had money, he said. Her father had owned a big property, thousands of hectares, and sold it for a fortune.
Jirina and I had brought a trampoline down from Costco. Every morning the girls would go out and play on it. I'd pick oranges for them, make espresso for Jirina, and we'd all have breakfast outside. Sometimes Carlos would bring his kids over and they'd all bounce together. The weather was beautiful. You could see the turquoise waters of the Sea of Cortez from our deck. It was a great time in our lives. When you have a dream that finally comes true, you're the happiest guy in the world.
