idea what we were doing. So we just stood there are slapped wrists of people trying to take our suitcases until we found a driver we didn’t think was trying to rip us off. Driving in Mexico is scary. There are no rules! People just drive around like crazy and Nick and I were scared to death. I just closed my eyes the whole time and I was so sure that we were going to die, but we didn’t. He pulls up to our hotel, throws us and our luggage out, and then drives away just in time for us to look up and see that the hotel is under construction and not open.My dad is the president of a timeshare resort. My parent’s wedding present to us was a week of timeshare. RCI set everything up…..in a hotel that wasn’t even open. Luckily the lobby was open and there was a nice man working in there (Franklin). He really did want to help us. I tried to call my dad since he would know what to do. But, unfortunately, he was on a three hour long flight from Portland to Atlanta. I called RCI. Everyone I called said that I was calling the wrong person. They kept asking the phone number to the hotel we were at and we would just sit there and wait for someone to call us back. I never thought anyone was going to call us back but they did. Finally I got to talk to a person who knew my dad, knew the situation, and was going to work something out for us. The problem was, it was New Years in a tourist city and almost everything was already booked. Nick and I had not eaten in over 24 hours. We were starving. We trusted Franklin enough to leave our luggage with him an
d he promised that if someone called he would run over to the restaurant and let us know. So we finally got a bite to eat and ran right back to the lobby. We sat in that hotel lobby for about six hours until RCI lady finally confirmed that she made a new reservation at a different hotel. Franklin helped us find a cab. He even yelled at the first few cab drivers who pulled up and tried to rip us off. Franklin let us know when we had a good deal and waved us off to our new hotel. Things didn’t go too smoothly at the next hotel. The lady we were supposed to talk to had already left for the night without telling anyone else our situation. The fax that was sent to them had not gone through. Somehow I think they just felt sorry for us and went ahead and gave us the room and assured us they would just sort the mess out. So, we actually ended up in much nicer hotel than we were originally supposed to be in! It was called The Mayan.So we spent the next week mostly on the beach and in the pools. We ate at the hotel restaurants and experienced a Mexican Walmart. We celebrated New Years and watched fireworks from our balcony. I even let Nick watch some of the bowl games on TV.
Leaving Mexico didn’t go very smoothly. We are so lucky that we gave ourselves and extra day to make it to South Carolina for the reception…otherwise we really would have missed our reception. We left Puerto Vallarta airport and had a layover in Mexico City where we needed to switch airlines. We got off the plane and got into
this scary box. It was actually really scary….we thought people were supposed to be walking through the tunnel into the terminal to go into the airport but there was a wall at the back. People were just walking into a tunnel and getting crammed into a box. We were one of the last people in there and it was crowded and kids were screaming and then all of the sudden all of the doors shut. I thought gas was about to turn on to kill us all. But, apparently it was what they call a ‘remote gate.’ It is just a box on wheels that drove us to the airport. We had about ten minutes to switch airlines, go through customs, and check in again at a place that was about a twenty minute jog away. Yeah, we weren’t even close to making it. We had to stay the night in Mexico city and then make the same flight the next day. We rode in a shuttle van to our hotel. We were in the sketchiest looking place I had ever seen. Seriously. Graffiti and guns were the least of my worries in this place. Anyway, the hotel we stayed in was actually pretty nice. I have no idea why it was in the middle of such a scary neighborhood. Nick and I had to leave the hotel and venture out into the streets of Mexico City to eat. Puerto Vallarta is a tourist town and so everyone there speaks English. In Mexico City, nobody spoke English. We actually had to pull out what little Spanish 
we could remember from high school to try to communicate with people and order food. The only food name I could really remember was pollo. Chicken. So I just kept saying it over and over while a cook just kept lifting up food and pointing to it. Nick actually ate some sketchy tacos al pastor from a street vendor. I was so scared he was going to get horrible food poison. But he didn’t.The next day we arrived extra early to make sure we made our plane. We made it to South Carolina.
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