Day 34: Cancun to Home

February 2, 2023

As crabby old people, we often object to excessive noise in and around hotel rooms. Usually this involves noisy bars nearby, and very often, loud talkers. The talkers, for example, like to populate beer gardens in Germany, and we seem to often get the room right above the beer garden. But last night was a bit beyond the red line. Voodoo talker guy and his brother ? were camped outside our door, smoking and shouting for hours. We yelled at them periodically, but to no effect. Eventually, they quit, but then at 6 a.m. they were back!

At seven we joined three other guests (all German) for "breakfast", which still consists of two slices of untoasted white bread and a plain omelet, with 1/2 cup coffee or Tang. I had already posted my zero star review of the place, but we had fun grousing about the various shortcomings with the Germans. About the breakfast, we can not even consider a "jammer" rating. The staff are great at conveying at least the impression that they have never even heard of jam, let alone considered whether to supply any or not.

Since our flight was at 4:30, we asked our former host Jorge to send a cab to the Sleepy Time for 1 to get us to the airport with the 3 hour lag. No use asking the Sleepy Inn people for help, we're just glad they did not strangle us in our bed.

But Sleepy Inn suddenly got efficient and threw us out of our room promptly (to the second) at 10:00 a.m., the hour they decided is check out time. So that left us scrambling to get a taxi to the airport. Two of the Germans had tried Uber, but with no luck. Fortunately we got Jorge on Whatsapp, and he connected us with a driver.

Cancun can be quite a maze, and the driver didn't know how to find us at the Sleepy Inn. Learning Whatsapp fast I sent him a screenshot of Google Maps showing our location. Not good enough, somehow. He requested (in Spanish) a "live" location. Learning Whatsapp double fast, I "shared" our location with him. Somehow that really worked for him and in less than 10 minutes he showed up.

Though we got dropped at the correct Terminal, it is very long, and we were at the wrong end. Amazingly, glitzy Cancun airport has no carts, only a few porters with small hand trucks. We handled that by moving our gear in relays - leaving one person with the main pile and having the other carry on some distance but still in sight, and back and forth.

The setup at the airport, except for the carts, kind of makes sense, in that there is no seating at the departures level, with the airline counters. Presumably you go through there and then wait upstairs at your gate, where there is seating. But we were about 6 hours before our flight, so what to do?

I solved it by spotting and absconding with a wheelchair for Dodie, and we set ourselves up with that and all our gear somewhere by an escalator. It worked out well, because a Westjet agent spotted Dodie on the wheelchair came over to see if he could help. I'm pleased to say that he really did come to see about helping, rather than to hassle us about maybe obstructing the escalator or to swipe his wheelchair back. The agent went off and returned to say that they would check us in right away.

Perhaps they soon regretted that, because of the bikes. We had them folded bu not wrapped, because we know they often like to check and sniff them, which is hindered by wrapping. But no, they wanted them wrapped right there in front of the counters, and then they would take them to large item x-ray. They did not believe us that the bikes, though folded, would not fit their x-ray (so they had better start checking and sniffing), but heh, what do we know?

It's a long trek from one end of Terminal 4 to the other. Also the guy lying down on the right has one answer to no seats.

Our little train does not move that fast.

Dodie leaps from her wheelchair to deal with the agent.

From happy go lucky (right) to contemplative (left) various agents think about how to handle the bikes.

Original agent helps wrap bike 1. After, he did bike 2 on his own. Nice man.

Bikes left to their fate. They arrived in Victoria very ripped up, but we have not yet checked for mechanical damage.

Our itinerary had a plane change in Vancouver. what we did not know was that this involves popping out of security and back in. This is apparently a special treat for travelers from Mexico. Westjet had provided someone to push Dodie through in a wheelchair. But when we put our stuff on the trays at this security check, the station "manager" who was standing nearby went ballistic, immediately declaring that he would not let our batteries pass. I pulled out my phone and held it out to show on CATSA's website that our batteries were permitted. But he refused to look at the phone. He declared that more passengers from another flight were coming, and we were to clear out of his station immediately. Talk to the airline if you don't like it, was his position. "Who, or where is that?" I asked, but he only insisted we clear off.

If you are willing to read, it's clear. <100 wh batteries in carry-on are permitted.

We hurried repacked all our gear, possibly losing one bag of gifts for grandkids right there, or perhaps in the train wreck that followed. The Westjet wheelchair man had an idea of where to go, and he guided us to the Westjet counters at Departures. The manager there tried to find a Westjet policy somewhere in their stuff, and eventually determined that it was ok, for up to 20 batteries per person. But he had to search for a long time. Then he walked over to the CATSA security station and told some of the people there to back off. By now our wheelchair pusher had had to leave, but he got re summoned, and then we found we all were in a long line to go through the security behind Westjet. By the time it was our time to get re-checked, corporate memory of who was saying what had evaporated, and CATSA started at square one, squinting at our batteries. This time the manager of this new station appeared and told his staff that there was no problem. Even so, one eager one had Dodie unwrap each and every battery so he could run his sniffer on it. It had been a long time dealing with these people, and we sure were watching the clock for missing our flight.

Westjet manager is a bit stressed, going through Westjet's battery policies.

Once again we found our gear spread out over 8 trays, and in a total mess.

It took this EV to "Get us to the Gate on Time". At this point we think we do see the lost package of gifts still in the Walmart bag, but not sure.

As Canadians, we are not accustomed to accepting inefficiency and guff from government workers, even including police, security, or whatever. So I had asked that CATSA manager for his identification. He handed me a card, that I only looked at later. It only said "Your opinion matters" with a phone number, although ok, this was in English, French, and Braille. We have now filed an official complaint against the guy. They will review the tapes and report. I'm glad I only waved my phone in his face. No violence here, this is Canada. We're glad to be back, I guess!

Don't forget to watch this space for the trip summary,including overall impression, costs, and other statistics. Coming soon!

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Andrea BrownGuff is something none of us need to accept but here we are. So sorry about the gifts that were lost.
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1 year ago