Mexico Day 1

Sat Dec 17.  Off we head to Mexico! Well, not quite yet. First we have to fly to Vancouver and spend the night there. That's one of the annoying things about living in a small non-gateway city...you can never really get to "there" from "here" in a single bound. There's always an overnight somewhere, and if not an overnight, then a long wait.

In this case, since we were flying Air Canada, they give a free add-on from Cranbrook to either Calgary or Vancouver, but it's a "six of one, half dozen of the other" scenario. They want you to fly with them so they give the free add-on, but they don't want to actually let you have a free day anywhere so they make you take the flight that is closest in time to your next flight. In this case, we had to leave Cranbrook at 8:45 PM, the last flight of the day. We tried to get an earlier one so that we could spend a nice evening in Vancouver with the kids, but alas, Air Canada didn't quite have that much Christmas kindness running through their veins. My travel agent informed me that there were only the 2 seats left, so I had to make up my mind quickly.

Visions of Sugarplums....

So we arrived in Vancouver at about 10:30 PM, the flight was half empty, so that was a tiny bit of a bonus,(hmmm...so much for my travel agent telling me there were only 2 seats left, there were over 20 empty seats on this flight.) although the flight itself is only an hour and half. We took a taxi to Shane's house, had some homemade soup that he had made earlier, opened a few gifts and met the new dog, Sava, who is just as sweet as she seems to be in this picture. 

It was a speedy evening, already almost midnight, and we soon took the taxi back to our Airport hotel, we had decided that it would be easier for us to stay there and take the shuttle to the airport in morning rather than all 4 of us trying to shower and get ready in Shane's teeny, weeny house at the ungodly hour of 5:30 AM with 1 bathroom and 2 large and excited dogs.

Sadly, at the hotel I was informed that the free continental breakfast started at 6:30 AM and we had to catch the 6:00 AM shuttle. Again, I had tried to get a later flight via Air Canada, but "noooooo", they wouldn't  give me that little bit of Christmas Kindness so I had to use the little coffee pot in the room that always has stale, strong coffee and coffee mate instead of actual cream. Damn you Air Canada, for your pretend kindness in offering free add-ons. Are the "cons" worth the "pros"? I am thinking the answer to that is a resounding NO!



Better than nothing? Hard to say...

 Anyhow, the shuttle was on time, and off we headed to the airport. The plan was to get through the security and meet at our gate, and Glory Be, it worked and we all made it on time. That was my big fear...someone would sleep in or be involved in a traffic hold up, or realize that their passport was lost/expired/torn (because did you know that Mexico is notorious for turning tourists away if their passport is in bad shape? True story! A passport that may be raggedy from use, or have something spilled on it, or been through the wash a few times can (and often is) refused by the Mexican authorities. And, the airline that flew you there is responsible for getting you home again...so, tell me, why on God's green earth wouldn't a travel agent or airline website inform their customers of this??? However, I can take a deep breath and not concern myself about this since it all went well for us.

But still...be aware of this fact. It's one of those things that I just know I'm going to bring up in conversation again and again until people are sick to death of me, but, really, how can a travel agent not know this? And if she did know it, she should inform her clients. I was not overly thrilled with my TA, I won't mention names, but I will say she was a total stranger to me, not my usual one and no one that I had ever met before. So beware when booking last minute travel.

The flight from Vancouver to Toronto was excellent, Steven and I had an empty seat beside us, so we had lots of elbow room and space to stretch out.  It was 4 hours, but went quickly. We had to change planes in Toronto, but that went amazingly smoothly and the final 4 hour stretch to Cancun was also speedy. Watched a few movies, dozed a bit,  and before we knew it, we were in Cancun!

We found the area where the buses sit, ready to take you to your resort, and the fellows went to find a beer and I went to get on the bus and of course ended up on the wrong one, but that's not unusual for me. I quickly realized the error of my ways and scuttled over to where the rest of them were cranky at me for being in the wrong place,  at this time it was about 9:30 or 10:00, it was HOT and HUMID and we were all getting tired, so I wisely didn't say a word and we clambered on the shuttle and headed off to our hotel.  It was about 1:00 AM "our" time and it we had all been up since about 5 AM, so silence was by far the best policy right now.

The ride to the resort was about an hour, the check in was very speedy, as a matter of fact, so far on this trip all the line-ups and check ins and outs were strangely smooth. I wasn't sure if this was a lead up to something totally horrible, or if this is actually a better time to travel than I had thought. In any case, we made it to our rooms, dropped our luggage and went to the buffet for a snack.

At first glimpse of the resort I felt like I was in a 60's version of what the architects though the future would look like.  And after seeing the buffet (see story below) I fully expected to see someone running through the lobby screaming "It's peeeeeeople....Soylent Green is peeeeeople!" and being shot dead. You need to google "soylent green" if you don't get this reference.

Oh...hmmm....the buffet was huge, however almost every single thing was empty, or had a few dried bits of noodle, soggy veg, sad looking fruit and pieces of something that was apparently  a hamburger, but unlike one I had ever seen. I ate it gingerly and the taste was a bit off, not in a spoiled way, but just in an odd way.The staff was miserable and pretty much said that "no, they weren't going to be filling anything up", yet the place was supposed to be open for a few hours yet. There were a lot of other buses arriving and the place was filling up with cranky, tired and starving tourists. We ate what we could find, and I've actually forgotten  what it was that I did eat, but we decided ( or, I hoped) that a good nights sleep would put it all in perspective and that things would look yummy in the morning.


This is how I felt before bed. I think I might have looked like this too....