Arrivals and Departures
| We didn't do to well with arrivals and departures. The twelve people that stayed at the house arrived and departed in waves. I left Chicago Saturday morning as a light snow was falling. I was scheduled to arrive by commercial airline on Saturday about 3:00 pm. The small plane from Cancun to Cozumel was way overbooked. |  |
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They were making
shuttle trips as fast as they
could turn the plane around and make another trip.
I waited through two round trips and made the third.
My luggage made the fourth and I was all set.
The Garrisons were due to arrive on a charter about 9:30 pm or so. They eventually made it at 4:30 am, about 7 hours late. |
On the way
out, we figured out that the airlines messed up daylight savings time because
Cancun doesnt switch times when the US does so our departure time was an hour
earlier that the time listed on the tickets.
We stayed a few days on Isla Mujeres so that's where we left from.
That day I walked to the ferry, took the ferry to Cancun, took a couple
of buses to the airport, flew to Chicago and took the train home.
I took about all forms of transportation except for a car.
The final leg from Dallas to Chicago was delayed allegedly due to
weather, but we saw nothing but a little light rain. We sat on the plane in Dallas for about 3 hours until the
pilot said his deadline for flying was going to be exceeded so he was heading
back to the terminal. All of a
sudden, the weather problems disappeared and we took off a couple of minutes
later.
The Mexican
airports have a problem with tools. Hector
had one of those small folding 12-in-one tools in his carry-on bag. They caught
it and told him to go back, wait in line and put it in his checked luggage.
He refused, so they took it away from him.
He asked them why they had a problem with tools, do they think he is
going to take the plane apart? He got a smile, but not his tool back.
None of the signs say anything about tools, so it comes as a surprise
when the scanning people stop you. Hector
is going to send American Airlines and the Cancun Airport a bill for the tool.
He doesn't think he'll get paid, but he hopes to create paperwork
problems for both of them. As Hector was getting
stopped for the tool, he passed his pager around the metal detector.
No one looked at what he passed around or asked him to turn it on.
If he had the tool in a leather case, he could have passed it around just
as easily. So I think security was
very lax, but they spent a great deal of time hassling people for silly stuff. I
had the same problem in Cancun coming in. I
passed right through the scanners in Chicago and Dallas but got hassled in
Cancun.