All hope for two Australian surfers missing in Mexico appears to be lost, with families now saying they are preparing to retrieve their bodies.
Dean Lucas and Adam Coleman, both 33, drove a popular route from Vancouver to Mexico in November, passing through notoriously dangerous territory controlled by drug cartels.
The region features a cemetery with massive mausoleums erected by Mexican families to honor loved ones lost to the drug war.
Dean and Adam, who are from WA but had been working in Canada, were travelling in a beat-up, blue-and-white surfer’s van, with boards and bikes on top. The last known sighting of the pair was when they stopped to ask for a map.
Their van was found burnt-out on the side of the road on Sunday, with two bodies inside.
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Mexican authorities told local newspapers that the two men passed through Mexico on a particularly dangerous weekend, when drug cartels were seeking to settle scores.
There were 16 murders over just three days in the Sinaloa region on the weekend of 21 November.
The area is home to the violent fugitive drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who escaped from a Mexican prison for the second time, earlier this year.
“There are times or moments in which, unfortunately, these types of things happen,” a spokesman for the Mexican police told the Spanish-language press.
“As you well know, around the end of the year situations arise, when some people come from outside the State … Or they have some prior debt that they then have to pay, and these unfortunate things happen, but we are trying to catch everything.”
The US State Department’s travel warning for Mexico warns travellers to stay way from the Sinaloan region, and to only drive only on toll roads.
“Violent crime rates remain high in many parts of the state,” the warning says.
