Mar 22, 2009 - Hotel Riu Caribé, Cancún - TO

Sunday, March 22, 2009

I hadn’t yet taken a sunset pic despite being awake every day at its rising (~ 0600), so I had a special objective this morning to get some. Unfortunately, as was the case yesterday, its rising was obscured by low level cloud, which later burned off.

Our hotel departure for the airport was 1135, so we were at poolside by 0745, Lynda leaving at 1000 and I at 1030 to clean up and pack.


I had also not taken elevated pics into the main hotel lobby area, so took some from the 4th & 5th floors.



The Hotel Riu Caribé was fabulous in all respects, most particularly the quality, knowledge and friendliness of its staff, along with its beautiful and clean site.

We had a little bit of drama at the airport. While queuing for maybe ½ hr for boarding passes and luggage checking, Lynda learned that I had thrown out that morning a customs form from our inbound trip that I had place in my passport. She said we’d been told that it would be needed to exit (or, otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to leave - imagine hysteria by Lynda). The ticket agent sent me to the customs office for a new form, which probably chewed up another ½ hr, after which I had to requeue in a now longer check-in line, after which time I got my boarding passes. For some reason, we were together on the leg from Mtl, but not on the longer leg to Mtl. Fortunately, Lynda had someone seated beside her whom we’d met in the line, and he was quite happy to change seats with me.

At Mtl, we had to pick up our luggage, clear customs and recheck luggage during our 2 hr layover. We had shelled out for a couple of sandwiches on the flight, and went to Timmy’s for a couple of sandwich combos. I was still wearing shorts and wanted to change in the adjacent airport washroom into nylon track pants for the TO exit. I was kinda surprised that there were no urinals, but it made sense after exiting when I confirmed that I’d been in the Ladies!

The flight departure was delayed ½ hr for inbound passengers; nonetheless, we landed TO as scheduled at midnight. Lynda’s brother, Rob, dutifully arrived with our car to pick us up, drop him off, and speed away home.