Our adventure to the jungle began on Monday morning at 6 am… More or less. Mexico time is fuzzy. When they say 6 am, it could just as well be 6:15, 6:30, or even 6:45. You never really know. But to be safe, obviously, we were ready for 6 am. And so we waited. And waited. You know how it is when somebody else is late. You think of all the things that could go wrong and why it’ll never happen. By 6:15, we started to doubt whether we had given them the correct address. 6:30 am. Still nothing. Imagine our relief when they finally showed up around 6:40. The van was full so we all had separate seats. I had to sit next to a kid with too many tattoos and leaky iPod earbuds. (All the 20-somethings on the bus were listening to music.) Pedro braved the back seat where an unusually large woman was taking up nearly two and half seats. Poor thing just couldn’t fit. Pedro was a good sport about it though. The driver gave us his spiel that pretty much said the roads were dangerous and curvy and if anybody felt the need to barf, to please use a plastic bag. Not an auspicious beginning.

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…and feelin’ a little rough.

It’s going to take some time to put it all into bits and bytes so be patient.

We are now in, wow, where are we…we’re in Chiapa de Corzo which is a small town of nearly 40,000 just outside Tuxtla. It’s supposed to be nice. There’s a canyon and you take a boat to the waterfall. I dunno. Me and boats.

Anyway, the trip wasn’t bad, though, of course it was exhausting. When we were trying to get off the plane in Mexico City, we were all standing and waiting for the doors to open. But for some reason they wouldn’t. Then we were all told to sit down because the ‘authorities’ were there. Then we saw a couple of the Policia Federal come on the plane, grab one guy with blond crazy hair and they escorted him off the plane. THEN we were allowed to leave. Nobody could figure out what he had done but he was a business class flyer.

We made our way through immigration and customs and waited several hours for our plane to Tuxtla. I have to say that we got some beers and a few sandwiches and those beers and those sandwiches were the BEST BEERS AND SANDWICHES EVER. Hell, I don’t even like beer all that much but I sucked down two of them. So, I had the mother of all headaches afterwards, but for that one glorious hour, I was REALLY enjoying myself. Then, it was just fighting to stay awake.

We decided to stay in Corzo instead of Tuxtla because Pedro started talking to this guy while we waited for the plane and he said this place was way better than Tuxtla. Good enough for us.

When we got here, we found a place to stay ($28 for all three off us) and went for tamales which were awesome and about a $1 a piece. The lady who made them was short and rotund and she smiled as she swatted the little flying ants off her arms.

Then, we came back here, I took a cold shower (Shout out to Peru) and then… that’s all I remember. I blacked out for the next 10 hours.

Now, I have to repack everything and the adventure officially begins.

Just as soon as Huppy takes his shower.

LOooooong drive.

It was fairly uneventful until we went for breakfast at Shoney’s. Because I’m with my father-in-law and my much younger husband, the stupid woman server assumed I was a senior citizen as well and gave me the senior discount on the buffet breakfast. Huppy is not helping matters. He’s wearing converse high tops, a fedora and his Brooklyn t-shirt. He looks like he’s about 12.

{sigh}

I told him we should’ve walked back into the restaurant and french kissed and groped each other in front of her. He didn’t want to bother. He can’t figure out why I even care.

Again. {sigh}

Two hours to Mexico.

Oh and Lagniappe slept all by herself on her stinky blanket. She’s moping. She’ll get over it… or hate us forever.

Forgot to mention the pat down. Ms. Melanie Mann did a very professional job on my opt-out pat down. Huppy’s pat down wasn’t as thorough, but he still felt like she should’ve tipped the guy. Remember people, if we all opt-out of walking through the x-ray machines, they’d have to get rid of the x-ray machines. Force the kabuki theater performance. It’s costs them time and money.

We were having a hard time finding a place for Lagniappe (our spoiled dog). We thought we had it sussed before we left St. Louis, but none of it was working out the way we thought it would. It was looking like she would have to be boarded for 10 days or so and I had a meltdown thinking of her sleeping in a crate all by herself and being surround by other furry creatures she sadly cannot relate to. My mother-in-law, god bless her, said, “Of course I’ll take her. Relax.”

So now, Lagniappe is staying at Spa Abuela. She loves it here. There are lizards to chase, birds to bark at, a fenced in backyard, an equally spoiled playmate named Fannie to play with and a loving abuela to coddle her.

As for us, we leave in two hours to drive to San Antonio to catch our flight to Mexico City. I have the muscle relaxants in an easy pocket of my bag so I can sleep while my father-in-law and Huppy figure out what should replace capitalism (since it’s obviously a failed system) while they make the 10-hour drive to San Antonio.