Not being religious, Webster's is my choice as a definition of hell: a place or state of misery, torment, or wickedness. There could be no better desciption for the Mexico City International Airport. Every hell has its devils and demons; in this hell, they are the employees of AeroMexico, a true dichotomy of a company. In the air, it could not be better: attententive service, cute (hot!) staff, and free drinks. But on the ground are the devils.
Our story starts with a pair of passport problem that required a call in to AeroMexico for advice. Their suggestion was to take an earlier flight out for our first leg (6 a.m. vs. 2 p.m.) so that the problem could be resolved quickly and not require an overnight stay. Additionally, our second leg would be later in the day so that there would be no stress in the time between the two.
Being, well, who we are, we stayed up the entire night before (you know, packing) knowing that we would be able to sleep it off the next day on the second leg of our flight. When we arrived for the first leg from Puerto Vallarta to Mexico City, we were informed that our second flight had also been moved up, requiring us to move quickly through the immigration process. We were already rather brain-addled at that point and couldn't have moved quickly through a time warp. We slept on the first leg from Vallarta to Mexico City, arriving with running shoes ready at Benito Juarez.
We rushed to Migracion, and were told to find an incredible obscure office "above the Burger King". At this point we are running through the main terminal asking anyone that looked knowledgeable or portly, "Donde esta el Burger King?". Reeking of booze, we arrived in an office in a maze of hallways and were frowned upon by the woman working the desk. Seeing that Mister Offender's combination of fluent Spanish and aggressive approach were accomplishing nothing, I dug into my acting bag of tricks and released one tear from my left eye. Boom. I was sent to Banorte to pay a fine and Mister Offender sorted out his obstacle at the counter.
With ten minutes to go, we checked the terminal tracker and were hoofing it again toward our gate and our beloved New York. But first, we had to go through baggage check a second time. Pockets emptied, laptop out, and everything on the conveyor, we passed through the metal detector with no problems, or so we thought. Something in my bag had caught the eye of the woman working the x-ray machine. A bottle of Atavan? A forgotten baggie of this or that? No, a neck pillow shaped like a monkey had caught her eye and she just had, had to show her friend Lupe. After Lupe also had seen the xango adorable, the bag checker just walked away, not saying a word. Paranoids that we are and not wanting to be shot if we ran off, we asked, "Um hullo? Can we leave?". Casually, she turned, looked at us like we were homos locos and nodded.
As we ran off to our gate, Mr. Offender at this point was huffing "I ... hate ... Mexico!" Upon arrival, we found that our gate number had changed and had to run in the opposite direction (over one mile) in less than one minute. "Puede ayudarnos? Llame-los, por favor!?" we begged to no avail. Finally we arrived at the correct gate to be told that the plane had left and that our luggage had been removed from the plane. We were then instructed to go to the baggage checking center to pick up our bags and then re-ckeck in for the next flight.
[Keep in mind that at this point, we had slept 45 minutes in the last 24 hours.]
The baggage claim area was immense and finding the remote desk for misdirected luggage added further confusion. Upon arrival there were two people working the desk, one very much the pretty-boy and the other, grizzled and haggard. Of course the older one was available first and was not feeling us in any way. Eventually he was able to discern that our luggage had in fact left on its way home without us and that we were: Utterly. Wasting. His. Time. By this time the pretty-boy was off of the phone; so I made eye contact and gave him my best face. Boom. "Can I help you?" We repeated our situation; he made some calls, but the damage had been done.
Defeated we headed back to where we were told to go: back to check-in. Upon arrival at check-in, the woman working the counter had no idea where we there, and, in time, was irritated with us that we were indeed at her counter. She instructed us to return back to the gates to wait for the next flight, eight hours later. We asked for alternatives. We explained that we were simply following the directions that we had been given. We pondered in what way they could alleviate the problem that the airline had put us into by advising us to arrive eight hours early to solve problems that ended up taking fifteen minutes to resolve. We were asked to please leave the counter.
Which put us back at the same conveyor belt, putting our possessions out, stepping through the detector and seeing our good friend who had so loved our neck cushions. At this point Mr. Offender has had it and explained in even tones how much that delay had cost us. She shrugged her shoulders and turned away. Since our bags were already open, we decided to shed some belongings as the weight had followed us for too long. Several magazines lay on the conveyor as we just walked away.
We now had eight hours to kill in the airport and the first stop was in one of the most surreal of spaces, an improvised smoking lounge. So improvised that it had no ashtrays. So improvised that it sat between duty-free shops for Corneliani and Izod, filled with clothes that reeked of nicotine. We sat, we smoked, and we pondered. We reviewed our day thus far. We were convinced that we had done no wrong, other than trusting the advice that we had been given, but were seeking validation. We chatted up our fellow smokers, both travelers and duty-free shop workers on break. They agreed that we had done nothing wrong other than being too polite.
We were recommended a place where we could eat, drink, smoke and chill for some time. Our stomachs were not excessively receptive to solid foods, having survived for so long on liquids and powders, but we slogged our way through the food. With our stomachs refusing to accept more, we paid our bill (tipping generously), and looked for a comfortable spot to spend the next six hours.
At this point Mr. Offender was fading fast, having to contend with two injuries (incurred in Vallarta) throughout the entire ordeal. Knowing that if I would sleep there would be no waking me, I went to the newsstands and selected enough media to keep me awake for as long as possible.
Two hours later I had been awake for almost 30 hours, with only 45 minutes of sleep. I was recalling the sleep deprivation documentaries that I had seen long ago. I was hallucinating (granted the activities of the night before didn't help), seeing shiny pieces of metal appear where there truly were none. I was jittery, conscious of the fact that I looked like a madman sitting there in my Paul Smith sunglasses. I was dying for a decent conversation, but my semi-fluency in Spanish had now completely failed me and there were no fluent English speakers nearby.
Finally we were half an hour from our flight. Perfect time to hear that our gate had changed from the massive holding area of Gate 19 at one end of the terminal to Gate 35 at the other. We trogged over to the new gate, stopping by assorted shops on the way, digging into our pockets for the helpers we had for the flight. Arriving at Gate 35, we found other New Yorkers, some with similar stories, but nothing to top ours.
After 34 hours awake, as I drifted off into sleep and thought things over, it occurred to me that we had not been "Ugly Americans" (Mr. Offender actually holds dual citizenship between the US and Mexico) and there had not been a language barrier (Mr. Offender being fluent and I being able to hold my own in conversation for the ten days prior). We were merely the victims of bad advice from AeroMexico and a horridly designed terminal. (Although I gave much mention of the constant distances being travelled, the horrificly placed smoking lounge was merely a symptom of a diagnosis of design diaspora from harsh lighting to poor shop placement with rows of duty free shops being following by rows of food shops with much distance between them.)
Regardless, you will never see this Offender on another AeroMexico flight (despite the most gorgeous flight attendant ever on the way home - Claudio) or ever transferring in el infierno de Benito Juarez ever again.
