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Our Move to Mexico! We did it.. we’re just outside of progreso, yucatan, MX!

Written by Siotha on November 11, 2009 – 2:29 pm -

Oh, my….the trip.
Oh the trip. Wow. Could it have been more funny? We had something like 12 bags/stroller/carseat, kids, us… everything. we had the maximum flyable limit and people raising eyebrows at us every turn we made. Mostly they saw us and thought… hey they must be good tippers! Which is ok. We moved out of our house about 2 weeks before the flight. We finally got the house on the market, expected it to sit for a while, and had multiple offers the first week… it was great.. a bidding war ensued, then after all the drama of picking a viable contract… the inspection came. We did need a new roof, even thought 2 years ago there was no hail damage and it was fine. Thank God for homeowner’s insurance. So we lived at my parents apartment and a couple of hotels for 2 weeks before our flight. Jeremy was working day in and day out to meet some deadline all the while working on getting us packed, moved, and happy. Everything is now packed up in storage, minus a carload, and plane full of our baggage… our cars are in storage, oh man that was hard to give up our newest addition to the fleet – our hard earned BMW… we got a great deal on it, and one of those maintenance plans to boot… anyway. My parents drove the dodge down on a Tuesday. The radiator had to be replaced before they ever left dallas. I couldn’t believe. I was worried about my mom, and their trip because they had 4 long days on dirt roads, cities and places I can’t imagine. Our trip was supposed to be easy. 2 cars to the airport, unload bags, board plane, uh oh… here’s where it got complicated… oh man… we sat in dallas on the runway almost exactly 4 hours… they told us we were going back to the gate.. then within 5 minutes they said great news we’re going to houston… and we took off.. in the mean time my flight had already landed in mexico… so… when we landed we were the last to deboard… the last in line… and of course stuck behind a guy who consumed an hour trying to get to Merida (Merida only gets flights on certain days.. our next available was like 5 days later). So we were told they couldn’t help us at the counter we should speak with a supervisor. We went to the customer service counter to speak with a supervisor, and there he was again. Let me say – Alyssa and Bella were GREAT. Everyone was telling us how amazing our kids were during the whole thing. So we stand in line, wait another hour it’s midnight, we’ve not ate since 2pm… Bella was on her last bit of formula that was premade… We were given 2 options – fly to cancun, while our bags wont make it – in the morning; or fly to merida 5 days later. We went to cancun instead. The hotel they put us in… we over paid for. It was a suite, but good grief, it had rain leaks, and well it wasn’t the nicest of places. I’ve stayed in worse… so anyway… we get to the hotel at 1 am, then turn around and leave at 5am for the cancun flight. The cancun flight was just fine. We arrived with no problems, went through immigracion, and had to fill out a health form (for the flu protection). We went to baggage claim where Alyssa spotted our bags… all of them… everything… We were saddled with ton of bags to go through customs. We got a green light and went to the bus terminal. The bus to the bus station was truely the best option, from there, they handled our bags for us… everything made it we only traveled the UNO bus (a luxury liner worth the $60 tix)… all the way to Merida. It’s in Merida where things got hairy.. it was dark, it was 6pm, we were tired, hungry, unable to call anyone, and prayed we could find mom and dads house. We told them where we were going, and for the price of two taxis ($60USD+ tips) we got into Chelem, found the Bull Pen restaurant and got to mom and dad’s house with no problems. It was here that we left 2 of my bags in the taxis. My meds, and my purse with our passports where accidently left in the taxis. It was dark, they were small bags and… it was my fault.
I was distraught. No meds for my nueropathy, stress from 2 solid days of travel, in a different country, no passports, no way of knowing when parents where coming exactly. It was chaos in my mind. However, the neighbors were great – they helped us out, one took me back to the bus stop to try to contact the taxi driver, mom and dad showed up within an hour of our arrival.. our property manager showed up too… lots of people, lots of great helpful people came to our rescue. We slept at the house mom and dad built. And the next day… I walked around with a huge cloud on my shoulders… about 2pm i heard a commotion in the street… I looked out the front door and there was a hand holding my purse in the gate… I freaked out! My purse came back… it came back with trash, and my passports.. no iphone, no misc store credit cards, no pens.. but our passports and our visas came back! We lucked out! We had a neighbor translate that i still was missing my pill bag… the taxi driver said no problem he’d ask the other guy. After this – a huge weight off my shoulders kicked in. I was excited!
That afternoon we went to see our new house. It’s quite the nice little setup, beach front, office, shells, ocean, ocean… and more sand. I’ll talk more about it in another blog… but… to conclude the trip from chaos to happyness, my medicines came back as well. Another taxi brought it on the following day. It was missing our Alyssa’s Ipod and Leapter. I was just thankful that the thousand dollars in pills were back. The electronics we can replace. (although that leapster has been replaced practically once already – with all it’s games lost and charging station accidently packed). So while you may think that all of this is whining or complaining.. I’ve got two morals of this story… Number 1: We traveled like champions! and Number 2: no other place in the world would a couple of lost bags (purse included) ever come back to your doorsteps. It’s amazing here. The people are so friendly and outgoing. They are really nice. It makes up for the mosquitos, the dirt roads, weird rules, and the sandspurs!