Content warning: this is a very long boring travel story. I don’t really enjoy hearing other people’s bad travel stories, and you probably won’t enjoy this one. It was just so much, I feel this need to write it down.
“You just go.”
It was a split-second decision at the airport. We were going with two other families down to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico for spring break, and the two families didn’t know each other yet. We were the glue family. But when we got to the ticket counter at the Redmond, Oregon airport, we were told Ruby (4 years old) could not board the flight, as we did not have a passport for her. We knew we didn’t have a passport, of course. We ordered it months ago, but it hadn’t arrived. We confirmed with Delta (twice), that a birth certificate would be enough for travel to Mexico. It is not. (Readers, let me be clear again: it is not.)
It was already a trying morning. We were up at 3 am, out the door by 4 am, and sitting in the airport parking lot trying to fill out our Mexico travel forms. The family traveling from the east coast had given us a heads up this tripped them up at the airport, so we were trying to be ahead of the game. The online forms were challenging to successfully complete, to say the least (BAD UX!!). It was a game of “see if you can format the address in such a way the form will accept it”. Insult to injury, we never once needed this particular form.
The “you just go” decision was that rather than the whole family aborting the trip, I would go on to Cabo without them. Then I would be there to help everyone get to know each other, and I’d do everything I could to make sure everyone had as much fun as possible. It was our idea and our plan, after all.
I wasn’t sure I was up for the task. It made me incredibly sad to be traveling without them, on what should have been an absolutely perfect vacation, especially for Miranda. Sun! Beach! Friends! Amazing food! Drinks by the pool! I like those things too, but Miranda had arranged all this right down to the resort itself. Being there without my family just didn’t feel right at all, even if the intention was good. I learned later that Ruby was balling crying when she had to leave the airport, a fact I’m glad Miranda didn’t tell me until much later.
The travel down wasn’t horrendous, but a long and tiring three flights. The worst of it was doing customs in Mexico City. We were all under the assumption that we had to claim our baggage and re-check it there, a ritual I had done many times when flying into a new country. We could even see our baggage out a little window in the baggage claim area. Two hours we waited until we watched it be driven away. Turns out we didn’t need to wait at all and it was automatically re-checked, which I didn’t know was possible when customs needed to be passed 🤷. There we also some minor alarming moments where I didn’t have a seating assignment and got one at the last minute.
Wait I take that back, the worst of it was that I had purchased a little mini travel banjo to have fun with on the trip, and I just accidentally left it on the plane as we arrived in Mexico City. By the time I realized it, it was far too late to do anything about it. Gone with the wind.
I say “we” before because I was traveling down with one of the other families, so it was 5 of us traveling down together, making the pain of being separated all the most present. It should have been all 7 of us traveling together. In the end, we made it. Me, alone, but the other families were intact.
We were staying at the One&Only Palmilla, a real slice of paradise down there (a phrase they don’t mind repeating to you). The resort sent an impossibly posh Lincoln Navigator to the airport to fetch us. That night, an unforgettable sushi dinner with the three dads, including a few ounces of Wagu beef they sent out along with a hot stone for us to cook it ourselves on.
And yet — I went to bed sad; I woke up sad. My family wasn’t there. In talking to Miranda, she had already exhausted a number of methods of getting a passport. There is an emergency passport place in Seattle, but the only circumstances they get you a same-day appointment and get it to you within a day or two is in the event of a family death with a death certificate in hand. Plus the options seemed like they required both parents, a measure Miranda and I agreed was nice to see in place to prevent one parent from absconding with a child, but weren’t doing us any favors right now. We fantasized about some wildly impractical and/or illegal methods for getting them down there before giving up again.
A new plan.
It turns out that a birth certificate is enough documentation for border crossings if traveling by land or sea. Land, in our case, was more practical. Both parents needed to be present, but if we could do that, we could cross from the United States into Mexico at the San Diego / Tijuana border. Once in Tijuana, we could fly to Cabo without a passport for Ruby as it’s a “domestic” flight. Just like within the United States, you don’t need a passport to fly from state to state. We immediately put that plan into place.
I booked a flight from Cabo back up to San Diego that very day. I would stay in a hotel by the airport that night. I booked their flights down to San Diego early the next morning. Miranda booked flights for her and Ruby to San Diego early the next morning, and also a car to pick me up at the hotel, grab them from the airport, then take us to the border crossing. We would all cross the border right into the Tijuana airport and away we go. Badda bing. OPERATION LAND BRIDGE.
Fumble.
I dang near ruined the plan immediately. I grabbed a cab from the resort back to the Cabo airport. I used the check-in computer right inside the airport doors, and it wouldn’t print my boarding pass. Turns out I booked the flight for May 20th, not March 20th (I’d lol if I wasn’t sobbing).
By some miracle, One&Only has an airport concierge who helps guests navigate the Cabo airport and make sure it all goes smoothly. I had booked with United (the only good flight I could get out of there that afternoon) and she took me over to the United booth and spoke with them about getting me onto the correct flight. There was one seat left. I’ll take it! “Great, I just need your negative COVID-19 test.” Oh crap! I knew we needed tests for the way home, but I had totally forgotten about it while booking OPERATION LAND BRIDGE.
So to make this flight out, I could buy the ticket as late as 40 minutes from this very second. Assuming nobody else bought it in the meantime, anyway.
There is a little COVID testing facility right at the airport, so we run for it. “We”, meaning my angel in disguise airport concierge and I. There is a small line. Crap. I also have to scan a QR code and fill out a form. The internet is taking forever to load the page with the form. Once it loads, the rest of the whole thing is a whirlwind. I’ve never filled out a mobile form more quickly and we sorta get to skip the line as everyone else is having trouble with the form. I don’t think I mistyped a single character. I emailed it to them as my credit card flew out of my wallet through the slot in the plastic desk shield. There was a cotton swab up my nose and the door to the place pats my ass on the way out. I bet we did the whole thing in less than 10 minutes, which I’m very sure is the absolute world record at this place.
But… we’re told the results take 45 minutes. If they really did take that long, it would have been 15 minutes past the deadline for this flight, and the whole plan would have been screwed up. So here we are, my airport concierge and me, sitting awkwardly at a tall round table in front of a gift shop near the United counter, with me refreshing my mobile Gmail app every 18 seconds waiting for the results. There was an extra awkward moment where she asked me if she could go to the bathroom (yes?!) like there is some resort-mandated protocol she might be breaking. Twenty-eight excruciating minutes later, the negative results arrive! The ladies at the ticket counter remember us, accept the results, and sell me the corrected plane ticket with literal seconds left. I hand my concierge the wad of every single Peso I had in my wallet and thank her like I’m thanking a doctor telling me my tumor biopsy is benign. I’m the last person on the plane, and the lady I’m sitting next to is extremely annoyed that she has to move her stuff she was sure she’d get to use the empty seat for.
This flight was first to LAX, then to San Diego. A 45-minute layover in LAX. Should be no big deal, but of course: it’s a deal. We’re stuck on the tarmac waiting for a gate. And we need to clear customs because we’re arriving from Mexico. It’s Sunday night, so the smaller customs facility at our terminal is closed and we have to clear it at another, further away customs facility. By the time we’re deplaning, it’s just about the time the next flight is boarding. With customs still ahead, it feels like it’s going to be a missed flight. But two miracles await. You know that thing where the flight attendants announce “we have some people with tight connections so if everyone could stay seated until they are off” thing? They did that, and people actually honored it, which is a first for me. Another is that the week before this trip, my Global Entry card arrived, which I had renewed a few months ago. I remembered to bring it, and it really made customs a breeze. The whole thing only took a few minutes and I made the next flight to San Diego just fine.
A breath.
I stayed in a Hilton hotel by the airport. I barely remember it. I just popped a cab over there, checked in, and immediately went to bed, exhausted. At least I didn’t screw up that reservation. I even got to sleep in a bit and catch breakfast, because Miranda and Ruby weren’t arriving in San Diego until 10:45 am. Their flights, thankfully, went just fine. Are things starting to turn our way?
The nail-biting started again as it was time for the car to pick me up from the hotel and he didn’t show. I contacted the company, got in touch with the driver, and he said he went to the wrong Hilton. He said he’d be there in a few minutes, but it was clearly 15 minutes away at least. Not a huge deal, but Miranda was already outside the San Diego airport waiting with a very squirrely 4-year-old, who was essentially doing crazed snow angels on the dirty sidewalk.
The border.
The driver gets there though, and he’s a perfect nice fella. Apologetic about the mistake. We’re just a lot to handle right now as we’re smack in the middle of a major journey we don’t even for sure know we can pull off. Being late for a flight would be the stupidest possible ending.
The border crossing to the Tijuana airport is done by a company called CBX (Cross Border Express), and we booked tickets in advance. The driver dropped us off there, but we asked the driver to wait in case we had any trouble, which he was fine with.
We found trouble immediately. Yet again, a passport was required at CBX to cross, and we only had a birth certificate. The CBX attendant gives us a hard no. A painful, abrupt, and unforeseen no. I have a feeling the CBX admin website was all like:
<label for="passport-number">Passport number</label> <input required type="text" id="passport-number" name="passport-number" />Code language: HTML, XML (xml)And it’s, ya know, probably against company policy to open DevTools and delete the required attribute. Kidding aside, the easy, convenient, airport-adjacent border crossing that would take us right into the Tijuana airport was off the table.
Our driver was incredulous. “It should not be this hard to get into Mexico,” he said. I can’t speak for practical international policy, but as two parents who weren’t trying to pull a fast one on anybody, just enjoy a little trip and spend some hard-earned bucks on tequila and tacos, I agreed.
Turns out, you don’t have to use a company like CBX to cross. You can just… walk… across. The driver drove us a few highway stops down, and called his friend who knew more about border crossings so they could talk us through how to do it. It wasn’t hard. It was just somewhat unusual for us and we didn’t have anyone else to help us. It was essentially a day worker crossing. We just had to walk down some cement paths, up over a fenced-in bridge, through some iron gates, and ultimately through a dingy little building where our luggage was scanned. Not a single person looked at any documentation, let alone a passport. We were in Mexico.
More boss levels.
Where the border crossing area lets out into the city there are cabs waiting. We caught one of them back over to the Tijuana airport. A 4-minute ride down a single road for $40. Jokes on him, I probably would have paid him $400.
All we needed to do is catch our flight, and we almost certainly don’t need a passport for that, being a “domestic” flight. So we start making our way to the gate, but we’re stopped as we don’t have a Travel Visa for Mexico yet. We were directed to the travel office to obtain said Visa. BOSS #1. “Passports, please.” We just handed her our two adult passports and Ruby’s birth certificate. “Where is her passport?” As you know, readers, we did not have it. Heart sunk. We pulled out money to pay for the Visas, just to see if we could move things along, and it essentially worked. We were told to “make sure we have it next time” and ultimately they sold us the Visa. Phew.
Then we got in line to check-in. We didn’t have actual boarding passes yet, so that felt like a huge next step. Of course, it was a solid slow-moving 45-minute line, life just making sure we ran out of sweat and chewed our fingernails away. Turning back at this point would have been devastating. BOSS #2. “Passports.” We hand over the two passports and the birth certificates. This time, nothing was made of it, we just checked the bags, got the boarding passes, and away we go.
I made the mistake of feeling relief at this point. Don’t fret too hard, as we did board the plane just fine, but there was a BOSS #3 checking passports just letting us into the security line (the birth certificate was fine) and a BOSS #4 at the main security booth (again they took the birth certificate without issue). I wouldn’t even allow myself to feel relief after security. I was so worked up I might have actually been stomping and snorting.
The arrival.
We really do make the Tijuana to Cabo flight. We’re separated. The seats are far too tiny for my big ass. But we did it. We fly, as a family, to Cabo. The same airport concierge is there when we get there. I give her a big hug, which I immediately regretted as we technically are still in a pandemic and we probably haven’t crossed into the hugging stranger’s cool zone yet. We both know I tested negative the day before though, so hopefully not too egregious. A pimp-ass Lincoln Navigator again ushers us to the One&Only. I made sure they gave Miranda and Ruby the same lovely entrance as I got. A little shot of fresh juice and tequila, a quick spiel about the resort, and a hand-ringing of the bell announcing their arrival. A lovely little ceremony, nothing too overwrought or drawn out.
The One&Only.
Now that we’re at the resort, everything is amazing. The service is incredible. The dining is great. Everyone gets along. We do lots of fun stuff. Vacation achieved. This warrents a whole post to itself, but since I’m focusing on the travel story here, back to that.
Let’s do it all in reverse, while sick.
I phoned Delta during the week to see if we could fly home, back to the United States, without Ruby’s passport. Somehow I thought that might be possible since we’re American citizens and all and I can’t image anybody giving an American family too much grief about arriving home. But no, can’t be done. Hard no. So a land crossing at the Tijuana / San Diego border again is the plan. We thought we might even try CBX again just for convenience, but no, it’s just not worth the rejection. We might as well just do what already worked once.
So I line up flights home. At least we’re all together this time, shouldn’t be too bad. We decide we’re going to leave Sunday instead to give ourselves just one more day at this lovely resort. At some point on Saturday, I realize that the flights I booked out of Cabo for us were actually on Saturday (that day), not Sunday, so despite the fact that we took the trouble to extend our stay, I’ve already fouled up the travel plans. Miranda takes over and re-books the flights, and hilariously (ha, hA, HA< HAHHDADF dead) also books flights on Saturday again. She fairly quickly realized the mistake, but by the time we were re-booking, we can no longer get the good flight we wanted out of Cabo, the one where we could actually make it home on Sunday. Just a truly heartbreaking moment as all we wanted was one smooth travel experience on this forsaken trip.
Turns out, there is just nothing to be done. We leave Sunday, but we arrive to Tijuana so late we can’t make the crossing and catch any flights back to Bend. So we book an airport hotel in San Diego and find flights on Monday back to Bend.
To layer on a little extra pain here, both Ruby and I had gotten sick at the end of the trip. Just a gnarly throat booger thing. Lots of wet gross coughing and tiredness.
As we’re flying to Tijuana, we know we have the whole border crossing thing ahead of us. Miranda is poking around on her phone looking at stuff and finds a terrifying bit of information. The land crossing we’re planning to go across, the one that we crossed originally, the one that we’ve booked the car again to pick us up at to take us to the San Diego airport, is closed on Sundays. Google Maps says it’s closed, anyway. Websites confirm it. How are Earth are we going to get into San Diego if CBX won’t take us and the only crossing we really know is closed?! Just to really crank up the tension on us, we spent 40 minutes stuck on the tarmac in Tijuana after landing for god knows what reason.
Turns out, crossings don’t really close. I mean, it’s also a road, and I’m not sure “roads” really “close”. I’m also not sure if the crossing is 24-7-365 either, but we just decided to ignore the closed-hours thing and go for it. It was totally open, thankfully. If it wasn’t we would have been missing/rebooking flights yet again. I think it’s just “the office” at the crossing that was closed.
At the crossing, there were American immigration agents. Two sets of them. The first took a passing glance at the passports and birth certificates and waved us through. There was a more official agent-at-a-desk that took a closer look, asked us a few questions, but ultimately let us through without issue. BOSS #5 & 6, I suppose. Neither of them cared about the COVID tests we took great care to make sure we had taken and printed out the results of.
This time, we felt an extreme amount of relief crossing back into the United States. The driver was half an hour late, but whatever, we made it to the hotel, had a hot pretzel and shrimp cocktail at the bar, and went to bed.
Bend.
It was a two-legger home, through Salt Lake City. The layover in SLC was too long, we were exhausted still, but we had that we-made-it feeling. I so wish we had 2-3 days of downtime after getting back home to Bend, but alas, we did not. Heck, I had to give a talk at a meetup in the afternoon that Monday and Miranda had appointments as well. It’s over a week later as I’m writing this and honestly, I still feel tired. And I still have the same gross (non-covid) cough.
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