“Travels to a Different Time” : 10March2002: Cancun, México: Mexican Shakedown

Off from Toronto to Cancun on an Air Transat L-10-11 a rather aged plane at least 20 years old. But steady as she goes the flight was smooth. Why can’t you get a cold beer on a Canadian airline? Food was fit for a dog. I think it might have been Rotini in a vegetarian sauce with a stale roll wrapped in plastic. How low can airline food sink! Some industrial chocolate cake fit for a pig. Air Transat is very low indeed made even worse by being crowded in like sardines. Locked in the plane for an hour upon arrival with no air circulation. Treated like cattle. Herded off the plane and on the tarmac to the sultry heat of Mexico. A group of students on our plane was playing a boom box in line at immigration and customs. Stupid and disrespectful were these young fools. They were whisked away by customs officers perhaps to a “deep cavity search”. What turkeys! Individuality at customs is not a good idea so they may have suffered a deserved shakedown. Customs was most interesting with a traffic light approach. Green pass through quickly. Red get interrogated. Onto the bus and a 35-minute wait before we pulled out. Coronas for a buck. There were a few very corked people that had been “fuelling up” before boarding the plane. Haze of alcoholic fumes and glassy eyes! It was a 50-minute trip in the dark to the hotel. We checked into our two rooms at 22:00 and are facing the pool, ocean and well manicured lawn with lots of palm trees. Each villa is low rise and there must be 20 or so of these villas. There is one main restaurant serving buffet style meals, a snack bar by the pool where we had some tasty fries for a snack. Those Yucatan potatoes as usual are so tasty. In bed at 24:00.