Passing Through The Big Tamal

living.boondockingmexico@yahoo.com

I had my breakfast presentation yesterday morning at the Camino Real in Tampico. Tampico isn't the largest city in Mexico so it was a small select group from the local universities and institutes.

After I finished, I took my nap and headed out for the airport to Mexico City. The place is huge and I think the size can only be appreciated by air. You can see the World Trade Center in the photo.

We landed and pulled into the new Terminal C. It's huge also. Mexican airports are going through major expansions as air travel has picked up considerable in the last couple of years thanks to deregulation and the addition of many discount airlines.

Take offs and landings are two minutes apart from 5 a.m. until 11 p.m. Amazing how they can manage all those flights without incidence with only two runways. Visit Kansas City's airport and it covers square miles and is the largest white elephant I have ever seen. This new terminal is high-tech, efficient and a pleasure to spend time in. Best of all it is paid for by Mexican tax payers, government bonds and private interests. Amazing for a country that most consider third world.

While we were waiting for push back I snapped a shot of one of the terminal shuttles. Yes, just like Dallas, New York, etc., we don't travel between terminals on the backs of burros :).

We took off, had our complimentary open bar service with snacks and arrived in Aguascalientes 50 minutes later. My coworker from Guadalajara picked me up and we went directly to the hotel where we freshened up and went out for dinner. We had comida Yucateca; tostadas de cochinita pibil and queso relleno. Not like the real thing but pretty close. The place was packed.

I had a small incident (you can't take me anywhere) with another diner. Ernesto and I were seated at a table for four next to a group of teens with six adults, about 25 in total. All of a sudden a guy about 16 walked up to the table and took a chair away. He didnt say a word. But during dinner he knew his time had come. When we left I walked up to him and said, "la próxima vez que sacas una silla de una mesa, seas amable y pides permiso!". Shocked he didn't know what to say. (I told him, "next time you take a chair from someone's table, it would be nice if you asked for permission".