BREEZING THROUGH CUSTOMS – THAT HARDLY HURT AT ALL

Going by plane into Mexico is amazingly painless, at least when you are flying into Cancun anyway. The price of your FM3 or immigration paper is included in your plane ticket. You just fill out this one page form along with one for your family group. The staff gives you plenty of time on the plane andthen you’ll be guided to Immigration officers once you land. Choose 1 day to 180 days.

This is a look out the window of the plane as the sunsets.

These people actually seem like they don’t mind letting you into their country, as long as you’ve done your part.  Just have your proper ID, be nice and no problems.   These men and women are all in their sharp uniforms, very much businesslike but pleasant to deal with.  They even wish you a good time.  Well, I think I may.

Back to the luggage issue.  In my last post you saw the amount we had.  Is there a van out there big enough and how many people is it going to take to haul this stuff along?

Our very helpful luggage carousel guy assists us to get a cab.  Is it lost on him how much we have?  Noper, as he gets us what we need, but not what we expect.

The gentleman coming with the cart is not what I would describe in anyway as being athletic looking.  Poor guy is going to break his back hauling our stuff and where is his helper?

Well if there were luggage carrying Olympics this guy would be getting all the metals.  Wished we’d taken a photo but our mouths are hanging open too far to find our cameras.  He was amazing at jockeying our luggage!  Off we head to the taxi, hauling only our carryon’s and trying not to step on our bottom lip as our able steward guides us.

Then we are walking towards what?  A van? SUV? Station wagon?  Nope it’s a Camry.  Oh man these guys don’t get it!  No way is that going to fit! 

Again our mouths are gapping.  The taxi driver starts loading our luggage into his trunk.  This is like watching him work with large, heavy puzzle pieces.  Like Jenga in his trunk.  There is no squishing, cramming or jamming, just fitting in.  He does this in a flash.   Guess he’s probably done this a time or two.  Man, its all in there with only one piece in the front seat and our laptops in the back seat with us. Whew what a humongous relief!

Now off to the lovely Bonampak Hotel in sunny downtown Cancun. http://hotelbonampak.com/index_en.html  What a great night's sleep we had. 
I think we should ask for a van to take us to the bus line for Campeche just in case we don't find as talented a trunk puzzle assembler as last night.  Alas our cab arrives, and it is even smaller than the one last night.  This is a Nissan Tsuru, a very popular vehicle for taxis.  He too had excellent packing skills.  We just ended up with our suit bag between us.  Pretty good.
Now off to our comfy ADO bus for the 6 hour trip to Campeche.  No chickens on this bus or any other we have seen.  So what did he say...?

 TO THE AIRPORT AND CHECKING HOW MUCH??? HEAVY LUGGAGE 

So you are going on vacation. Basically if you are going one or two weeks you pack the same stuff.  But what if you are going for a year?  And you are trying to limit yourself to your suitcases, not shipping anything? And you are a woman of substance, like me so can I buy clothes and shoes here that will fit?  And you are trying to avoid paying the price of an extra passenger like we did?  That is a very tall order. 

Mon. morning a dear friend kindly picked us up at 3:45am to take us to the airport.  We did a practice run the night before to make sure it would all fit.  Once we arrived in Mexico we were astounded as to how much luggage can really fit into a small car.

So we had 4 carry ons (Two vultures get on a plane each carrying a 3 dead raccoons.  The stewardess, opps, flight attendant says “Don’t you know its limited to 2 carrions each”.) and 5 checked pieces.  Bruce had carefully stepped on and off the bathroom scales a million times with the various pieces at different times.  The four were under 50 lbs each and the large one 60 lbs, or so we thought. 

So at the air port Mr. Baggage check in man, with many swings of his head, pointed out they were all over and we couldn’t take the big one.  PANIC!!!  He says if we take out 5 lbs from the 65lber he’ll let us take it.  SCRAMBLE!!!  We take some stuff and quickly cram it into our carry on.  “Ok you can take them but this is gonna cost you”.  What can we do?  As Bruce says, “Pay the man and say,” Thank you very much””.  So we kept calm and kept smiling and did just so.  Now we go to the gal we have to pay.  She is horrified and so apologetic that he would charge us so much and be so inflexible.  She asks if we want her to get our luggage so we can repack it.  Well it took us days to pack it and the stress-o-meter would be going off the chart if we had to whip them open then and redistribute.  There would have been a big storm of unmentionables and what not that day.  So “Just pay the woman and say…”  What a lovely gal she was!  We told her what we were doing and she was very jealous (she said so) and commending about our endeavours.       

Now as we are walking towards security Bruce remembers his knife is in his pocket, as he always has it there.  “Good bye our little friend the knife” and Ker plunk into Mr. garbage can.  Then I remember that some of the stuff I had grabbed and crammed into my carry on, so that our other luggage could go through, has all our toiletries in it.  Well what can you do, just smile and carry on.  They stop me and I have to go back through security.  No not because of any hazardous hair spray, it’s my six year old comfy Neutralizers’ sole that are a threat to national security.  Emergency averted and off we go. 

 

A few valuable lessons can be learned here:

- do your best to try and understand your airlines baggage policy, and pack less.

- buy quality and buy less.  If you are in any major center there are lots of name brand stores and lovely seamstresses.  We could have bought a fair bit of clothing for the extra we had to pay due to our luggage being over.

- make sure, if need be, that only one bag is over and the rest a bit under.

- it might be good to invest in a little luggage scale.  Having your dear husband balancing 50 or so lbs of luggage while you are craning your neck under the luggage and around his legs might not be really conducive to accurate measurement.

- sometimes, no matter how hard you try, things may not go smoothly but maintaining your calm will help your head stay clear.  And not make the folks on the check in desk not hate their job.

So what did he say  http://thesunnysideofmexicohesaid.blogspot.mx/

How will we buy food? Where will we get water? How will we do any of that as we don’t speak the language? Have I scrubbed these fruits and veggies enough? What if I get water in my eyes while I am showering? What was I thinking of coming here? I’m sure you get the idea. For the first three days we thought the tops of our heads were going to blow off from stress.


Alas, our wonderful hosts had been coming to our rescue. The tops of our heads stayed firmly planted as the stress dissipated. They helped us to buy bottled water, only two doors down. They took us to the grocery store and helped us to start to learn that everything we needed was right around us. Yes things looked very different from our home in Halifax but really everyone has the same basic needs so its got to be here.

As time is going by we are really coming to see the charm of the people and the lovely scenery of Campeche. Oh those beautiful sunsets on the Malecon!