Sunday, November 26, 2006
Saturday 11/25/06 Day 8
The Last Day In Mexico
Before I begin, I will warn my readers that if they do not like reading about big men with guns, then they should click here to skip the section, or just skip this post entirely and draw their own conclusions about how my vacation ended.
Our last day in Zihuatenejo did not go quite as I had expected. I expected it to be full of packing and plane rides. Those elements were present, however, more exciting things happened.
As I was in my room packing, I hear my dad yell from the room above, "Que pasa?" I heard some talking, some in Spanish, some in English. I went outside to see what all the commotion was about. My dad had come down into the courtyard and was looking over our wall. I looked over, and there was nothing interesting going on. I asked my dad what was so interesting. He replied that one of our neighbors was trying to cut down our bamboo trees. The neighbor, who will be reffered to as "Loco #2" for the remainder of this post, said that the bamboo trees were blocking her view of the beach.
Apparently, Loco #2 used the excuse that she had gotten our property manager's permission to cut down the trees. Even though our property manager is somewhat negligent of the comings and goings of our house, she would never give permission for something like that without consulting my dad first.
What had probably happened was that Loco #2 thought we had already left and that we would never notice that the trees were gone, or we would not be able to find out it was her who had cut them down. My dad caught her in the act and she only got away with removing one piece of bamboo.
My dad had told Elio to call the police and, soon after, a police car arrived. Two police officers in white uniforms got out. Each of them carried a huge sub-machine gun. They walked up the stairs to our neighbor's house and began to talk with her. I don't know what they said because I was too far away, but I think they gave Loco #2 a fine or a warning. After about 20 minutes of talking, the police men got into their car and left. I'm very relieved that they did not feel the need to use those guns because, if they had, we would have most definitely missed our flight.
Once all of that was wrapped up, we finished packing and loaded our belongings into two taxis. We waved goodbye to Elio and Yanet as the taxi pulled away from the gate and down the driveway. We were soon on the highway and speeding along towards the airport. The taxi had to stop at a checkpoint near the airport. We pulled into a little open space on the side of the road with a white building in it. Around the building were half a dozen police officers, each carrying a different type of gun. The only similarity between the guns was that they were all very big. We passed the checkpoint and continued on our merry way.
We arrived at the airport and should have known that we were in for a ton of confusion. As we were progressing towards the plane, they checked our bags at least five different times. At the place where we recieved our boarding passes, the man behind the counter must have been on his first day because he spent half and hour or more on our group. He got confused about which bags were ours, how many bags we had, whether or not a purse was carry on or checked luggage, etc. We were eventually given to another person to handle. She was not as bad as the first person, but not very much better. She was reading the scale as she weighed Jon's bag and read 50 kilos. However, the scale was actually displaying 50 lbs. 50 kilos is roughly 130 lbs, so she said that the bag was way over the weight limit of 50 lbs. It took a long time for my older brother to convince her that the scale was in pounds instead of kilograms.
While I was watching our group work through their various problems with the second helper, I noticed that another family had gone up to the first helper and was checking their bags. They finished before Jon was done explaining about the difference between pounds and kilograms. The family left, and 20 seconds later, the helper sprinted after them, having forgotten to give them their boarding passes.
We finally finished checking our luggage and set out towards the gate. Everything went smoothly until we had boarded the airplane. Once on board, we realized that Melissa's mom was not with us. We searched the airplane and did not find her. The flight attendants would not let anyone off the plane once they were on, so the pilot volunteered to go look for her. He brought her onto the plane and told us that she had been browsing in the stores located near the terminal.
The plane took off and we experienced an average amount of turbulence, but arrived at the Atlanta airport ahead of schedule.
We got off the plane and then were horrified to find out that Melissa's mom had left her bags on the plane. Melissa was going to go get them when the pilot told her that nobody could go back onto the plane once they had gotten off. The pilot volunteered again to go and get the bags. The copilot left before the pilot had returned. He was laughing and had apparently figured out that this was the same woman who had been shopping right before takeoff.
We spent another two hours getting through customs and finding our bags. We found our car in the immense parking lot and drove home.
After that you can guess what we did. It was almost 9 o'clock at night and we were all very tired after a long day of traveling. Because the Internet Guy never did come, I posted some blog posts that I had written over the trip. If you have not already, you can read them below. We ordered pizza and then went to sleep.
Just if you were wondering, all of the posts put together are twenty pages long. Muhahahaha.
If you decide that you do not want to be called a chicken for skipping the part with the big men with guns, you can click here to go back to it.
Before I begin, I will warn my readers that if they do not like reading about big men with guns, then they should click here to skip the section, or just skip this post entirely and draw their own conclusions about how my vacation ended.
Our last day in Zihuatenejo did not go quite as I had expected. I expected it to be full of packing and plane rides. Those elements were present, however, more exciting things happened.
As I was in my room packing, I hear my dad yell from the room above, "Que pasa?" I heard some talking, some in Spanish, some in English. I went outside to see what all the commotion was about. My dad had come down into the courtyard and was looking over our wall. I looked over, and there was nothing interesting going on. I asked my dad what was so interesting. He replied that one of our neighbors was trying to cut down our bamboo trees. The neighbor, who will be reffered to as "Loco #2" for the remainder of this post, said that the bamboo trees were blocking her view of the beach.
Apparently, Loco #2 used the excuse that she had gotten our property manager's permission to cut down the trees. Even though our property manager is somewhat negligent of the comings and goings of our house, she would never give permission for something like that without consulting my dad first.
What had probably happened was that Loco #2 thought we had already left and that we would never notice that the trees were gone, or we would not be able to find out it was her who had cut them down. My dad caught her in the act and she only got away with removing one piece of bamboo.
My dad had told Elio to call the police and, soon after, a police car arrived. Two police officers in white uniforms got out. Each of them carried a huge sub-machine gun. They walked up the stairs to our neighbor's house and began to talk with her. I don't know what they said because I was too far away, but I think they gave Loco #2 a fine or a warning. After about 20 minutes of talking, the police men got into their car and left. I'm very relieved that they did not feel the need to use those guns because, if they had, we would have most definitely missed our flight.
Once all of that was wrapped up, we finished packing and loaded our belongings into two taxis. We waved goodbye to Elio and Yanet as the taxi pulled away from the gate and down the driveway. We were soon on the highway and speeding along towards the airport. The taxi had to stop at a checkpoint near the airport. We pulled into a little open space on the side of the road with a white building in it. Around the building were half a dozen police officers, each carrying a different type of gun. The only similarity between the guns was that they were all very big. We passed the checkpoint and continued on our merry way.
We arrived at the airport and should have known that we were in for a ton of confusion. As we were progressing towards the plane, they checked our bags at least five different times. At the place where we recieved our boarding passes, the man behind the counter must have been on his first day because he spent half and hour or more on our group. He got confused about which bags were ours, how many bags we had, whether or not a purse was carry on or checked luggage, etc. We were eventually given to another person to handle. She was not as bad as the first person, but not very much better. She was reading the scale as she weighed Jon's bag and read 50 kilos. However, the scale was actually displaying 50 lbs. 50 kilos is roughly 130 lbs, so she said that the bag was way over the weight limit of 50 lbs. It took a long time for my older brother to convince her that the scale was in pounds instead of kilograms.
While I was watching our group work through their various problems with the second helper, I noticed that another family had gone up to the first helper and was checking their bags. They finished before Jon was done explaining about the difference between pounds and kilograms. The family left, and 20 seconds later, the helper sprinted after them, having forgotten to give them their boarding passes.
We finally finished checking our luggage and set out towards the gate. Everything went smoothly until we had boarded the airplane. Once on board, we realized that Melissa's mom was not with us. We searched the airplane and did not find her. The flight attendants would not let anyone off the plane once they were on, so the pilot volunteered to go look for her. He brought her onto the plane and told us that she had been browsing in the stores located near the terminal.
The plane took off and we experienced an average amount of turbulence, but arrived at the Atlanta airport ahead of schedule.
We got off the plane and then were horrified to find out that Melissa's mom had left her bags on the plane. Melissa was going to go get them when the pilot told her that nobody could go back onto the plane once they had gotten off. The pilot volunteered again to go and get the bags. The copilot left before the pilot had returned. He was laughing and had apparently figured out that this was the same woman who had been shopping right before takeoff.
We spent another two hours getting through customs and finding our bags. We found our car in the immense parking lot and drove home.
After that you can guess what we did. It was almost 9 o'clock at night and we were all very tired after a long day of traveling. Because the Internet Guy never did come, I posted some blog posts that I had written over the trip. If you have not already, you can read them below. We ordered pizza and then went to sleep.
Just if you were wondering, all of the posts put together are twenty pages long. Muhahahaha.
If you decide that you do not want to be called a chicken for skipping the part with the big men with guns, you can click here to go back to it.
# posted by Osiris Stein @ 3:16 PM 
