January redeems itself

As December continued getting colder and colder (first 16C was freezing, then 14C and then someone somewhere said it was going to get down to ELEVEN) I started getting more and more depressed that this winter was going to be as bad as last years.  I was wearing socks already!  When I have to put socks on I’ve pretty much given in to miserable.  So I was expecting the worst.   After freezing our asses off in California over the holidays the pilot announced that the temperature in Cancun was 14C and my heart sank.  Another frigid winter.

But…so far so good.  The weather has been mild – 26C with a low of 21C one morning and my knees and joint definitely appreciate the break from the frigid teens.  I’ve been on the bike twice and Pike and I even put on our big boy and girl undies (that metaphor really does NOT work here) and got a swim in.  And we didn’t come out covered in icicles.  So I have hope.

Tomorrow Jesse starts back to school after a nice long 3 weeks off.  Don’t tell the other kids but I’m looking at getting Spanish lessons for the girls and a native German speaker to teach Jesse and/or Pike.  We are still without Jesse’s apostilled birth certificate but if it ever gets to my sister’s house we’ll try to get it by way of Canada.

We took a curious route home – from SFO we flew to DFW and spent the night at the La Quinta there.  I thought it might be nice not to have to leave early (our flight was 3pm) and to break up the flight so it would not feel so long.  American checked our checked luggage through to Cancun from SFO (only 6 bags natch) so we only had 14 carryons to schlep to the hotel.  We stay at La Quinta often enough that I was able to pay for 2 rooms with points and we got a hearty breakfast to boot.  Next morning we left at 6am, flight at 8am and we were in Cancun before anyone was ready to wake up.

We ALWAYS bring back a shitload of stuff.  This time cawfee (that has turned out to be truly horrid and I can’t wait until I can get my cubano roast of Coatepec beans again from our italian roaster), grain-free dog food (as Kilo has turned out to have a fou-fou grain allergy), vitamins galore, a complete lack of books this trip, 6 large cannisters of Cytomax and thriftstore bedding.  We filled 6 bags to capacity.  I’m honestly not even sure what all we brought down.  So, even though we got the green light, when 3,587 bags come from one family you know you’re going to get a search.

So Aduana naturally identifies 2 of the largest bags and the food mochilla to peruse.  I figure we’re home free with the rest of the stuff and I am frantically gesturing to the kids and Jamie to Get The Hell Out of Dodge and exit Aduana already, but they’re milling around like they have nothing better to do than offer Aduana a peek into ALL of our luggage and wouldn’t that be just lovely?  So I turn my head away from Aduana and tell Jamie to “GET OUT” and finally it kicks in and he takes the kids and leaves.

As the aduana agent has me open the first bag he asks if there is any food.  Oh no, I say.  He pokes one thing, “what’s this”, “oh that’s food”  Oops.  No, it is not really food it is a suero – electrolytes (the Cytomax).  “Ok so what’s this?”  “Oh, that’s dog food”  and on it went.  Big fat liar – but honestly I had forgotten the millions of things we had packed in there.   Luckilly I only left the mandarinas behind and headed out with everything else.

Once we finally gathered everyone together and headed outside we found our neighbors (who had kindly arranged to pick us up in our van) and they told us that there might be a tiny problem with our car.  Envisioning something ELSE breaking on it I was surprised to find it had nothing to do with the car per se, it was the fact that the federales had stopped them and threatened them with impounding the car.  Apparently they didn’t think “friends” could drive ex-pats cars (but family can) and took away one of their driver’s licenses.  After some hemming and hawing and jawing on each other’s parts they handed back the driver’s license and admonished them not to move the car until I arrived, provided proof that I owned the car (and it was registered and insured) and paid the fine.

Right.  I figured once they handed back the license that meant “get our of our hair and don’t bother us anymore” so I proceeded to load up the car with our 7649 pieces of luggage and hightailed it out of there, checking my rearview mirror until we were well clear of Cancun.  We’re not planning on heading back to the airport for a veerrry looong time.