by We had grand plans of getting up and going for a swim in the hotel pool before catching our bus to the airport but that never really materialized. It was after 2am by the time we all turned the lights out this morning and no one was moving too quickly… I slept in a little but still woke up well before Caitlin and Marie and kind of schlepped my way out of the room and into the bright morning sunlight… it was sort of overcast after the beautiful day we had yesterday but it was still very bright for 7:15am…
There were quite a few people still hanging around on the beach in various stages of post New Years recovery… The beach club folks were setting up the beach chairs and many of the loungers were occupied by people sleeping off the previous night’s revelries. A few people were sacked out in the sand while others were up and swimming in the seaweed soup… More than a few people were still in their New Years’ finest (a couple of people were swimming in their evening clothes) and were a little worse for wear but most people were just sort of enjoying a post awesome night morning at the beach… It was actually a pretty cool vibe with whole families (kids, moms, dads), tourists young and old, etc. sacked out on beach chairs or kind of ambling around aimlessly.
I left the beach and headed for my coffee spot but they weren’t going to be open for another 40 minutes or so (a few of their staff were looking like they’d had pretty awesome nights and were pretty slow moving) so headed back to the hotel and grabbed a coffee in the little breakfast area while Marie and Caitlin slept. The coffee wasn’t nearly as good as Pez Vela’s but it was free so I can’t really complain. I was able to do up the last day’s blog post and start to adjust to the fact that our holiday was ending today…
I left Caitlin and Marie to sleep until the time we’d set an alarm for and returned to the room to find them up and moving around and we all took care of the last of our packing (trying to fit all Caitlin’s booze into her suitcase was no easy feat!)… No one was moving particularly quickly but not because of the night before but more a “I know my vacation is coming to an end but if I move really, really slowly maybe I can bend the space-time in some way so that in never ends” way… For a thrown together at the last minute (for us buying tickets a month before we leave is last minute) spur of the moment kind of holiday, it’s turned out really well and we’ve all had a really good time and would definitely like to spend a few more weeks in the sun than head back to the rain and wind and grey skies of Victoria and Vancouver…
Alas, despite our best efforts there was no warping of the space-time continuum and we had to go get breakfast (fruit and yogurt all round again) and then it was off to the bus station to catch our bus to the Cancun airport. We’d opted to buy our tickets from the ADO Tourist Station which is right on 5th Avenue and only about 200 metres from our hotel – I’m sure it cost us more but it was worth not having to schlep our packs the further distance to the regular ADO station. We dropped our bags in the luggage hold (no check-in or tag system this time) and piled onto the bus… We sort of guessed that traveling on New Year’s Day would not be a super popular travel time and the bus kind of bore that theory out as it was much less than half full… We picked up a few passengers from the regular ADO station but the bus never got close to being full.
While we were eating breakfast we’d received an alert from WestJet saying that our departure time was delayed by 1 hour (wish they’d let us know that earlier so we could have taken a later bus to the airport and maybe had that morning swim!). We got another alert as we arriving at the airport to say that it was delayed a few minutes more so we had a bit of time to kill… in part because we’d opted to get to the airport a full two hours early to begin with just in case it was a bust travel day… it wasn’t… in fact, the airport was quite deserted when we arrived…
We shopped at a few of the kiosks and stalls for a few small items to use up the last of our pesos (we didn’t have that many and we felt we might as well get hosed on the price of buying something rather than getting hosed by airport exchange rates) and found something to eat (surprisingly tasty and reasonably priced tacos)… There was a bit of confusion when our flight disappeared from the list of flights but it all sorted itself out and we were soon waiting at the right gate with our fellow travellers… There was even more confusion for a group of SouthWest passengers who’d been waiting at their gate for quite some time (judging by their high volume complaints) and who were not at all amused when they got to watch their plane literally pulled away from the gate they were at to be replaced by a WestJet flight to Saskatoon… Our gate change was only a few metres away so it was no big deal…
We piled onto one of those big airport shuttle buses and were bussed to an entirely different terminal I think (WestJet is at terminal 4 but that’s not where our plane was… in fact, I think we ended up at some kind of private jet area because there were no other commercial planes around at all). Our plane was an older 737 and looked a little worse for wear… it was also one of the much smaller 737 models so things were a bit cramped even by airplane standards.
If you have ever done much flying, you know the routine… It’s the same the world over… You’re greeted as you walk on by a ridiculously cheerful cabin attendant. You shoot death glare looks at the people in first class or business class or premium or whatever the airline calls it (with WestJet it’s Premium and the passengers get the same seats as us peons but the middle seat in the row of three is occupied by a console with two drink holders and a padded armrest). If you’re hauling a big carry on pack you maybe try to clip a couple of first classers with it as you pass by… or maybe that’s just me… but then people tell me I can be petty… You inevitably wait as someone (it’s almost always an older white dude wearing a cheap straw hat, a Panama hat or even – on our Africa trip – a pith helmet) fumbles around trying to get their bags into the overhead compartment and blocks an entire line of passengers while they dig some coveted item out of their bag before putting it overhead… You find your seat and sort of flop into with a resigned sigh and go about getting yourself situated in your allotted 16 square inches of space… If you’re me, you look through the seatback holders hoping to find something cool left behind by a previous traveller (that’s what I’m going to do from now on… I’m going to start bringing something – a poem, a note, a joke… a magazine… something to leave behind for the next person who boards the plane… it’ll be like an airplane version of a message in a bottle)… If you’re Marie you go through this kind of preparatory ritual that involves emptying the entire contents of your bag into the seatback holder – it’s like origami or something… she stuffs her phone, an iPad, her dinner, a couple of spare tacos, a water bottle, magazines, and a book or two into the little mesh holder… it’s truly a wonder to behold… And then you wait and wait and wait and wait and wait…
Finally, you hear the doors closing (they always close with a sort of whooshing sci-fi airlock sound) and then there’s this almost spiritual moment of submission where you realize your fate is now entirely in someone else’s hands… you’ll eat when they feed you, drink when they water you, sleep when they turn the lights out… you’re no longer an autonomous human being but are instead stuck in some kind of weird plane limbo where you can’t even get up to use the bathroom unless the sign says you can… It gets hot. Then cold. The cabin attendants continue nudging and cajoling everyone into their allotted spaces. Someone pushes the call button. Kids cry…
Then there’s some canned sound that starts the pre-flight briefing process… a detailed explanation of the location of exits and the life jackets and oxygen masks… all of which essentially comes down to “there are many ways this whole thing could turn to crap and most of them don’t end well for you…” Then there’s a bunch of loud noises and jolts and more kids crying and then the plane starts to move… backwards… Eventually, the stars align and the planets reach apogee and the omens portend correctly or whatever they’re waiting for happens and the plane starts moving forward… then it stops… and then starts… and then there’s that moment where the engines spool up and the plane isn’t going anywhere and then the pilot floors it… and that’s about the last exciting thing that will happen to you for the next 5.5 hours… unless you get excited by pretzels…
Our flight from Cancun to Calgary was completely routine. Which basically means we spent 5.5 hours watching movies, reading, sleeping and generally trying to get comfortable. The only real excitement of the day was the almost 2 hour delay in leaving Cancun had cut seriously into the layover time for Caitlin (she was flying back to Vancouver while Marie and I were flying to Victoria). Instead of 3 hours she was going to have less than an hour to go through passport control, clear customs, go back through security and find her gate… It took less than 20 minutes to do all that… We breezed through passport control, didn’t have to pick up our checked bags to go through customs (turns out Calgary is one of (maybe the only one?) the few airports in Canada where you don’t have to collect your bags to go through customs and then check them again for your connecting flights… We breezed through security and had no trouble finding the gate… We had about 20 minutes to hang out with Caitlin and say our goodbyes and then she was off to Vancouver while we waited another 1.5 hours for our flight to Victoria.
It had been some time since we’d had anything besides pretzels to eat so Marie and I hopped on one of the little shuttles (hey, when you’re flying you take your excitement where you can find it) from our end of the airport (it’s kind of limbo area sandwiched between the domestic and international departure gate areas and has little or no food or other services) to the domestic departure gate areas and found a place to eat… we settled on a healthy panini for me and a salad for Marie… they were both unpleasant… and with two small cookies and a Vitamin Water for Marie, came to $26… or about the cost of a full dinner with drinks for the three of us in Mexico… We caught the shuttle back (our driver was the same ever cheerful and chatty Bill who’d driven us earlier) to our gate area and waited for the plane to board… and the whole boarding-waiting-briefing-finally taking off process repeated itself… and yes, there was an older white dude with straw hat… I kid you not… Our plane this time was a much newer (and much more spacious) 737… because it makes perfect sense to cram people into a smaller, older plane for a 5.5 hour flight from Cancun and to give them a much newer and much roomier and more comfortable plane for a 1.5 hour flight from Calgary to Victoria… Marie and I both fell asleep during the pre-flight briefing, woke up briefly when the plane took off and then slept fitfully for the duration of the flight…
We landed, collected our one bag (we’d had to check Marie’s to get some cheap booze home… we should have stuffed it into Caitlin’s to save the $30USD fee but she didn’t have room in her bag without giving us some of her clothes and she needed them in Vancouver) – Marie’s bag was the 2nd to last bag off the plane so next time no booze for us (unless it’s duty free and comes in one of those carry-on approved bags)… We were able to share a cab with a guy going just around the corner (otherwise we’d have had to wait as there were none left by the time we collected our bag) and were soon picking up our truck – thanks again Thaylin and Doug for letting us park it at your place for the 10 days!! – and heading for home… I definitely dozed off at times along the way…
We had a brief reunion with Bear – our very much missed 115 pound lab/Rottweiler/shepherd dog – then crawled into our king size bed (heavenly after the doubles we’d been sharing for the past 6 nights) and promptly fell asleep… at least I did… Marie says she had didn’t fall asleep until well past 2… but that’s only fair as she slept most of the flight back to Victoria…
And so ends another Doherty family adventure… this one was much shorter (in fact it’s the shortest trip we’ve ever taken outside of North America) than our usual trips and was far less planned out but turned out pretty well all around… we can definitely see now why so many Canadians travel to Mexico or other warm places during the winter!
