Inspected, detected and lost

Puerto Chiapas, Chiapas, Mexico

There is nothing so relaxing as a trip by air.

We left Edmonton, on a sunny, relatively warm, day.  Our flight left at 11:50PM, just before midnight, minutes before daylight savings time kicked in in Canada and the US.  For reasons unknown, the US customs and immigration at the Edmonton airport was not open, so we actually flew into Houston as an international flight for a change.

No problem with the ridiculous requirement to check into the USA and back out again on a connecting flight as we had lots of time and the lineups were not too bad - nice to know that the USA is looking out for us.  We even had time for breakfast in the airport.

The problems started with the flight out of Houston, destined for Mexico city.  There was a nasty thunderstorm raging in Texas and they shut down one of the takeoff runways, forcing the large volume of traffic to use a single runway.  This kept us waiting for over an hour on the ground before our turn came up.  This was a bit of a concern for us as we only had a scheduled hour and a half in Mexico city to clear customs and immigration and get from the international terminal to the Aeromexico terminal for our flight to Tapachula.  Indeed, in spite of making up some of the time on the flight from Houston, we still arrived very late.  The approach to Mexico city is always spectacular, as you descend beside the volcanoes into the haze, to find yourself over this immense city.

As usual, the Mexican formalities ran very fast and smooth and we were whisked through immigration.  We only had a short wait for our bags which we had to pick up and take through customs (green light - thank goodness) and we plopped the bags onto the conveyor belt that supposedly takes then through to the connecting flight.  With only a 1/2 hour until that flight took off, we had little hope that the bags would make it in time.

For ourselves, we had to take a bus (the train was not working) to terminal 2.  As were sitting on the bus, we saw the boarding time listed on our boarding pass, pass by.  Once we were at the terminal, we were directed into two incorrect lineups before finally finding the security gate.  Fortunately there was no lineup there and we were able to clear security very quickly.  We literally ran the length of the terminal to get to our gate about 10 minutes before takeoff.  There was no-one at the gate and it was closed.  As we stood there in shock, someone came up from the plane and opened the door and asked if we wanted to get on the plane.  Yes, we shouted!  She advised us to run down the ramp and so we did just that, and as they closed the door to the aircraft behind us, we congratulated ourselves on accomplishing the seemingly impossible task.  We had made it!

The bags however, were another story.  When we arrived in Tapachula, just before 2PM, as feared, the bags did not.  After filling in some lengthy forms for lost luggage, we almost left the airport when it occurred to us that the next flight would probably have our bags, and that was scheduled for about 3 hours later.  So, we just hung around the airport until the next flight arrived around 5:30PM.  The Aeromexico baggage guy had already confirmed that our bags were indeed on that flight, and sure enough, there they were.  For some reason they were all wrapped up in plastic bags and were a little worse for wear, but they were there.

We grabbed a taxi to take us to the marina, about 20 minutes from the airport, and opened the bags to find that everything was OK, although mine had a nice note from US Home Security letting me know that they had felt it necessary to search my bag and break the lock in the process.  Oh well, this is the fun of travelling through the USA these days.  At least nothing else was broken and nothing appeared to be missing.

Back at the marina, the boat seemed to have weathered the last two weeks OK.  It is a little dirty.  This morning, four sailboats arrived into the marina, so there are actually more boats here now than when we left, although most of the ones that were here then have now gone.  Great news was that the restaurant at the marina was open.  A somewhat limited selection but we were able to grab a quick supper before we both collapsed for the night.

This morning, we unpacked all our booty.  It looks like quite a haul, considering we had very little on our list of must-haves when we left here two weeks ago.  Thank goodness we got the green light at customs, as I would hate to have to explain it all to them.  The accompanying picture shows just about everything except some clothing.  Now our job is to cross a few key items of boat maintenance off our list before we can get out of here.  I already have a guy scrubbing the accumulated weeds and barnacles off the bottom of the boat and I hope to arrange for some diesel this afternoon.  With any luck, I should be able to get the new alternator installed today or tomorrow.  Susanne wants to get some laundry done, and that will just about be everything that absolutely has to be done.

BTW, it is hot!

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