Global Wandering

We made it back from Mexico today. A day late. I made a tactical error and didn't notice until too late that when Delta changed the flight schedule for our flight from Merida to Atlanta, there wouldn't be enough time to pass through customs and still make our connection to Salt Lake City.

We of course missed the connection yesterday by 10 minutes and were then unsuccessful in flying standby. We were rebooked on a flight for this morning. Delta provided some vouchers to some hotel I had never heard of and when I called the hotel to confirm two rooms they said they couldn't do it until I was at the hotel. So we walked outside the airport to find the hotel shuttle. It was easy enough to find. It was the only shuttle that had fifty people standing at its door fighting for ten seats on the bus. I was sure there were already fifty people at the hotel trying to get a room.

This only reinforced to me that Atlanta is the worst airport to fly through. If things go wrong in Atlanta, they typically go very wrong.

Fortunately, there was also a shuttle for the Westin in the parking lot. We hopped on.

I am a big proponent of staying as much as possible within the same hotel change. In this case, my allegience to Starwood paid off because unlike airlines who will charge you through the nose when you are in a bind, Starwood will allow you to cash in hotel reward points at a discount rate if it is late at night and the hotel isn't sold out. They'd rather have the room filled in hope that you'll spend at the restaurant. Seems like a smart business decision to me. So we got our two rooms and the flight today was uneventful. It is good to be home.

I took the pictures posted here on an early morning New Years Day walk through the streets of Campeche. There is no quieter time in a Mexican city, or probably any city for that matter, then early in the morning of New Years-unless you count the several houses that still had revelers belting out Mexican ranchero songs.

Of course, one of the challenges about Campeche is while the buildings look quaint from the outside, you never know which brightly painted exterior wall is hiding an interior such as the one below that happened to have one of its outside windows open.