February 7, 2015

Happy Birthday Dean!! feb 7th is always one of my favourite days to celebrate! It was an early morning wake up,at the Four Points Sheraton in Kelowna! Our 6 a.m. Flight dictated that we were in the shuttle by 4:30 so there would be no sleeping in for us today! It was all worth it though and we are now sitting on a rooftop patio in the centre of Zihuatanejo Mexico. Our first flight was less than an hour from Kelowna to Calgary and then the next leg was a little more than 5 hours. After the long flights we've recently endured....this was a cake walk! I'm always surprised by how small the world can be at those moments when strange and unusual things happen or you bump into people you didn't expect to see. This morning at the Kelowna airport we ran into Summerland residents Randy and Karen Jones and then a couple of hours later as I boarded the flight from Calgary to Zihuatanejo I was met with two familiar faces who recognized me right off. They were a couple from Saskatoon who I met on the flight home from Zihuatanejo a year ago. That was the flight that was grounded for mechanical problems and that ended up being the trip home from hell. Connecting with that couple again today brought that memory back to life which gave us both a point of reference that we didn't really want to remember! Luckily today's flight was smooth sailing and we arrived in Zihuatanejo right on schedule. We had booked a rental car online and although we had some challenges in getting a car at the airport it all worked out in the end. Again, we have the kindness of locals to thank for some of the happy ending to our car rental story. David, staff person at the Dollar counter, had to inform us that there were no cars available until tomorrow. In no time at all he was helping us by asking the other car rental agents if they had any cars and if they would honour the incredible quote we'd gotten online from Dollar. Ruben, from Eurocar, agreed and David drove us and our luggage across the airport property to where Ruben had a car for us. The story doesn't end there though...there were no little economy cars so we've ended up with a brand new Dodge Journey that is much larger than will be easy to drive and park in the crowded city centre. Ruben promised that he would have an economy car for us tomorrow and we got the Journey for the price of the economy car for the day. From there Lynda did us proud and was able to navigate that big car through the traffic and and narrow streets and get us to our hotel, Posado Citlali, in the centre of Zihuatanejo. We got settled into our room (for 3 nights) and love the real Mexican ambiance of the place. Amazing to think of the fact that just one week ago we were frolicking in the Indian Ocean on Zanzibar and tonight we are looking out at the Pacific from Mexico! When you factor in that we also had 3 days in Canada during this same week....it is little wonder that we are both yawning as I type! Tomorrow we will make use of our fancy vehicle and head south to visit a ruins that we've been wanting to see. Hasta luego, L & L