I sit here listening to the fountain cascade over the edge of its giant bowl. It’s hard to believe just a few hours ago I was shivering beneath my covers. An occasional cloud passes by. The plaza is filled with families as if it was midsummer, and here in Mexico it is. Every day.

Mexico has its own discount airlines

This day was an unexpected treat though it didn’t begin that way. Two days before, I’d been looking at visiting a remote village nestled in a mountain top crown in the central highlands of Mexico when I noticed that it was just a few hours from Monterrey. I’d always wanted to visit Monterrey to see its modern architecture, but that left me fairly far north, just hours from the Texas border, and I needed to get to the west coast to tour all of those remote beaches on my list. A fellow traveler had told me about VivaAeorbus, a Mexican discount airline, and when I went to the website, I found they had a special from Monterrey to Mazatlan, another city on my list that I didn’t know how I was going to fit into this trip. Perfect! And to sweeten the deal, the flight was the equivalent of $50 US dollars.

For whatever reason, I chose not to book the flight immediately, a mistake I regretted over the next two days. I guess I was not sure I wanted to have a hard date I had to be somewhere, since I was making an attempt to travel without any advance planning for the first time in my life (I still don’t have my ticket back to the states). The next morning, I reasoned that even if I didn’t make the flight, I would only be out $50, so I decided to book the ticket.

Unfortunately, the internet cafe I’d used the night before was closed and no hours were posted. In Mexico, there are really no fixed hours for anything except busses, so the cafe might open at 9 or 2. Having exhausted the things to do in the underwhelming town of Tequisquiapan, I was anxious to get a bus to my next destination. I also wanted to arrive there early as I was out of clean clothes and needed to do a load of laundry. I made a last ditch effort to try making the reservation using my smart phone and the hotel WiFi. I received what I think was an error page saying the airline’s web site was down. I should have booked that ticket the night before!

A few hours later, I arrived in the town of Queretaro. Having remembered the general layout of the city from my visit the previous year, I was easily able to navigate my way from the bus terminal to the hostel, which turned out to be full. So much for spontaneous travel. After being directed to a non-existent hostel several blocks away, I pulled out my Lonely Planet guide and began to search for other nearby hostels.

Two Mexican weaknesses: directions and time

I have to tell you, Mexicans are bad at two things: directions and time. I guess this is a country of people who don’t travel much. I have been within a mile of one of their biggest tourists sites, asked for directions, only to be told they’d never heard of the place. This has happened to me on several occasions, with the police too. You’d think they’d know their way around, but I have learned on more occasions than I should admit, that police are the most consistent at sending me to a place that is just not there.

Time is the other thing that Mexicans have a unique perspective on. Because I was trying to leave town by a certain time one day, I tried to ascertain, in advance, how long it would take to get to the waterfall from town. One person said 25 minutes and another said 45. It took over an hour. A friend explained it like this: Mexicans don’t think in terms of time. It takes however long it takes. You never know whether you’re going to bump into a friend, have a flat tire, or walk a tourist to the nearest post office. Mexicans just go along from one adventure to the next getting to any given point when they get there, not when it is time to get there. I have to say, I love this concept, but it’s pretty hard for my type A personality to fully understand it.

My transfer point turns into an overnight stay

By the time I found the next closest hostel, it was after 2 in the afternoon, which meant it was too late to get my laundry done by the hostel that day. You usually have to have your clothes in by noon in order to get them done the same day. Having gotten directions to a laundromat from the hostel host, I grabbed my bag and headed out to spend the rest of my afternoon doing my own laundry. The laundromat, of course, was not at the place I was directed; just a rusty metal door. On my way back to the hostel, I stopped in at a hotel, and asked the front desk person if there might be a laundromat close by. Having followed her directions to another dilapidated building with a rusty hanging door, I decided to head back to the hostel. Laundry was not going to get done today, so I resigned myself to staying another full day in town to get my laundry done. I mean, it was time, if you know what I mean. All underwear and socks had already been reversed once.

I hopped on the internet at the hostel to still find the airline website down and decided to give it one more try the next morning before giving up on squeezing Monterrey and Mazatlan into this trip. I really hadn’t intended to use this town as more than a transfer point.

The next morning brought interesting developments. I was able to get onto the site and found a ticket for even cheaper than it’d been two days before. I quickly clicked on the link only to get an error message, which I could not read in its entirety. You may have used a website before that has pages translated into different languages, but what most companies often forget is to provide different translations for their error pages! It reminds me of a time at my last company where I was asked to translate our web pages into Spanish. I asked, “and what happens when someone calls the customer service number on this page?”, to which I received an “oh, I hadn’t thought of that.” Yes, serving a multi-lingual audience is more than just having your web pages in another language. To their credit, the airline did have bi-lingual customer service reps, but I get ahead of myself.

With persistence, I was eventually able to make my booking, but when it came time to pay for my ticket, my credit card was rejected, again in language that wasn’t quite clear to me. I tried my other card, but it didn’t work either. Now I was nervous that I’d triggered flags on the only two cards I had to acquire money while in Mexico.

The host at the hostel was kind enough to let me use her phone to contact the airline, but after 15 minutes on hold, I gave up. Given the technical difficulties from the day before, it was no surprise their lines were flooded, and I didn’t want to rack up costs on the hostel’s phone bill.

Buying a ticket and paying for it are two different things

After leaving my laundry with the hostel host, I headed down the street to an internet cafe, where I could use Skype to call the airline for free. I figured I could do some writing and upload some photos while I waited on hold. Strangely, they answered in about two minutes. I was told that the airline did not take US credit cards but that I could go to the local bank, give them a very long set of numbers, and pay cash for the ticket there. Great. I wrote down the numbers on a piece of paper and headed to the bank.

Having watched a couple people pass before me, I learned that you push a button on a machine and receive a number. What button you pushed was based on what service you needed, and here was a set of words I didn’t know in Spanish, so I just picked one at random. It turned out I chose correctly that I was not a client of the bank, which means that for every four clients they serve, they serve one non-client. I waited for about 45 minutes while other numbers kept jumping ahead of mine but eventually got my turn at the counter.

I gave the teller my set of numbers including the price in pesos, $603.06. She took my money, and I thought, “great” until she told me the transaction had not gone through. Now, there were a lot of numbers on that piece of paper, and we went through them again: the airline’s account number, the number for the transaction, and the amount, which I thought I had remembered. She still said, no, the transaction did not take. So, as it was, I had to return to the internet cafe and hope again for a short wait before talking to a customer service rep for the airline. We went over all the numbers, and it turns out they were all correct except one. I had showed the teller all the numbers on the piece of paper, but I told her the amount orally. As it turns out, I read it incorrectly. It should have been $603.60. Who knew that would make the difference?

Back at the bank, I waited in line again for my turn as a non-client. When I got to the window and gave my numbers, the transaction went through. I had purchased my ticket from Monterrey to Mazatlan! So maybe, it did cost be a little more in time than the $40 I paid, but as I’ve learned here, what is time exactly? Besides, here I sit on a bench with my shoes off under the warm Mexican sun while someone does my laundry. Maybe everything does all work out.