College sophomore Gareth Glaser spent his spring break in the coastal Mexican city of Playa del Carmen, enjoying the breathtaking views of the sea, the sand - and the soldiers carrying submachine guns.
Despite a travel alert from the U.S. Department of State last month warning Americans about the dangers of visiting the violence-ridden nation, many students still went to Mexico for spring break.
Glaser and his friends from the Beta Theta Pi fraternity had booked their trip well in advance of the alert and decided to continue with their planned trip.
"I would have been upset if I missed out because of the travel advisory and then nothing happened," he said. "We figured that the Mexican government would have enough security."
Glaser and his friends stayed at an all-inclusive resort in the eastern part of the Yucatan Peninsula, far from cities such as Ciudad Juarez, where violence is erupting between rival drug gangs near the U.S.-Mexico border.
Almost 2,000 people have been killed in Ciudad Juarez in the past year.
"Mexican drug cartels are engaged in an increasingly violent conflict . for control of narcotics trafficking routes," the federal travel alert said. "The greatest increase in violence has occurred near the U.S. border."
A U.S. Department of Justice report in December said that Mexican drug traffickers near the border posed the biggest organized crime threat to the U.S., according to the BBC.
Although Glaser's vacation spot was about 1,400 miles from the border, the city still had tight security.
Soldiers dressed in camouflage carrying M16 rifles regularly patrolled city streets, he said.
"We didn't feel unsafe at all," he added.
Other students spending spring break in Mexico included members of a program sponsored by Penn Hillel in partnership with the American Jewish World Service.
They stayed in a small Mayan village called Muchucuxcah, also in the Yucatan Peninsula.
"The travel alert did not apply to where we were going," said Rabbi Janice Elster, Jewish Student Life coordinator at Penn Hillel.
She said AJWS assessed the threat before the trip and decided the region was not affected by the drug violence.
"It was very safe and very quiet and we were very far from the border," she said.
