Racing the Sun to Mexico

Passport, boarding pass, luggage - check.

Souvenir flamenco dresses in the Madrid airport

You'd be surprised at how many people are in an airport at night.  Most of them are even awake.  There are people cleaning the floors, people cleaning the bathrooms, and people striding along briskly with their luggage rolling behind them.  Of course, plenty of people are also trying to sleep.  Some lie on the floor with their heads pillowed on their luggage; others sleep sitting up or propped against each other.  And everywhere are people waiting in lines:  lines for the bathrooms; lines for Customs; lines to check baggage; lines to pass through security; lines to board the airplanes; and even lines inside the airplanes.  Belén and I played I Spy and In my Grandmother's Trunk while we were waiting in line to check our luggage.  We got sillier and sillier, until Bé said that in her grandmother's trunk she packed a rubber duck wearing her grandma's lipstick.  Then my lemonade came out my nose and we had to stop playing.

Our luggage was weighed and whisked away on a conveyer belt.  I asked Belén if I could ride on it, but she said that I might not be able to jump off in time to find my way back.  Instead she pulled out her phone and showed me a video of Rick Mercer riding the conveyor belts at the Vancouver Airport.  He had a special pass so that he could go anywhere in the airport ... and they even let him drive a firetruck! 



The jet bridge is attached to our airplane. It's almost time to board!



Waiting in line for boarding.

The flight from Madrid to Mexico City takes twelve hours.  We left at 12:20 a.m.  Nobody ever let me stay up until midnight before, but I wasn't even tired.  Everybody else was yawning, though; and as soon as the airplane had taken off and headed west across the Atlantic Ocean, most of the passengers went to sleep.


   

Our flight path from Madrid to Mexico City.

Twelve hours is a very long time to be shut into a metal cylinder flying eleven thousand metres above the ocean.  There wasn't anything to see out the window except for a flashing light out on the very tip of the wing.  Finally I curled up on the seat, pretended that sound of the engines was actually the sound of Noa purring beside me, and finally drifted off to sleep.

Much later, after Belén had woken me up so I could have an omelette and croissant for breakfast, my ears started to pop.  I forgot to tell you about that.  Whenever a plane takes off or gets ready to land, your ears start to hurt.  As soon as you swallow, they make this strange popping sound and you feel better right away.  It doesn't last, though.  I have to swallow every couple of minutes when our altitude is changing.  It wasn't my ears that bothered me as much as the fact that we were landing already.  It was still dark outside!  I knew that our flight took twelve hours, so we weren't supposed to land in Mexico City until it was noon.  Unless we were in the Yukon instead of Mexico, we were landing too soon!  Maybe we were crashing!  Nobody else looked worried, but maybe grown-up ears didn't pop the way mine did; and maybe they didn't know that we were falling out of the sky before we'd even finished brushing croissant crumbs off our laps.

Bélen certainly wasn't looking worried.  She was calmly completing a form that one of the flight attendants had been distributing, stating that we were bringing nothing of value into Mexico.  The pilot - who didn't sound worried either - spoke over the intercom in Spanish and English, telling us that we were beginning our descent to Mexico City.  But how was that possible?

It turns out that the time in Spain is seven hours ahead of the time in Mexico, and six hours ahead of the time in Ontario.  Because of the time difference, we were landing at 5:45 in the morning in Mexico ... even though back in Madrid it was 12:45 in the afternoon.  In Spain the sun was already high in the sky and Belén's friends were having lunch, while in Mexico the sun hadn't even risen yet.

A tall flight attendant with a shaved head was collecting our breakfast trays, when all of a sudden there was a scream from the front of the plane.  I looked up and another flight attendant was waving frantically at the attendant beside us.  He dropped the tray and rushed to the front of the plane, another attendant behind him.  Everyone else became absolutely silent.  I looked up at Belén, and she had both hands pressed against her mouth.  Something was very, very wrong.  The flight attendant with the shaved head was pulling a man up to his feet.  He got his arms around the man from behind, and lifted him right off the ground with a jerk.  He did it again.  Then all we could see was the backs of flight attendants for a minute.  Nobody else in the whole plane moved or spoke.  I think they had stopped breathing.  Finally one of the attendants turned around to face us and put both thumbs up.  Everybody on the plane started clapping and crying, and there were tears on Bé's cheeks.

"What happened?" I asked.  "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong and everything's right", answered Belén.  It turned out that one of the passengers had choked on his breakfast, and the attendant had reacted quickly and done the Heimlich manoeuvre.  He had saved that passenger's life. 

Bé had just given me a stick of gum to help my ears when the flight attendant with the shaved head returned to our seats.  Bé congratulated him, and so did all the other passengers.  Then the attendant (he said that his name was Carlos) whispered that the Captain had invited me to come up to the cockpit to watch the plane land.  Carlos put me in his shirt pocket, and we went back up the aisle to the nose of the airplane.  Before we entered the cockpit, he told me that I had to stay absolutely quiet and not move until I was given permission.  Carlos strapped me into the jump seat, and went off to make sure that all the passengers had fastened their seatbelts properly.

Mexico City at Night

This is what I saw from the jump seat - my first view of Mexico.  It was awesome of Carlos and the flight crew to let me come up and see it this way.  My favourite part was watching the blue lights that mark the runway come up to meet us.

Now we've passed through Customs, been met at the Arrivals lounge by Belén's friends, and been whisked to their house on the other side of the city.  They're having lunch on the patio, but I'm going to bed ... after all, I've been up all night!

love,
Katie