So we were done with Belize, covered in another post.
Our plan was to fly from Belize City to Cancun, spend a night in a local hotel then fly to Mexico City and on to Queretaro then a shuttle from there to San Miguel de Allende.
The fun part is the first part, checking out of Belize and taking a Tropic Air flight to Cancun on a twin engine Beechcraft, a new experience for us. You get both a window seat and an aisle seat at the same time with a nice view out the window to see the Mexican Riviera from a few thousand feet.
Landing at Cancun was interesting as the airline uses an FBO to check in at, which is a general aviation terminal. If we had taken our jet there we'd use the same place to check in. Immigration was easy, the luggage was inspected by some young soldiers from the National Guard who had been told to open everything and look at it. No x-rays here, just rooting thru luggage.
We took a van from this building to Terminal 4, which was not quick, this airport is laid out over a really large amount of land. There are four terminals plus general aviation hangars and terminals connected by a serpentine road. We had made reservations at a Comfort Inn which was advertised to be 2.5 miles from the airport and offered a free shuttle. We were thinking of a 10 minute ride to this inexpensive hotel to rest up and get going again the next morning.
It didn't happen that way, we stood outside Terminal 4 for about 2 hours looking for our ride, making occasional calls to the hotel asking about where our ride was. We were told he's stuck in traffic but we had no idea the magnitude of the issues.
When the driver finally found us it had taken him 3 hours to make the normally 10 minute trip due to some colossal road closures and construction projects on the surrounding freeways and roads that connect the somewhat isolated airport to the Cancun resort areas.
Traffic was fully stopped for miles around the airport, which meant that the road that connects the terminals to each other was also plugged up. Travelers who needed to go from one terminal to another had to walk, carrying whatever luggage and children they had.
As we slowly got away from the airport we saw hundreds of people trying to make their flights by getting out of their busses and taxis and walking to the airport for miles. Some of these people were elderly or carrying children as well as whatever luggage they had. It was a scene out of one of those mega disaster movies where a city is evacuated and people are forced to walk.
There was no way for our driver, even though he seemed to be a black belt in aggressive driving, could use the roads near the airport to make it to our hotel. The police had blocked off the returns he would need to make to get us there the normal way.
So we went the long way...drove all the way to the Cancun resort row, all the fancy hotels and shopping areas and beaches around to a point where he could approach the hotel from the other direction. It was an interesting trip to see how much had changed since the last time we were in Cancun which was many years ago.
We finally got to the hotel about 8 hours after getting to Cancun, the place was good enough. We had read that it had a bar and restaurant we could visit. So we did. The bar was a shelf with bottles of Tequila, Vodka, Jack Daniels and some shot glasses. It was a make it yourself kind of deal. No problem there, we can handle that. Gayle found a Coke, filled a shot glass with Jack and started to chill a bit, she had found some cervezas for me. The restaurant offered Tacos and Enchiladas, we went for some tacos and were grateful to get them.
Before going to our room we set up a 6:30 taxi for our 10:30 flight hoping that the roads would clear up overnight.
We were ready to go by 6:15 and so was the (same) driver. This time it really was a 10 minute trip, we checked our bags and made our way to the main terminal. We found breakfast at a Starbucks and settled down to kill some time waiting for our flight, we also polished off a small pizza that was too good to pass up.
The AeroMexico flight boarding process was the best I've ever seen. The boarding desk is the middle of a spoke of zone numbers 1 to 9 or so. The seats were assigned, and each ticket told you which zone you were in, so you queue up in the appropriate line. When getting on the plane you see that it is being filled from front to back, so our zone 2 got us to the 7th row very quickly and easily. The other zones soon followed and quickly the plane was full.
We had a normal flight to Mexico City Airport where we had an hour to get on the flight to Queretaro, another place I'd never knew existed.
Once off the plane we started looking for our flight number on the big boards to see what gate to use. There were lots of gates but our flight said it used SalaA. There were also SalaB and SalaC but what in the world is a Sala?
We saw the usual sign indicating where to walk to SalaA so we took off, it went down some hallways, down some steps, up some other steps and then down a ramp to something that looked like a bus station all while dragging our carry on gear. It really was a bus station there inside the airport. We all queued up and they led us our to the bus shuttles which drove thru the airport behind other planes parked at gates, and out onto the field where there was a smaller airliner being fueled and loading luggage.
This was our ride, we got out of the bus and walked up those portable stairs and on to the plane. An Embraer 190 which is a 2+2 seat arrangement. Apparently the huge Mexico City airport isn't as big as it needed.
After a fun but quick flight to Queretaro we collected our baggage and went out to find the shuttle that Micky and Don had arranged. No problems this time, we found each other and took off for the 1 1/2 hour ride to San Miguel de Allende.
This is high desert, elevation of about 6,500 ft cactus, crops, cattle and other normal agriculture along the road, Mexican taxi driver rules in full effect once again. Best not to look forward.
San Miguel de Allende is old, 16th century Spanish architecture but many of the people were here long before that.
We'll pick up this story in another post.
