Galapagos and Beyond: day 20 - Mexican wave goodbye

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Today was the end of our holiday! We went down to breakfast and found the family to say farewell. It was somewhat sad as we don’t know how long it will be before we see the American branch of the family again. This was the second time in two months that many of us had gotten together. We had attended the wedding of Don's nephew in Chicago two months ago in March, but the previous gap had been two-and-a-half years since the family gathered.

We collected our bags from our room and said a teary farewell to Caroline and Max who were staying on for a further day. Then we queued for the taxi to the airport. We were a bit panicked as there were very many people waiting to go to the airport but the taxis were only 12-seaters. However, we were reassured that there would be enough taxis ordered. Once we had boarded it was a 45 minute drive and we arrived at the airport.

Through security and passport control we looked for the lounge - in vain. Cabo San Lucas is a very small but busy airport. We managed to find seats near the gate and boarded the plane for San Francisco.

Connecting to our homebound flight at SFO airport was an interesting experience. Because we were in the US we had to collect our bags and go through security again. We lined up in a very long line to go through passport control and security. I have a real problem with the fingerprint machines. My finger prints don’t register easily and often I have been sent to the back of the building with the suspect “aliens” to have my finger prints taken manually. I can honestly say it is not a pleasant experience as all the persons there are suspected of illegally entering the US. Fortunately we had a really nice passport officer who cleaned and recalibrated the machine, and who was very patient with me and lo and behold after four attempts I got through.

The fingerprint delay was irrelevant because we had a very long layover in San Francisco (SFO) airport. Before boarding our United Airlines night flight we had a snack in the newly-opened UA business lounge restaurant.

Eventually they called our flight, and we entered the tin can that was to be our home for the next 15 hours.

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