Gray Whale Migration Epilogue
Well tonight once again we find ourselves in the Los Angeles Crown Plaza spending the night before our flight home tomorrow. If we didn’t spend the night we would have had to take the “Red Eye” home and didn’t feel that was the way to end a great vacation. Today we discovered the worst airport in the world for making your life miserable without any value added. La Paz airport is our number one choice of airports never to transverse again. It is an extremely small airport and arriving was palatable although it took forever for the luggage to arrive and then every piece was x-rayed. After we claimed our luggage from x-ray we had to push a button and if a green light came on we were free to go, if a red light came on your luggage was completely unpacked. We fortunately got a green light. Today all of our luggage was x-rayed prior to check in, then every single piece of checked baggage of every single passenger was unpacked on a table in front of check in and then repacked by the Mexican version of our TSA. If it wasn’t such a pain in the rear it would have been almost comical watching them try to repack everyone’s suitcases. It took almost 3 hours to check in the 40 people on our airplane, thank God we weren’t getting on a 747, it would take 3 days to check everyone in. I later learn that the US Government requires every bag being checked from Mexico be opened and unpacked; they hardly looked at our carry ons – go figure. When we got to Los Angeles immigration went fairly smooth but the line for customs went all the way around baggage claim. They had two Custom Agents clearing all the flights that arrived when we did, about 7 flights from all over the world. We counted 24 other custom agents standing around the same area talking to each other. The drug sniffing dog was the hardest working person in the place. Maybe this is part of the reason our Government is going broke. Other than our airport experiences, it was a fabulous trip and I got some great photos that I will post when we get home if anyone is interested. The connection on the ship was just too slow to attempt to post any pictures. I will send out an e-mail when pictures are posted.
“The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.” – Muhammad Ali
No More to Follow,
Tom & Holly