Mexico Day 1: Victoria to Cancun to Puerto Morelos

We were quite late getting to bed last night (mainly because we left a whole lot of stuff to the last minute) so no one was particularly cheerful when the alarm went off at the ungodly hour of 4:50am. Marie and Caitlin got ready in truly record time and we pulled out of our driveway right on time at 5:45 am and pulled into our friends Thaylin and Doug’s house (where we’re parking our car while we’re away) a few minutes before 6:15… A HUGE shoutout to Thaylin who generously offered to drive us to the airport. Everything went flawlessly this morning and we were walking into the departures area just before 6:30am… only to discover that we were ridiculously early. Expecting huge Christmas crowds, we were stunned to find the airport less busy than almost every other trip we’ve made… Caitlin was not amused. There are apparently Instagram posts…

We’re doing the carry-on thing this trip and checked in on line so we breezed past the kiosks and check-in counters and joined the line for Tim Hortons. To discover we’d already lost Marie. Apparently she decided to ask the WestJet staff if we’d be getting anything to eat on our flight. Marie is nothing if not optimistic. A Canadian airline serving food on a 5.5 hour flight? Nonsense… We would be getting pretzels and water… We rejoined the Tim Hortons line and waited… And waited… And waited… And waited… Eventually we placed our order (an experience in itself) and collected our food and headed to the little seating area to fuel up. After downing her coffee and scarfing her bagel BELT, Caitlin was tamed enough to consider going through security so we made our way to the almost non-existent line… Where the staff were ridiculously cheerful and friendly. In an airport… At Christmas… There might have been 10 people in front of us and they even opened up a new line for us… All was going well…

Until Marie’s carry-on bag went through the scanner… Then the smiling faces disappeared and the latex gloves came on… My camera bag – which had already been swabbed and vetted got pulled back in and my spiffy new liquids travel bag (which had been checked and approved just seconds earlier) got pulled back and dumped into the bin with Marie’s… Marie’s carry-on bag was opened and rutted through until the offending culprits had been unearthed… a mascara, an eye-liner, a 10ml tub of face cream and a 40ml tube of toothpaste that had not been put into Marie’s requisite liquids ziploc… The screener was not amused… So made me take everything out of my 1L TSA approved Nalgene travel toiletries bag and place it into the approved ziploc bag (which is actually bigger than mine) and add Marie’s rogue makeup and toothpaste to it (because there wasn’t any room in hers or something). To be honest, we’ve had clearer communication in countries where English is not the primary language than we got from our previously quite cheerful screener… Caitlin was mortified by the whole experience… And chuckling at the fact that she’d left a bunch of creams out of her liquids bag but had breezed through while our screeners were distracted… a classic traveller move perfectly executed…

Marie has already accumulated a substantial number of travel “Dick points.” Those of you who are older might remember a bumper sticker that read “See Dick drink. See Dick drive. See Dick die… Don’t be a dick.” Years ago that spawned a contest we used to do when I was running backpacking trips where doing something stupid earned you “Dick points” and the person with the most at the end of the trip had to bake a cake for everyone else. Marie is winning. It’s day 1. To be fair to Marie, the mascara thing seems a little over the top as they contain less than 5ml of a substance that technically qualifies as a liquid or gel I suppose… but the rogue toothpaste… that’s Dick point worthy when you travel as much as Marie does… Update: we are just over two hours into our flight and Marie is still insisting that toothpaste is neither a liquid nor a gel…

Eventually we were turned loose and allowed to repack our bags (there’d be no saving our tattered pride) and head to the departure gate… But first we needed to grab something to eat on the plane. Marie and Caitlin gave me their demands… I mean orders… and I joined the line (maybe 6 people)… and waited… and waited… and waited… While I was waiting I contacted my bank and checked that we had enough room on the credit cards to pay for the 1 sandwich, 1 salad , 1 sausage roll and package of 4 cookies… They suggested I take out a 2nd mortgage…

After securing the requisite funding and eventually making my way to the counter guy, I timidly placed my order and hoped for the best… because Joe – let’s call him Joe – was not having a good morning. I don’t think Joe has had a good morning since Kennedy was killed… In fact, I think Joe might have done it… I must have done things right because I only got grunted at… until I asked for a bag and then things took a turn… Still, I feel I got off lucky… others got much worse treatment. Joe is in for a very long day…

Collecting my food I headed upstairs to join Marie and Caitlin and to wait. Caitlin grumbled something about being too early (by this point we were only about 30 minutes prior to boarding so pretty much perfect timing all things considered). We boarded precisely on time and everyone seemed to know what they were doing so the plane was buttoned up and armed for takeoff right on time… WestJet may not feed you but they do run a tight ship…

We’ve now been flying for 2 hours. We’ve been fed (pretzels and cookies) and watered. One of the cabin crew – Reid? Ryan? Randy? I can’t remember – epitomizes someone who’s doing exactly what they should be doing… cheerful… funny… and most importantly gives the proper 1 glass of soda water and 1 glass of orange juice instead of chintzing out and going with a single glass… Caitlin has given up on trying to sleep and is alternating between moaning (she’s apparently very sore from a truly epic 5am in-home workout courtesy of the Nike fitness app the other day) and complaining that she’d be sleeping peacefully by now if WestJet handed out free booze like a civilized airline…

The rest of the flight passed pretty uneventfully. A couple of spots of mild turbulence. Some crying kids (although the 3 young kids travelling in front of us did amazingly well on a flight with no in-flight entertainment of any kind). We were watered and fed (more pretzels and cookies again) a second time. And we landed… obviously… or there wouldn’t be a blog…

We actually landed almost 20 minutes early – which did nothing at all for us because there was a plane at our gate still and a lineup of about 7 planes on the ground in front of us… So we waited…

Eventually we made our way to the gate. Cancun has a very large airport – at one point the taxiway even crossed over a highway. Our terminal (4) seemed to be at the far end of everything but disembarking (I’ve been told that deplaning is a made up word and should not be used in civilized conversation so henceforth we shall disembark from the plane) went smoothly and quickly. I do need to point out that there is always – always – that guy… the guy (it always seems to be a middle aged dude) who disrupts the great chain of disembarking and pushes his way past the lesser mortals who disembark in an orderly and respectful manner… There is a level of hell reserved for such people. Or maybe they’ll just be made to fly Air Canada for eternity…

After getting off the plane (I’m tired of disembarking already) we made our way through immigration – not crowded at all, very efficient but not super friendly. Okay, truth be told, not friendly at all. But efficient. Very efficient. I will not try to hide my sense of satisfaction at the karmic justice meted out to the dude who pushed his way past people to get off the plane sooner… he did not have his form filled out correctly… he was sent away to do it right… and had to rejoin the line. Sometimes the universe just gets it right…

After immigration we breezed past the baggage pick up (gotta love traveling carry-on only) and made our way towards customs. 20+ years ago when Marie and I arrived in Mexico for the first time ever, we were herded through gates that randomly flashed a red X or a green √ – we got red X’ed and were subjected to a thorough inspection of our bags… by a guy who was very taken with my Swiss Army knife (so taken he tried to confiscate it)… Here we just joined a herd (sorry… group) of tourists and walked out the wide hallway past the uniformed agents who pretty much ignored all of us.

After customs we were accosted (helped?) by one of the many uniformed Tourist Information staffers… we were not able to tell if they were actually tourist helpers, whether they were selling tours or something else… but they were helpful and we were able to disengage relatively easily to make our way to our waiting shuttle transfer.

The process of finding our driver (we used a very highly rated service called CanadaTransfers) and getting to the vehicle was super smooth – our name was on their big list, our driver was located by the helpful staff and we were on our way in no time. Definitely a much smoother – and far less frightening experience than 20 years ago when we had to find a taxi at the Mexico City airport at 1 in the morning… and ended up getting into the exact wrong kind of cab… This time our driver was friendly. We had the van all to ourselves and they had cool clothes to wipe our faces with… it was all very civilized.

We arrived in Puerto Morelos after about a 20 minute drive and George (our driver) gave us a short tour of the town and a rundown on the layout then dropped us at the door of our apartment for the next few days.

There’s no pictures for this post and we’re about to head out on bikes so I’m going to describe the apartment and our first evening in Puerto Morelos in another post….

0 thoughts on “Mexico Day 1: Victoria to Cancun to Puerto Morelos

    1. This had us laughing out loud at the restaurant last night. People thought there was something wrong with us…

  1. Kirk, you obviously enjoy writing–and I enjoyed reading. How many Dick points for carrying a Swiss Army knife on the plane, and how come the agents didn’t find it earlier? Philip

    1. Thanks Philip. I do enjoy writing and the blog makes such a great trip record for us. The Swiss Army knife incident was when we traveled to Mexico for the first time more than 20 years ago… shows how much air travel has changed since 9-11.

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