12th January – San Jose – Costa Rica, Playa Del Carmen – Mexico

A 4.10am wake up call to get our taxi to the San Jose Airport to take us to Cancun via Mexico City. The airport was fairly busy, even at that time of the morning, much to our surprise. We paid our departure tax, cleared security etc. and hung around the airport which is in mid-renovation. A mixture of nice and new with crap and old. The plane was called on time and we boarded for a four hour flight to Mexico City flying past the coast of Guatemala.

On the way to Mexico City, the captain announced that if we all looked out of the left hand side (where we were sitting) we could see an active volcano with glaciers and snow on it. It was massive! The volcano is called Popocatepetl (Aztec for ‘smoking mountain’) and it is 5,465m high, North America’s second highest mountain. By the way, who associates Mexico with snow and glaciers? Not me until now!We then flew over Mexico City which was obviously densely populated with 20 million people. The captain had to cut through the hills and do a very scary sharp downwards embankment to get near the airport. Mexico City from the air looked like a sprawling mass of housing with a thick blanket of smog covering the city. The buildings on closer inspection were brightly coloured even through the haze of smog. We were glad we were only there for a one and a half hour layover.

Mexico City airport had some interesting objects which we haven't seen at other airports. One was a Herbie, a volkswagon beetle (far right in photo), which was used as a security car (no number 53 on it) and another Stars Wars like personnel carrier (a mobile transit lounge).

After a quick beer (in a blue bottle) at the airport at 11.00 am (it’s beer o’clock somewhere in the world), we boarded another plane to head towards Cancun. Another 90 minutes on the plane and we made it, very thankful to see our luggage arrive this time! We caught the bus to Playa Del Carmen, a long day of travel over.

Back to our normal hotel, we collected our left luggage (we now only have additional luggage in Vancouver and Saskatchewan – God knows how it will all get home) and headed out for a long awaited Starbucks (yes we are addicted) and then later to our favourite old haunt, Babes for dinner. An early night after such an early start.