Hot and cold in Palau, Philippines, Mexico, Canada & Solomon Islands

[drron]

I'm getting a bit worried about your worst day now.

 

[Mattg]

I had a pleasant day on the Saturday exploring Guadalajara with my new friends. It's a city rich in culture, with a historical downtown area, lots of local markets, and great food. It's also known as the birthplace of mariachi and tequila.





This was the view from my room at the (surprisingly affordable) InterContinental hotel:



We encountered another protest march in the centre of Guadalajara, this one about the cost of bus fares.



I tried out Guadalajara's metro system, but found the wayfinding significantly worse than even the metro in Mexico City. I usually have no problems navigating public transport systems but I got lost trying to find the right train. Even the network maps posted inside all the trains were out of date and didn't show all the stations.




At least Uber is widely available and not too expensive, so I mainly used that to get around.

 

[Mattg]

On the Sunday morning, I was planning to do a walking tour of central Guadalajara with my friends. The tour was scheduled to start at 10.30am so we headed downtown a bit before then.

At 10am, the guide contacted us to inform us that they had cancelled the tour due to security reasons. Initially, I had no idea what they were talking about, but this would prove to be an ominous sign of things to come.

From there, things escalated quickly.

We checked the local news and unbeknownst to us, the most wanted drug lord in Mexico was killed during the previous night in a military operation near Guadalajara. This article explains what happened in a bit of detail:

Mexico's most wanted drug lord 'El Mencho' killed in military operation

Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as "El Mencho", headed one of Mexico's most powerful drug cartels.

www.bbc.com

Drug cartel members retaliated by burning cars, setting fire to petrol stations, blockading roads and attacking security forces. The local authorities were advising people to stay indoors, and the city basically shut down for the day. You could see plumes of smoke all over the city, most of the shops closed, and most of the roads in and out of Guadalajara become unusable.

I quickly realised that I needed to get out of there. So I returned to my hotel, picked up my suitcase, then got a taxi directly to the airport while I still could. Luckily, I managed to do this before the road to the airport was shut. We had to take a bit of a detour, but the trip was actually quite fast as there were very few other cars on the road. It was eerie and surreal.

I arrived at Guadalajara Airport around 11.40am on the Sunday morning. My flight back to Mexico City was scheduled for 6pm, but Viva lets you change the type of ticket I had booked to an earlier flight. I figured I might as well switch to the next available flight, which was scheduled for 4.15pm.

As I was standing in the check-in area, attempting to change my flight in the Viva app, I heard gunshots in the distance. The crowd of people that had been waiting near the international arrivals area suddenly dispersed and started running towards my left hand side. I had been inside the airport for just a few minutes at this point, and people were scrambling to hide behind check-in counters, up staircases, inside shops... anywhere they could. Yikes.

I stood there in shock for a moment, watching what was happening around me, and honestly didn't know what to do. I ended up following the crowd and ran to hide behind a wall, leaving my luggage where it was.

There are plenty of videos and news stories about this on the internet. These video clips pretty much sum up the situation inside the airport at that moment:

After a few minutes, the panic thankfully subsided and I went back to where I had been standing earlier to retrieve my luggage. I don't know exactly where the gunshots came from or what happened to the person who fired them.

This was the scene in the airport a while later, once things returned to normal:



The airport suspended operations after this. They shut down the luggage system, and nobody was able to check in for their flights. The security checkpoint to go airside was closed. No aircraft were departing. Many inbound flights diverted to other airports.

When I arrived at Guadalajara Airport, many of the shops that would usually have been opened were not. And after that incident, most of the remaining shops also shut for the day. Only Shake Shack and a few convenience stores remained open.

I was able to change to the 4.15pm flight after paying 665 pesos (never mind that Viva advertises that this change is supposed to be free). But I couldn't yet check in my bag or go airside.



Unfortunately, I had brought a checked bag with me to Guadalajara. In hindsight, I should have found a place to store it for the weekend in Mexico City because this would later add to my problems.

In the meantime, I was getting hunugry and had very little food with me. So, I headed over to Shake Shack and ended up waiting an hour for a burger and fries. At least I wouldn't starve for a while.



Eventually the check-in counters reopened, but it was utter mayhem as so many people were now waiting in line and there were very few staff working. The queues were not organised at all and there was lots of yelling and shoving.



At least, by this time, the national guard had sent extra troops to the airport so there was a much higher security presence.

Four hours after I'd arrived at the airport, I had finally checked in and was through security. Once airside, things were a bit more normal. More shops were open, although the supposedly 24/7 Priority Pass lounge was about to close and would not reopen until the following day.

By this point, my 4.15pm flight had already posted a 2-hour delay. The revised departure time came and went, and there was no plane, crew, or even a gate agent at the assigned gate. In fact, there was barely a single Viva airline employee anywhere in the terminal - and certainly no customer service desk. Viva made absolutely no attempt to communicate with its passengers about the delay, and whenever I tried calling Viva, the call would drop out before I could ever actually speak to a person.

After the two-hour delay came and went, my flight simply disappeared from the departure boards and Flighty - not the airline - told me it was cancelled.



Many other flights had also been cancelled, so getting rebooked (or even just buying a new ticket on another airline) proved very challenging. And even if you did get onto a new flight, it was impossible to predict if that too would get cancelled or would be one of the lucky ones that actually run.



As the sun set over Guadalajara Airport, Viva still had my checked bag and I didn't know where it was. If not for that, I could have tried just buying tickets and checking in for multiple different flights, in the hope that one of those would actually run. But with a checked bag, that would have required me to abandon my luggage.

At least I had an Airtag in my checked bag, and this appeared to show that my suitcase was at the baggage claim area. I went downstairs to the baggage claim and sure enough, it was there among a huge pile of uncollected bags. Viva never communicated that my bag was there. In fact, the lost & found desk in the baggage claim area was completely unmanned.



Unfortunately, once I'd entered the baggage claim area, I was landside again and would not be able to go back airside until I had checked in for a new flight. That would prove easier said than done.

I now had quite a few compounding problems:

• I had no flight out of GDL
• Getting out of the airport was basically impossible at this point because the road was blockaded and there were no taxis anyway
• The airport hotel was already well and truly fully booked, so I had nowhere to sleep for the night
• The airport shops all started to close around 8pm, so sourcing food became a real issue
• GDL airport has no freely available drinking water and very few charging outlets landside
• It now became obvious that I wouldn't make my flight to Canada the following morning

In hindsight, I should never have changed my original flight out of GDL. That one actually did end up departing that night - albeit 3 hours late.

By the time Viva officially cancelled the 4.15pm flight, the best rebooking option they could offer was a flight 2 days later. The flight I'd orginally booked was already fully booked - as was every single other flight out of that airport that night.



I tried to rebook onto a different flight through the Viva website (there was no chance of talking to a human) and it would generally offer some ridiculous indirect route (e.g. a trip with an 8-hour layover in Cancun) and/or try to charge me a change fee, even though the airline itself had cancelled my original flight. Eventually, after refreshing the page enough times, I was able to rebook onto a direct GDL-MEX flight for the next day. That too got cancelled a few hours later.

While this was all happening, I had a small army of people trying to help, including my local friends in Guadalajara and even some AFF members who were aware of my situation. I am very grateful for that. Despite my and their best efforts, I simply had no way of getting out of that airport that night.

 

[Mattg]

Unfortunately, I do have some experience with getting stuck for extended periods in airports. The last time something similar happened, I spent 15 hours at DCA airport during a snow storm. In this kind of situation, nobody is going to come and rescue you. You have to advocate for yourself.

Throughout that day, I constantly shifted my priorities to whatever was the most urgent thing at that time. At one point, it was my personal safety. When the airport shops started closing for the night, my priority became sourcing food and water. At one point, I had to stand in the bathroom for 20 minutes holding my phone and its charger, as my phone was about to run out of battery, the only power outlet I could find was above the hand dryer in the men's bathrooms, and my charger would not stay connected to the wall by itself. And once my flight out of GDL was cancelled, my priority turned to getting a new flight.

When Viva cancelled my flight yet again, their next offer was a flight 3 days later.



So, I gave up on Viva and tried to book a flight out on another airline. I didn't really care where the flight would end up - I just wanted to get out of there, and once I was at another airport, I would have more options. Eventually, I found a Volaris flight to Felipe Ángeles International Airport (NLU), which is the new airport near Mexico City. It was scheduled for 8.30am the next morning. I booked it and figured that if Volaris cancelled that, I would just request a refund. At least now I had something.

With that out of the way, my attention turned to minimising the financial loss that I would incur due to missing my Air Canada flight out of MEX. That was scheduled for 7.15am on Monday morning, so I definitely would not make this. (I did consider taking a night bus to Mexico City, but these were all cancelled too.)

Air Canada had issued a travel waiver for Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta, but not Mexico City where my ticket was booked from. I thought I would try calling Air Canada and explaining the situation, in the hope they could move my flight to the next day. I ended up waiting 3 hours on hold, and nobody at Air Canada ever picked up the phone.

In the end, I had no choice but to "voluntarily" change my MEX-YVR booking. I had booked an Economy Flex ticket, so there was no change fee - but I would have to pay the fare difference. The difference betwen the fare I had booked months in advance, and the last-minute price, was over AUD1,300. I had no choice but to pay it - thankfully, I eventually got some of this amount back through my travel insurance.



With that sorted, it was now midnight and I wanted to get some sleep. The terminal was full of other people trying to do the same thing - there must have been thousands of us there, all stuck together under the same circumstances. During the evening, the crowding got even worse because flights started arriving again, but the passengers coming off those flights couldn't get taxis out of the airport. So, those arriving passengers also got stuck with us in the terminal.



There weren't even any empty seats in the terminal, which must have looked a bit like a hurricane shelter. So, I claimed a spot on the marble floor and tried using my ski jacket as a mattress to lie down on, and my backpack as a pillow. This wasn't at all comfortable, but what choice did I have?




Around 3am, someone (not an airline employee) walked through the terminal handing out packets of chips. I was very hungry and there was basically no food or drinks available in the terminal other than a single vending machine with a huge line, so that was really appreciated.

Throughout my entire stay in that airport terminal, I did not see a single airline or airport employee trying to help the crowd of stranded travellers. There was no water being handed out, no information provided - nada.

I had checked in online for my new Volaris flight, but had to wait until 5am for the check-in counters to open so that I could check in my bag. When I got to a check-in kiosk and tried printing my bag tag, the machine made some noises as if it was trying to print - but it was out of paper. So, I went to the next kiosk, and that kiosk told me that I had already checked in a bag so couldn't check in another.

I asked a Volaris staff member for help. He told me that he couldn't do anything, and that I would need to join the big line for the service counter. This was the same counter that the hundreds of people who needed help with rebooking were also queueing for. Arrggghhh...



An hour later, I had finally got to the front of that queue, checked in my bag with Volaris, and could head through security and upstairs back to the departures area. By now, the Priority Pass lounge had reopened so I popped in to try to get some food. It resembled a disaster zone, with people sleeping and their things spread out everywhere. The lounge had some muesli and sandwiches available, but it was a spartan offering that had clearly already been well picked over - and they were about to pack everything up and close the lounge again because the staff that were supposed to take over for the morning shift hadn't arrived.

With nowhere even to sit in that lounge, I finished my sandwich and left. At least now that I was airside, I could find an empty seat by one of the departure gates to sit down on.

It was now Monday morning and pretty much every flight out of Guadalajara Airport was either delayed or cancelled. Aeromexico had already pre-cancelled everything for the entire day. The only airline that actually operated on time throughout this entire time was Mexicana, a small airline that doesn't appear on Google Flights or in the GDS. In hindsight, I should have booked with them - but of course, I didn't know in advance that they would be the most reliable option.



No reason was ever given for all the delays and cancellations, beyond just "operational reasons". (A few months later, I tried to get a more specific reason from Viva at the request of my travel insurer - but Viva never responded.) I suspect the real issue was a lack of staff.

Luckily, the inbound Volaris Airbus A320neo that was supposed to operate my flight to NLU did arrive on time from its previous flight.



A fresh set of pilots and cabin crew were even waiting at the gate with us passengers. But the scheduled departure time came and went, without so much as an announcement about the delay. Then, eventually, the flight just disappeared from the departure boards. It reappeared 10 minutes later, and this time it was showing "delayed".

I was so over it by now, so you can imagine my relief when a gate agent showed up and they finally announced boarding for this flight.



We eventually departed 3 hours behind schedule. Again, the delay was never explained. All in all, the lack of communication from every airline throughout this ordeal was abysmal.

In total, I spent 24 hours at Guadalajara Airport. During that time, I think I managed to sleep for about 2 hours.

 

[Mattg]

Once in the air, my Volaris flight was totally uneventful.





We landed at 12.20pm at NLU, which the Mexican government had intended to take over from the highly-congested MEX as the new "main" airport for Mexico City when it opened a few years ago. This is actually quite a nice airport - modern, spacious, and it has lots of thoughtful touches like themed bathrooms and a giant animated Mexican flag on display as you enter the arrivals hall (albeit with a big "Windows error" box in the middle of it).



On arrival, my first priority was to eat something. I was so hungry. I found an airport restaurant and ordered a big plate of chilaquiles.

My next priority was to find somewhere to sleep that night. I made a new booking at the Holiday Inn near MEX which I had intended to sleep in the previous night.

I then just needed to get to that hotel. And now, I learned why NLU never really caught on as the main airport for Mexico City. Nobody really wants to fly there because the location sucks! It's really far outside of the city, and the only real ways to get from NLU to the city centre are with an expensive taxi or a long-distance bus.

You can't even take an Uber or DiDi from the airport terminal, because the airport operator has blocked the ability to request a pickup there within the rideshare apps. Now, you could request a rideshare pickup from the Holiday Inn that's literally across the road from the terminal... but the airport has made it impossible to walk from the terminal to that hotel. There are physical barriers preventing pedestrians from doing this. I'm pretty sure they designed it that way, and I despise that.

There is a public "Mexibus" bus that serves NLU airport. The Mexibus won't get you to Mexico City. In fact, the Integrated Transit Card that lets you tap on and off the metro and buses within Mexico City doesn't even work for this bus. I got around this by paying 10 pesos in cash to someone else, and they tapped their card for me so I could pass through the barrier.

The hack that all the locals use, if they want to catch an Uber or DiDi, is to take the Mexibus 3 stops from NLU to the Glorieta Militar bus stop - which doubles as an informal rideshare pickup zone for arriving airport passengers.



From there, I ordered a DiDi and a driver accepted. That driver didn't move for 10 minutes, and was obviously just waiting for me to cancel. On my second attempt, a driver did show up and was very kind to me. But in one final instalment of "absolutely everything that could go wrong did go wrong", a rock hit and cracked his car's windshield while he was driving down the highway a few minutes later. He pulled over, couldn't fix the problem, and I had to try my luck with a third DiDi.

What a relief when I finally got to my hotel and could have a shower. I caught up on a few things, had dinner, and was out like a light.

 

[Melburnian1]

@Mattg , to reduce problems using metros in far-flung cities, the Urban Rail site run by Austrian-born but Berlin resident Rolf Schwandl is mostly kept up to date. I use on my PC but it may be OK on a smartphone. He is also a prolific author of books on tramway/light rail/metro networks worldwide.

You were fortunate to only have food poisoning for only a day. Great trip report.

 

[drron]

I don't know but this TR tells me I am not taking my wheelchair to Mexico. When you talked about the worst day o the trip I just assumed you missed your AC flight. But wow what a way to miss it.

 

[Mattg]

The next thing I knew, it was 4.30am on Tuesday and my alarm was telling me it was time to get up for my flight to Vancouver.

After checking in with Air Canada, I had a bit of time before boarding so headed over to the United Club (this was the lounge for Star Alliance Gold passengers). This is a fairly standard North American lounge - basic but serviceable - with some hot food and filter coffee. I was actually pretty happy to see steamed vegetables on the buffet after several weeks of eating Mexican food.

Boarding at MEX was a shambles. My boarding pass had Gate 36 printed on it. The Air Canada app and Flighty both showed Gate 34. When boarding started, I got an SMS and email from Air Canada telling me to go to Gate 34. And finally, the airport information screens said Gate 19.

For context, it's about a 15-minute walk through a construction zone to get from Gates 34/36 to Gate 19. I originally went to Gate 36, but there was no plane there. An Air Canada jet was parked at Gate 34 but that was going to Montreal. So I schlepped down to Gate 19, which is a bus gate. When I got there, there was absolutely nothing to indicate an Air Canada flight was about to board there - until I spotted our flight attendants and asked them. Yep, Gate 19 was the right place to be. Several passengers never made it there and got offloaded.



We boarded the Boeing 737-8 at sunrise on a beautiful morning in Mexico City, and I settled into my seat 17F.






The flight itself was uneventful - the usual Air Canada service with food and drinks for sale. I slept a bit, watched a few TV shows on the IFE, and enjoyed some nice views of the snow-capped mountains east of Los Angeles.



It was a nice morning in Vancouver, too, when we arrived.

 

[Mattg]

Originally, I was planning to meet a friend in Vancouver (airport code: YVR), and we were going to fly together to Kelowna (YLW). I had also missed that YVR-YLW flight, so got rebooked onto an Air Canada Dash 8 service leaving that afternoon.

I now had about a 5-hour layover at YVR, which I mostly spent chilling in the Air Canada Maple Leaf lounge. For a North American lounge, I find this one pretty good. It has nice views and reasonable food & drinks.

The Dash 8 to Kelowna was fully booked, and the 1-hour ride was pretty uneventful. We had some nice views of the mountains to the north and east of Vancouver after take-off, and the crew served everyone a cookie with juice or water.

 

[Jacques Vert]

The only airline that actually operated on time throughout this entire time was Mexicana, a small airline that doesn't appear on Google Flights or in the GDS.

Mexicana! Now there's a name I haven't seen for quite a while. Gem56 & I flew from HAV to MEX in 2010 on a B717 with the original Mexicana, not long before they went into bankruptcy protection. As I'm sure you are aware, their 717's sat in a desert for a number of years until five? of them made their way to Australia and QantasLink. I think we may have flown on the exact same airframe from CFS to SYD a few years ago. Who'ld have thought it?

We also spent a few hours in Mexicana lounges in both HAV & MEX; the one in HAV was very basic but the one in MEX was one of the nicest lounges I have ever been in. I was sorry to see them go under but nice to see the name resurface.