December 8, 2012 Woo Hoo! Touchdown!
Well, we survived another trip to Mexico without any major foo-foos. Got to the Westjet counter at 04:51 because we wanted to be first in line with all our extra bags, and we were. The very nice lady at the counter tried about 20 times to print out our baggage tags, and when the Infernal Machine finally decided to work it pooped out enough tags to take us around the world a couple times! Very uneventful flight, which is my favourite kind.
Manzanillo Airport is actually about 30 kilometers north of Manzanillo, halfway to Melaque. It’s right on the beach in the middle of nowhere, which is actually a pretty good place to put an airport when you stop and think about it. Barring tsunamis, of course….fortunately, there wasn’t one scheduled for today. Instead, we got shaken down by an airport security guy because of our 3 – 50 lb Humanitarian Assistance (HA) bags! This is a first for us as, despite what you see in American movies, the Mexican public service is efficient and conscientious to a fault. Bureaucratic, yes. Corrupt, no. Well, this guy wanted 300 pesos per bag (about $25) to let us through, and THAT wasn’t about to happen. Luckily, our friend Cheryl was just outside the doors, and we got the guy to talk with her and explain how the HA thing worked. After she dressed him down in English for a couple of minutes (I don’t think he understood 10%, but he definitely got the tone), it was suddenly decided that we could, indeed, proceed without further delay. Turns out, when Cheryl showed up 2 weeks ago, they tried to confiscate her HA bags, so maybe there’s just confusion and angst over what to do about HA. Nothing more heart-rending than a bureaucrat faced with a novel situation and no rule to apply!
So, despite the best efforts of the Mexican bureaucracy, we managed to get all our bags out to Cheryl’s jeep. It’s a great little vehicle, but little is the operative word here; it has 2 bucket seats, a rear jump seat, and a baggage space big enough for one bag of groceries. Perfect for everyday life in Mexico. We have 5 – 50 lb bags and 4 – 20 lb bags, plus we have to figure out how to get the three of us in. Remember the Clown Car at the circus when you were a kid? Well, that’s us. I got the back seat.
The Clown Car, with Clown in place.
We’re in Melaque, in a ten-unit complex of two-bedroom furnished apartments (‘bungalows’ in Mexico), called Villa Itzal. It’s in a quiet subdivision, just three blocks from the north (calm, swimming) end of the beach, and there are lots of palapa restaurants. Our new place looks great, albeit smoking hot as it’s been buttoned up for a while. We got everything opened up and the fans are all going, and things are starting to look much better. Our neighbours and new bestest friends, CJ and Stephanie, bummed us drinks, so we’re sitting on our new front porch watching the world go by. I’ll save the intro and the photos for tomorrow. It’s time for bed.
Alles gut. Siempre bien.