We walk into the aeroporte 30 minutes prior to the flight and there's 50 people in line. Dang. After a few minutes at the back of the line, a counter agent approaches us and asks where we're headed and if we have tickets. Tijuana, we don't have tickets. Oh. Momecito. She walks over to the ticket counter, then returns, asks us how many and for our ID's. 15 minutes later we make it to the ticket counter and she sells us 4 round trip tickets. We're in the air a few minutes later. Ha!
After arriving at Tijuana, the last checkpoint before leaving the airport my wife gets stopped by a military woman for a random inspection. She gets frisked and released. Weird. Seemingly random, but Eddie suspects that it could be because my wife gets mistaken for a Mexican all the time. The rest of us never get hassled.
Aside from a couple entertaining taxi rides the evening is uneventful, we obtain all the necessary paperwork. The following morning we begin the phone battle with the airlines attempting to get out ticket changed to the early flight. We originally booked ourselves on the late flight in case we needed time in the morning for paperwork. Last night at the bar we considered our options, and the only way we figured we could make the Rally on time would be to catch the early flight back and then the Cargo ferry to Mazatlan instead of the passenger ferry, which we already missed. I managed to get through to a ticket agent right away, he spoke english and understood what we wanted to do. Sweet! I gave him my ticket locater code and immediatly got disconected. Dang! I'm still figuring out the mexican phone system, I suspect the small amount of credit included with my sim card has expired. I begin working on that while Cara finds a number to call on the hotel phone. Why didn't I think of that? Cheap bastard. Cara gets through and all seems well until she gets put on permahold. After 5 minutes we give up and she calls again. Multiple transfers later and lots of hold music, we finally get our reservations changed to the 11 am flight. That took almost an hour.
Another entertaining Taxi ride back to the Aeroporte and we make it back to La Paz and our vehicles. The guy who gave us a ride the previous day had his bicycles stolen the previous night, but our vehicles appear intact. The Campground owner calls the Ferry for us (she speaks very fluent Spanish and can communicate in moments what takes us ages and rarely has the results we desire. Unfortunatly she informs us that there is no room left on the ferry. Dang again. We decide to cruise over to the terminal and check it out for ourselves.
We make it to the ferry terminal 20 minutes prior to departure and start fumbling around trying to get on. Hable Engles? No Senor. Dos Carro on El Ferry-o? Que? Can we get two cars on the Ferry? Si. What? Go over there and then come back? OK. We go to the next building. It's locked. I wander over to what I later discover is a scale, Hable Engles? No. Hable Engles? No, Acie (or whatever spanish for there is) and he points across the parking lot. OK. Hable Engles? No. Dang. Cara discoveres that we're supposed to get our vehicles weighed then return to the ticket booth. OK. We attempt to drive over to the scales, but are stopped at a checkpoint. Crap, it's 4 oclock! We're not gonna make it! They want to see our vehicle permits. Kathryn has theirs and their back at the office. Oh wait, here they come! Hey, Kathryn! Over here. Wait, they turned around! No over here! Oh, there coming back, good. That lady needs the permit! Oh no! She thought we meant back to the original office. I hate running in flip flops. I'm getting a workout today. I go catch her and bring they're permit back to the checkpoint. When it's my turn the guard tells me to push a button on the wall. I do and it says PASE (pass). Cool, I'm good at tests. We make the 4pm sailing at about 4:30. Right now it's about 8am and we're sailing into the port at Mazatlan.
Leap and the net will appear. Thank you Dangerz!
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