Vamos de vacaciones! (Parte Uno)

On the morning of March 4th, Brian and the boys and I set out for Redding, CA and home to my oldest sister Pauline.  This wasn't just any trip....this was the first leg of our journey to Central America.  We were meeting my parents (Grandma and Grandpa) to pass Ben and Sam over for 11 days at their home in Happy Camp while Brian and I traveled to the Yucatan in Mexico and into Belize.  We had a short but enjoyable visit with Pauline, Howie, Olivia and Isaac, spent the night in Redding and were taken to the airport early on the 5th by my dad.

Our flight left Redding with no delays, arrived in LA, and by mid-morning we were checked into our hotel in Los Angeles just minutes from LAX where we would depart the following morning for Cancun.

We spent the afternoon and evening in LA visiting with Brian's good friend Marisa, her little girl Sylvie, Marisa's husband Steve, and Brian's other good friend Nate.  We enjoyed catching up with each other as we hadn't seen Marisa and Steve since their wedding in October 2004 and we had never met Sylvie.  We hadn't seen Nate in quite a while either.  Everyone had a great time and we had a very tasty and spicy dinner at a hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant called Jitlada.  This restaurant served wonderful food and definitely earned the acclaims it's received in Gourmet magazine.

Early on the morning of the 6th we arrived at the airport to check-in and fly to Cancun.  When we got to the customer service counter we were told that we were listed as flying stand-by for the flight.  This was not what we were expecting and once we had cleared security Brian started making phonecalls to the airline to see what was going on.  Once an agent was at the gate he went through the whole story with her and she assured us that we had seats on our flights in and out of Cancun. 

Afer four and a half hours we arrived in Cancun to high clouds and temperatures in the low 80's.  When our plane landed the pilot came on the intercom telling us that there wasn't a gate available for us at that time and we would be dropped on the tarmac, loaded onto buses and taken to immigration and customs.  This should have been a red flag....no gates available?  too many planes in at once?  As our buses pulled in at a back entrance to the immigration hall we entered to see at least two thousand people waiting in long snaking lines to get through immigration.  It soon became apparent that entering through a back entrance was only making a bad situation worse as passengers from later flights who deplaned through the gates were getting ahead of all of the shuttle bus flights despite our own snaking lines and patience.  After about two hours of waiting, and seeing no efforts on behalf of the Cancun airport staff to keep people organized and calm, they finally opened more counters but failed to recognize the existing lines and let the nearest people come through immigration.  This caused a loud uproar and lines began to collapse as frustrated people began to push their way forward.  By this time Brian and I had become helpers to two families from Canada who were each traveling with three children.  We did our best to help them move all of the kid gear - suitcases, booster seats, etc. - but when the lines collapsed we did what instinct told us to do, surround the kids and keep them safe from the masses of pushing spring-breakers.  As Brian put it, you know things were bad and emotions were running high when the moms immediately turned to the obnoxious college kids and told them off without censoring their language.

To cut a long and tiring story short, soon after the lines collapsed I left our little group to go use the restroom and saw Brian's parents waiting in line closer to the center of the building.  At that point I couldn't keep the tears back as I ran to them and hugged them.  They quickly told me to go find Brian and join them in line.  At that point we knew that Brian's Uncle Roger and Aunt Janet were somewhere in the chaos and hoped we would all be able to meet up once things settled down.  After another two hours and the help of a very nice husband and wife from Philladelphia who helped us hold our place in the masses of pushing people we made it to the immigration counter where the Mexican official barely even looked at the photos in our passports as he stamped them and motioned us through.  As Brian and his dad went off to find our luggage in the mountains of bags that had been piling up for hours, Dave received a text message from Roger and Janet saying they were outside waiting for us.  Funny that they were the last of our group to arrive in Mexico but the first to make it through customs.

Even more amazing was that a representative from the rental car company had waited around for us for hours and was there to take us to the rental car agency and get us on the road south to Playa del Carmen. 

As we made our way out of Cancun we had a hard time not talking about the ordeal we had just experienced but also vowed to let it go and get on with our vacation!  Vamos a la Playa!