Mexico- Day Ten & home

R. had given us his travel alarm which I had set for around 4:15am. At 3:50am the phone rang. No one moved and it stopped. Then 5 minutes later it ran again and A. got up and answered it. It was a recording in Spanish, he had no idea what it said, but thought it might have been a wake up call. We hadn't asked for a wake up call. But later found out that R.'s parents had (and they never got the wake up call). We go back to sleep and then at 4:05am the phone rings again and it's R.'s father calling to wake us up. I was a bit cranky and said that we still had 10 more minutes to sleep. After I hang up the phone about a minute later the alarm goes off. Okay! Apparently it is time for us to get up now, I can take a hint!

We get ourselves showered and dressed and the last bit of stuff packed and head on down to the lobby to check out. The lobby is dark and after checking out we go sit down with R.'s parents in the dark and wait for G., the husband of one of N.'s cousins, to pick us up, which he does promptly at 5am. He speaks very little English, just a few words here and there, but he presents R.'s parents with the clock that they had admired when we were at dinner at his house last week. They were a bit overwhelmed but pleased and thanked him profusely.

Meanwhile, R. and N. had taken a bus at 2am to Mexico City along with taking 4 large suitcases. There was no way we could fit all the people and all the luggage in the rental van, so they decided to do this. G., was going to take a bus back home after dropping us all off at the airport.

So he drove us to A.-Sr.'s house to pick up M., V. and J.. We did get to say our goodbyes and thanks in person to A.-Sr. and L., but the boys were still sleeping.

So, on to Mexico City, at least a 4 hour drive. R., N., the kids and R.,'s parents were taking at flight to Cancun around noon-ish. Our flight to Houston was at 3:20pm, so we had to get there in time for the other's earlier flight. It was dark when we left and driving through the mountains there were patches of fog here and there. G. was a stable (if that's the right word, he was smooth and didn't change lanes a lot) driver but probably a bit slower than our other drivers.

I was up front (as usual) with G. and V. was our only translator in the car so she sat in the row right behind. G. was telling us all kinds of things about the areas we were passing. What was funny was he would talk and talk and talk in Spanish and then V. would translate and it would be about one sentence. So we may not have been getting all the nuances :-)

At one point he pulls out a plastic Virgin, something with a suction cup on the back that you put on your car window. He explains through V. that it is someone you pray to for the sick, and gives it to me. He went on to talk about taking some kind of class for 4 months and then will do a pilgrimage there (I'm not sure but I think something might have gotten lost in that translation). Once home I showed it to a woman I know from Puebla who told me it was the Virgin of Juquila. I thought it was so sweet of G. to think of me and have put the Virgin up on my kitchen window (inside of course) over the kitchen sink where I also have an angel hanging that my mom gave me (in honor of my late sister) and a silly chef ornament (well, after all, I'm not exactly a religious person).

Both V. and I fall asleep at one point so G. doesn't have anyone to talk to. I think others in the back were probably sleeping too. We stop for a rest room break at some point and at some point on the highway (near a toll booth maybe?) G. stops to buy a slew of little gelatin cups from someone selling them on the side of the road. He says "breakfast" and most of us were grateful for something to eat at that point.

As we get closer to the airport N. calls one of the kids on the cellphone and we hand the phone over to G. She tells him where to meet her and R. and we get there about 9:30am. We all pile out, get their bags out, our bags back in, say goodbye to everyone, and then get back in the van with G. and the rental car guy who drives us over to the International terminal. We say goodbye to G. (who I think is getting driven to the bus station, but I'm not sure) and head on in.

I had been thinking on the drive there that maybe we could see about moving our flight up. We had such a short layover in Houston and didn't think we had enough time to get through Immigration and Customs and then recheck our bags and go through security to make our connecting flight. So we go over to our airline's check-in counter and ask. The woman tells us yes, we can get the 12:04pm flight for a $50 per ticket charge (when I had initially tried to do this online before we left they wanted $150 a ticket so we decided we'd just stay overnight in a hotel near the airport instead, as our connecting flight was the last flight of the day). We say yes and get our bags checked and re-ticketed.

While we still had plenty of time we decided to head over to our gate. As we show our passports to go through security (I always handed them mine and Z.'s) the woman is looking at Z.'s passport and then at mine and at us and back and forth and back and forth and finally says "senorita?". She was referring to my daughter who standing there in boys clothes and a cowboy hat with her hair in her face didn't look very much like a senorita. So I say "yes, senorita" and she then looks at mine and says "senora", uh, yes, I do think I look like a girl, but my passport photo doesn't have my glasses on (they were glaring too much) so maybe the whole thing was confusing her. Anyway, she gives us back the passports and lets us through.

Since we had thrown out our water bottles right before security A. goes off to buy new ones for both our wait and the plane. Only thing was that they have another security checkpoint right before you board the plane where they look through your carry on bags and take away your water bottles. Oh well!

So the flight was fine, only problem I had was my ears. I had the congestion from my cold and the drive to Mexico City with the mountains and all had my ears clogging and popping. The descent was really clogging them up. I was able to clear them a bit once we landed thankfully.

We got through customs just fine, but there were very long lines. By the time we got through the whole process and the bag check and security again (also long lines) it was at least an hour and a half. So we made the right decision, we likely would never have made our next flight if we hadn't changed them. We had time to kill in the Houston airport and A. and Z. were hungry (I guess it was lunch time, who knows?). We had a snack on the plane and I wasn't feeling hungry but had a real craving for a vanilla milkshake for some reason, so I got one of those (which they split into one larger cup and one smaller cup and I gave Z. the smaller cup). Then I got a gigantic cup of green tea from Starbucks, I was definitely in green tea withdrawal (I had it once the whole trip, at breakfast in the hotel in Veracruz).

We went to the gate and hung out till it was time for our flight. Z. of course wanted dessert so at some point A. got up with her to get her some ice cream. Eventually it was time to board our last flight home.

We landed pretty close to on time (and the descent seemed to permanently clog both my ears) and got our luggage quickly (yeah!, it's usually a long wait for luggage) and called the airport valet place and went outside to wait. It was around midnight and hot and humid! Welcome home! By the time we got to our house it was almost 1am, a very, very long day of traveling. Needless to say we went to bed fairly quickly and I had the best nights sleep I'd had since leaving home!

It was a great trip, kind of one of those trips of a lifetime kinds of trips. While we had such a wonderful time, we were also exhausted when we got home. One of my ears is still clogged, flying with a head cold is never pretty and can mean congestion for weeks (at least for me). My tummy troubles, which began the next morning when I got up, resolved in a few days. I haven't had the chile powder N. got me near the pyramids on oranges yet but we had it on jicama (with lime juice) and it was so good! This trip will be such a great memory for Z. (for all of us of course) and I'm so glad that she is old enough to both remember the trip and to appreciate it.