The girlfriends of two missing Australian surfers are taking dental records and hair samples to a gang-plagued Mexican state to see if two bodies found in a burnt out van belong to their boyfriends.
Two charred and unrecognisable bodies were found in the van in Sinaloa, considered to be the drug capital of Mexico and infamous for its violent gangs.
It's been more than a week since surfer mates Dean Lucas and Adam Coleman, from Golden Bay in Perth, had contact with family or friends.
Their distressed girlfriends are on their way to the Sinaloan capital of Culiacan, armed with items that contain the men's DNA, and fearing the worst.
"Everything points to it being them because the van matches, it had a bicycle," Mr Coleman's Mexican girlfriend Andrea Gomez has told the Associated Press.
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She's taken with her pieces of her boyfriend's dreadlocks he gave her as a keepsake. Mr Lucas' partner, Josie Cox, is going armed with his dental records.
Ms Cox has told of recently learning Mr Lucas was going to propose to her.
"They're such good guys and such good people," she told Canada Global News.
"I definitely don't doubt that there's something that's happened, something that we should be worried about."
The two Australians were travelling in a van from Canada to Mexico and were driving through the Sinaloa region when they went missing last week.
Their last confirmed sighting was when they got off a ferry at Topolobampo, on the Gulf of California, on November 20 at 10pm. The men were supposed to arrive in Guadalajara a day later, but never arrived.
Sinaloa, home of the powerful cartel led by fugitive drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, stretches down Mexico's Pacific coast and would be on the route of most road trips to Guadalajara from western Canada.
The Department of Foreign Affairs is providing consular assistance to the men's families in the wake of the grim discovery.
"The families hold deep fears for the safety of their sons, but stress that they are still waiting for details to be confirmed," DFAT has said in a statement.
Mr Coleman's mother, Zena Cattermole, appears to have lost any hope of her son being alive.
"Our son's life has left us, but they will be with us forever in our hearts," she wrote on Facebook.
