how not to get to Mexico

I’m in the states for a couple weeks after a great pilgrimage to Mexico for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. More on that in a little while. First, I need to share the story of how Ann almost missed the bus, for the benefit of those out there who know her. It’s really an incredible, “Amazing race” type story!

Now, this is Ann who works at Mt. Carmel High School as a campus minister, whom I lived with last year. Ann reserved our bus tickets (actually, our friend Dinorah, being a Spanish speaker, reserved the bus tickets, with Ann’s credit card) to Mexico City for us, we were scheduled to leave on Saturday at 4:30 from Chetumal (the town which borders Belize). Us San Pedranos decided to leave for Chetumal on Friday so that we’d have plenty of time to make the bus at 4:30. I left San Pedro early Friday morning, took a water taxi to Belize City and then visited a former student who now lives on the way to Chetumal. (My water taxi experience was a whole other story—we were all settled in and then the police show up with about eight scruffy, cussing prisoners cuffed together, one of whom was definitely smoking something that smelled like Amsterdam. But I digress.) I had a lovely visit and then met up with the rest of the San Pedro girls who took a ferry straight to the border of Belize. We crossed the border, ate McDonalds, saw a mediocre movie and went shopping (which is what you do when you’re in Chetumal).
We planned to meet Ann in Chetumal around 1:00 pm when her bus from Belize should be arriving. However, 1:30 at the bus station and she was no where to be seen. Hmm. We figured she just arrived earlier and went to the mall to shop and eat McDonalds and we’d just meet her at the bus station later. We chill at the station, ordered a pizza, changed into sweats and p.j.’s for our 25 hour bus ride… and then slowly begin to worry when it’s 3:30 and Ann is no where to be seen. Our bus leaves at 4:30 and she has the tickets on her card. At 3:45 I announce, “we officially have a problem”. I have visions of Ann locked away in a Mexican jail being interrogated by a soldier with a bushy mustache and her not being able to understand him… or maybe kidnapped with a shady taxi driver who’s speeding off with her into the desert. I’m already imagining the posters we’ll have to make, “American volunteer, last seen wearing orange”. We start to consider other options. There’s only one seat free on the later bus, if we can’t catch this one than we won’t make it into Mexico for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Plus, we’ll lose our current tickets. We call our friend Dinorah (collect, just to add to the drama) around 4:00 p.m. to see if she’d heard anything. She tells us Ann left on the 5:30 bus and should’ve been to Mexico by now. Now we have Dinorah worried too. So, where was Ann? Not in prison, luckily

Ann gets on the bus to Belize at 5:30 a.m., psyched to be leaving Benque and heading to Mexico. She dozes on and off for a few hours before she awakes with a start. In all of her packing it never, not once, in a million years occurred to her to pack… her passport. She says, “looking back, this was a fatal error”. However, she does not panic. Instead, she realizes that Mr. Daniel Juan is driving Cathleen to the airport that morning, so they can bring her passport along. However, Anne does not have Cathleen’s cell phone. What else is there to do but call her mother, in Pennsylvania, to get it? After contacting Cathleen by way of her mom, Cathleen assures Anne that they’ll have it to her in time for Ann to take the 11:00 bus. 11:00 comes and goes, no passport. Cathleen finally arrives a little after 12:00 (how Cathleen managed to catch her 1:18 flight home is a whole different story). Now, Ann has missed her chance of getting to Mexico by bus. This leaves her with only one option, to fly to Corozal which ironically enough, has a layover in San Pedro. Ann caught the 1:30 flight to San Pedro ready to catch the 2:30 flight to Corozal. However, 3:00 comes and Ann is stuck on San Pedro because the plane is late!
Ann arrives in Corozal, grabs her bags and catches a taxi to Chetumal by 3:30. She has one hour to get to the bus station. This is the time when those of us in Chetumal officially began worrying. Ann’s taxi driver now admits to Ann that she doesn’t know how to get to the bus station. So, naturally, they have to go to the driver’s house to find her brother, Philip, who knows the way (anyone who’s taken taxis in Central America knows that this is a regular occurrence). Philip is not home, so they’re all hollering around looking for Philip saying, “this girl has to catch a bus!”. They finally leave at 3:37 and Ann flys through the border by 3:45. They enter Mexico by 4:00 and take a detour through six lights. Just when we were sure that Ann had been kidnapped by the Mexican mafia, she stumbles out of a taxi in front of the bus station at 4:22, with seven minutes to spare.