If you've ever been to Mexico, you know that just before it's time to leave customs, you're required to push a button. This button causes either a green light to come on, meaning you can go on your merry way, or the dreaded red light, which indicates that you have to stop what you're doing and go over to have your luggage pawed through.
We've always been lucky with green lights - till today - Busted!!! Whisked off to the side, I began feeling guilty even though I had done nothing wrong. But it's embarrassing to have your suitcase opened in front of a bunch of strangers, strangers whose jobs are to paw through it to find something wrong.When the gal picked up my baggie full of Fiber 1 Cereal mixed with peanuts, Rick and I quickly let her know what it was, that it was a healthy snack. So she didn't give me a hard time on that. But then... she discovered my gallon sized baggie filled with 45 days worth of every vitamin I take - multiples, calcium, vitamin d, fish oil, glucosamine/chrondroitin, baby aspirin. There must have been a couple hundred vitamins in this pack, all colors, shapes and sizes. The gal called her supervisor over at once, and he immediately took it away into a room, and then came back and asked me for my passport. So now we're just standing there, right? suitcase open, feeling like a couple of fools, while all the other passengers have been processed and allowed to leave the area. After a while I reminded Rick that we were scheduled to be picked up in a van by a company we had contracted with a week before. My worry was that if we didn't come out soon, our driver would think we weren't on the flight, and would take off without us. Then how would we get to our destination?
Once I mentioned this to Rick, he began getting antsy as well. He started making goofie fish eyes at the gal who had examined my luggage in the first place, saying the word "pesch" which, we thought meant fish. As he was saying the word, he was making movements imitating gills that a fish might have. So I chimed in, saying aceite, which means oil. We were trying to get across the idea of fish oil. I then started to use my best Spanish accent, saying "vetamanes', "calcium""vetamane day (D). Perhaps they found us entertaining, or maybe they thought we were just being stupid and wanted to get rid of us. Whichever it was, it was enough to make the gal go to the room where the package was sitting on a table, no one paying attention to it, and pick it up to bring it back to us. We were relieved. But then Rick remembered they they had taken my passport from me as well. And so he asked for it back. The nice gal went over to got that too, and soon we were on our merry way, just a little worse for wear.
Turned out the driver did wait for us. There were 6 customers in the van, anxious to get to their destinations. But they warmed up quickly and took pity on us once they heard our story. We all had a good laugh over the idea of us being vitamin smugglers. But, as they joked, you never know about those old gals and guys,
I've heard stories about those Mexican jails, and I certainly didn't have any intention of spending my 6 weeks in San Miguel in a jail cell for a vitamin offense. We were free. Free to walk down the long hallway toward the door, free to change some dollars into pesos, free to get into the van that would get us to our destination, free to close our door behind us and try to forget that silly situation. Time to move on to some fun in this lovely place. Now that it's over, it's kind of cool to have this as a funny story we can share for years to come. But you can bet we weren't laughing too hard when it was actually happening. We worked real hard to keep straight faces and to be serious. We've learned from experience that you don't fool around in an airport. Especially these days.
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