By Valerie Salazar
During the summer of 2024, before Flores entered her sophomore year, her family planned a trip to Cancun to celebrate her birthday, which had been a couple of days before.
They meticulously organized every detail of the trip to get the most out of their vacation and got to the Tijuana International Airport ahead of time. Flores recalls, “We left the house around on July 1 at one am and got to the Tijuana airport around two a.m. because our flight was at six in the morning.”. She was excited to revisit Cancun and get to the beaches that she had remembered from the time before.
After they checked in their bags, they rested in the lounge, waiting for their flight, with plenty of time to spare. Two hours before they were scheduled to depart, it was announced that their flight was delayed due to a hurricane that prevented the plane from leaving where it was.
This was a major disruption and setback to their plans since the flight was delayed to 12 p.m., but they had a connecting flight from Mexico City to Cancun, leaving them all concerned they wouldn’t make it to that flight. Could their trip be completely ruined?
Faced with this pressure, her parents had to come to a solution. She states, “My parents then decided to cancel our flight and wait for another one to appear because our original one kept getting delayed and wasn’t worth the waiting.”. Unfortunately, this came with an issue of its own because they had already sent their luggage to be put on the plane. Flores and her family had to “wait and ask around many workers so we could get them back.”
After that frustrating search, they were finally able to get their bags and even scheduled a new flight, but they now had to wait almost a whole day because the flight was scheduled for 1:30 a.m. the next day. They had to think of ways to pass the time to prevent them from being bored, in an airport of all places. It was also driving them crazy because it was such an interference for their trip. Flores had to cope with the fact that “we were missing a whole day of our trip.”
Their original plan was to land in Cancun on July 1st, and the following day, they would visit Xcaret, a privately owned natural theme park in Cancun and Riviera Maya, after being rested up. Unfortunately, it did not go as planned, and they did not arrive in Cancun til July 2nd at seven in the morning, and their trip to Xcaret had to be pushed back, along with everything else they had planned.
Despite the massive hassle the hurricane posed for them and the whole day spent in the airport, Flores and her family still managed to enjoy their time in Cancun. She shares, “Although the way it happened wasn’t the best experience, I still loved the trip so so much.”
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