I along with my\u00a0tres\u00a0viejos amigas (three old friends) were headed to San Jose del Cabo, Mexico, the\u00a0fall of\u00a02008. It was a pleasant flight with\u00a0no turbulence and a perfect three point landing. The captain entertained us with his\u00a0funny nonsense all the way to the terminal. The hot 98 degree day greeted us as we walked down the ramp stairs to the Tarmac along with the 70 other people that\u00a0had been\u00a0on board. On our walk to the terminal, we were welcomed by a receiving line of uniforms. In retrospect, I believe they were making sure everyone went inside instead of\u00a0allowing\u00a0them to\u00a0wander off. I noticed right off that the airport had changed from my previous visit of\u00a0three years before. When we arrived in 2005, it\u00a0had\u00a0been\u00a0after dark with very little exterior light to\u00a0guide our\u00a0way to the terminal. Our baggage\u00a0had been\u00a0unloaded directly on the Tarmac,\u00a0where we walked over to the haphazard pile\u00a0with our 20 fellow passengers. I and the other women\u00a0waited patiently\u00a0as the men\u00a0passengers elbowed one another in order to\u00a0pick\u00a0their bags\u00a0from the pile.\u00a0Comparing that last trip\u00a0of 2005 to\u00a0my 2008 trip,\u00a0we continued our walk inside without our baggage\u00a0where we were herded into switchback lines waiting with about 300 people to go through customs. Once we made it through the end of the line still with no baggage in hand, we handed\u00a0over our paperwork, declared the amount of cash that we were bringing into Mexico, questioned as to\u00a0where we had\u00a0come from, where we were staying and for how long we expected our stay to be. We were then\u00a0handed a tourist I.D. that we were to carry with us\u00a0throughout our stay. Only then were we allowed to retrieve our luggage from the new automatic baggage carousel and exit at a slow rate through the airport\u00a0ex-ray screening.\u00a0The new advances seemed to have changed the pace of the workers to a more harried and stressful working environment.
\nOff to the shuttle and\u00a0a ride that was fast and jerky. The streets were narrow and full of construction. The traffic was chaotic with\u00a0jaywalkers everywhere. What looked to be a two-lane street suddenly turned into four lanes of\u00a0traffic with mere inches\u00a0between the fast moving vehicles of various sizes an\u00a0models. It was amazing to witness this order in chaos\u00a0with absolutely\u00a0no markings to indicate the added lanes of traffic. I was very confused at this point,\u00a0but I found it all very entertaining, as\u00a0drivers honked and yelled at one another, pushing this way and that to get where they needed to be. I just held on for dear life\u00a0until I saw the sign directing us to our destination, and boy, did I\u00a0let out a big\u00a0sigh of relief as we stopped at the gated entrance. When the\u00a0crossing gate\u00a0arm went up\u00a0the difference in traffic was like the difference in night and day. It seemed we were in the middle of nowhere, and we were completely\u00a0alone.\u00a0As we wound our way up the mountain, I caught my first sight of the Pacific Ocean. How can one forget the beauty and grandness of the ocean until faced with it again? Emerson said it best, “If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is it’s own excuse for being.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I along with my\u00a0tres\u00a0viejos amigas (three old friends) were headed to San Jose del Cabo, Mexico, the\u00a0fall of\u00a02008. It was a pleasant flight with\u00a0no turbulence and a perfect three point landing. The captain entertained us with his\u00a0funny nonsense all the way to the terminal. The hot 98 degree day greeted us as we walked down the ramp stairs to the Tarmac along with the 70 other people that\u00a0had been\u00a0on board. On our walk to the terminal, we were welcomed by a receiving line of uniforms. In retrospect, I believe they were making sure everyone went inside instead of\u00a0allowing\u00a0them to\u00a0wander off. I noticed right off that the airport had changed from my previous visit of\u00a0three years before. When we arrived in 2005, it\u00a0had\u00a0been\u00a0after dark with very little exterior light to\u00a0guide our\u00a0way to the terminal. Our baggage\u00a0had been\u00a0unloaded directly on the Tarmac,\u00a0where we walked over to the haphazard pile\u00a0with our 20 fellow [ …<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[181,182,176,183,175,179,180,178,188,177,184],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memories","tag-customs","tag-emerson","tag-mexico","tag-pacific-ocean","tag-san-jose-del-cabo","tag-tarmac","tag-terminal","tag-three-point-landing","tag-tres-viejos-amigas","tag-turbulence","tag-vacaciones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ranchpaintings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ranchpaintings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ranchpaintings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ranchpaintings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ranchpaintings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/ranchpaintings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":235,"href":"https:\/\/ranchpaintings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions\/235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ranchpaintings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ranchpaintings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ranchpaintings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}