Part V

I find the Clase Exejutivo desk at the far end of the bank of Mexicana counters, and there are acouple of others ahead of me checking in. One happens to be another Aeroplan Elite, his wife and two children, who I would continue to encounter on my flights through the afternoon. My ticket has included the Mexican departure tax, so I am not required to pay anothing further [US$20] and am given my boarding passes for MEX and LAX, but not YVR. For some reason, my luggage tag prints out the correct flight number to YVR, but shows YOW! Not wanting my bag to get ahead of me, I note this to the agent, and she taps away at her keyboard one more time after I say “Y-V-R por favor”, and the correct information now appears on a new set of tags. Satisfied, I make my way to the waiting area at the gate, as there is no special lounge at CUN.

We board the F100 about 20-minutes prior to departure, once more very orderly. On my seat I find two of the local newspapers waiting for me. The F100 is configured much like CP’s F28s, with similar J-class seats, though a bit more legroom seems to be evident here than back home. The seats, however, are not the same as we had on the 757s coming down, having no leg rests or hook ups to inflight entertainment. The cabin is full, 8 passengers in a 2x2 arrangement, two rows. The rear is pretty full, though many of the seats on the three side have the centre one empty. A preflight drink is offered, no alcohol until after 11 am on Mexicana, though. I just have an orange juice, and settle in for a relaxing 2-1/2 hours into MEX. Once airborne, we were served a large omlette and fruit plate. The flight was uneventful, but did provide a real sense of the Mexican landscape, with virtually cloudless sky giving a fine view of each zone, from Yucutan forest to parched central desert. Then the sprawl that is Mexico City comes into view and dominates the final 10-minutes of the flight. It is only after we make our final few seconds of descent that the yellow-brown layer of smog that is now as much a part of Mexico City as are the rings around Saturn, makes its appearance.

The newspapers I tried to read while enroute to MEX from CUN, and again in the Exejutiva Lounge in MEX waiting for my flight from MEX-LAX, all talked about the “Springbreak Touristas”. From what I could glean, this was a mixed blessing, for while they brought money and full hotel rooms, they also brought sex on the beach, and not the mixed drink of the same name.This was like the coming of the locusts to the prairie. It was like reading early tales of the goings on in Ft. Lauderdale, or the Hell’s Angels invading California towns during the 60s. The other major story to fill today’s newspapers was the arrival in Mexico City of Marcos, the leader of the Zapatista movement in Chiapas. This actually interests me more than the threat of teenaged American youth, since my Vancouver friend and cameraman on my last film, Kirk, made the award winning documentary, “A Place Called Chiapas”, and spent several weeks with Marcos and his people in the mountains of the south. I collect as many Mexican papers as I can to leave with Kirk when I get to Vancouver. He won’t be there since he is filming in Bologna this week with my director friend, Thomas.

Over the two hours I was in the lounge, I helped myself to several hot tomales, the Mexican version of the Scottish haggis or Jewish kishkas, without the use of an animal’s intestinal tract as the shell. Corn husks make for a more appealing container, and the soft mixture of corn meal and meats — when seasoned with enough hot sauce — make for a pleasant lounge snack. With this I had a glass of Tecante, which I chased down with some special Tequilla I spotted behind the bar, and which was poured accommodatingly for me into a tall shot glass of the type well know to those who frequent Mexican bars.

My flight for LAX was called, and I made my way to the other end of the airport. Upon which I discovered that there actually was a special lounge that could be used in the International departures area. No such information was provided in the terminal map, which is why I returned to the lounge I had visited Saturday morning. This one looked very attractive, but there was no time to try it out, as next to it was the Duty Free shop. And of course, my primary mission was to find a good bottle of Reposado tequilla to add to my small collection which I started after visiting a tequilla distillery three years ago when I spent a week in Guadalajara. This is when I, and the former head of communications for the United Church of Canada, discovered there was such a thing as fine tequilla, and the Cuervo we had been finding back home just wasn’t in the same league. God had led us on our very own quest for the holy grail of fine spirits, and we returned to Canada with an ample selection of the better ones. Unfortunately, it seem that last year, having tired of decimating the Bordeaux wine market and then the single malt Scotch one, the Japanese too discovered fine tequillas. Needless to say, the Canadian dollar cannot match the Japanese Yen, even in its current dire straits, and the bottle I picked up today was twice what I would have paid two or three years ago. But at P232, it was still one-thirdthe price they were asking at the tourist liquor shops I checked out in CUN yesterday afternoon! Caveat emptor.

So, the next leg is on a 727. Yes, a real 727, an aircraft type I have not flown on for almost a decade. The front cabin is configured with the galley filling the first two rows on the right side of the plane, while there are another two rows behind it, and of course two to the side of it. I have had seat 2A on every MX segment, so why change now? The seats are similar to those on the F100, and there is no inflight entertainment. We are to be in the air for 3-1/2 hours, so fortunately I have a book and my laptop to occupy the time, in between a couple of more tequillas, a lunch of a Mexican version of Beouf Bourgognon, and an otherwise ideal day for flying. As with the flight from CUN, we have a clear almost cloudless sky, so all of Mexico lays under me, and for the first time I have some comprehension of what our partner in NAFTA is really like: which is mostly rough desert, reminding me of the Alberta badlands and dry flat prairie. Coming into MEX, we flew over several inactive volcano cones, but their impact on the terrain could not be seen more clearly. This is definitely a land that no man could tame, and nature still very much controls. Once can now better understand how the Aztecs arrived at such a brutal religion, in order to appease their gods. But like trying to tame the landscape, appeasement strikes me as a futille act of ego, to believe men can make a pact with nature, or its surrigate gods.

What is interesting, and becomes very apparent on the final half-hour of the MEX-LAX flight, is how the landscape below changes suddenly as we cross the border into the U.S. Irrigation and water diversion have turned a similarly parched brown desertscape into acre after acre of green.

I am about to loose my battery, so a half-hour out of LAX, I will conclude this portion of the journey report. Next up, four hours in LAX...