The family and I left town for about nine days. Of course, inherent in any vacation is the preparation to make sure everyone has all their necessary items, oddball details and plans for the animal care while you are on vacation.
We chose Thanksgiving week as our vacation time and traded in the timeshare week for a week in Puerto Vallarta. So that we would not be travelling with all the holiday travelers on the way home, we bought two extra nights at the resort.
Our flight was O'Hare to Guadalajara and then to Puerto Vallarta. Our O'Hare flight left at 2am on a Saturday morning, was supposed to get to Guadalajara at 6:30am. We were anticipating a 5-hour layover in Guadalajara and then a flight to Puerto Vallarta and would arrive at about 1pm in Puerto Vallarta and likely 2pm at our resort. Somehow my inadequate Spanish language skills changed all that.
We got to the Guadalajara airport at 6:30am and found a huge line at immigration. It was absolutely insane. Taz insisted that we were supposed to be in a big long line that was for Mexican citizens. That would not be the blond family with American passports! I had all the passports in my bag so I stood in the correct line with the kids while Taz came to his senses and ultimately joined me in line. All of the sudden, this quiet, slim, Hispanic man mumbled something and I distinctly heard the world "connection" amidst all the unrecognizable words. I asked him if he was looking for people with a connecting flight. He asked where we were going and I told him Puerto Vallarta. He looked alarmed and rushed us to a separate line in which we were now first. After immigration examined our passports and stamped them, the man whisked us through the airport to claim our baggage and then we ran to customs. I kept telling him that our flight was not for five hours but he only looked at me once and said sharply, "you will miss your plane. Hurry!" So we ran with this man with all of our baggage, raced through customs, rechecked the bags and out the door to the small plane which was waiting. I checked my watch and it was 7am. We ran onto the plane, strapped in the kids and the plane took off. The pilot said that the flight would only be about 30-40 minutes. Still the flight attendant brought some drinks and breakfast. I confirmed a few times that they were going to Puerto Vallarta.
By the time we were out of the plane, and got our bags, it was only 8am. We made it to our resort at 9am, which was 5 hours ahead of schedule. Very bad Spanish language skills can be a blessing.
