Cabo snippet

mask assortment, photo courtesy Steve Kalning

I'm catching up on laundry, cleaning, and life in general so here is a brief snippet from the Cabo trip. It was on the way home......


In a group of 300-some people, there are bound to be some problems. The crazy American Airlines shenanigans left many of our friends scrambling to find ways to fly home, many of which were multi-stop nightmares. Our friends Jeff and Suzanne found themselves on a complicated Cabo-Mexico City-LA flight path and were worried about lost luggage. Specifically Jeff's custom dive gear that had it's own suitcase. We offered to take it with us on our relatively uncomplicated flight, since you're allowed to have two suitcases per person.

Which brought me to Saturday morning in the Cabo airport trying to figure out how to tell a customs agent "I have my friend's suitcase, and it is full of scuba equipment I SWEAR but I can't open the locks and show you."

In the Cabo airport, they have no x-ray machines. They have no fancy TSA-approved-lock-jimmying tools. They just have every single person in line hoist their suitcase up onto a folding table right in front of the ticket counters and open it up and rifle through your underwear in front of the entire airport looking for drugs and other naughties. And I forgot to ask jeff the combination to their locks. These are very serious security agents. They do not smile. They are probably secretly hoping that you are trying to smuggle something unmentionable just so that it gives them variation in their day.

Enter: Elisa, savior of me and Jeff. She helped me through the trip on many occasions... finding good restaurants, making reservations, haggling for me when I was too shy when shopping. But in this, her last act of assistance, she rose to heroism. I don't know exactly what she said because it was rapid-fire spanish, but at the end of it the guy didn't. even. open. the. suitcase. He just took our word for it. I was prepared for him to cut the locks, do whatever he needed but Elisa's magic went further than I thought possible.

At the time it was gut-wateringly terrifying, but now it's a great story!

The Arch, photo courtesy Steve Kalning

More pictures to come.....I didn't take any at all because of the aforementioned 300+ people on the trip, many of whom are top notch photographers and will supply me with images I could never have taken myself. The great pooling of photos has begun at work, and I will dip in later this week and pull out some gems.