Puerto Vallarta, Mexico Travel Drama

I was so nervous for this trip. I had just tested positive for COVID on March 31. We left April 19 and while I was pretty much completely better from any gross/yucky side effects I am still having a lot of trouble with walking long distances, running is almost impossible, and overall it has been difficult to catch my breath when I get winded. I am hoping that with time it will dissipate, but for now it sucks. Everyone seemed mostly healthy, we have an amazing group of people take care of our pup, Winston, and we were all excited.

The trip started with a 5:45am flight, but if you have ever heard any of our travel stories - something always goes wrong. Usually someone is sick, but we got that out of the way before we left this time. We get to the airport after driving in a crazy awful 6 hour snow storm and check our bags, but there is a weird line waiting at the escalator up to the security/TSA area. We had to wait there because there were too many people at security so they were holding people from going up. LIKE WHHHHATTTTTTT?!?! We get to the top and think or we are in the clear, it’s busy, but we are good. NOPE. The line curls down the bay to get to the parking garage and BACK. Once we finally got through security it was 5:45am and I thought we were done, but I ran (insert COVID asthma attack) down to the gate and by some miracle the door was a still open. Now we are on the plane, but since it’s snowing A LOT they need to deice the plane. We sat on the plane for probably close to 2 hours. We miss our connecting flight in Chicago, but Lucas finds an Aeromexico flight that has a layover in Mexico City, but will get to Puerto Vallarta at 12:30am. We get to the resort - we stayed at Dreams BAHIA MITA - and its close to 2:00am, but we are finally there, it’s warm, and even though it was pain we are all happy.

INSERT ABSOLUTELY AMAZING WEEK IN HEAVEN…

Skip to Tuesday of this week…our flight out of Puerto Vallarta isn’t until 2:45pm so we ate breakfast, packed, and left for the airport at about 12:00pm. We left Puerto Vallarta at 2:45pm and get into Chicago at like 6:30pm ish. It is all a blur so times might be a little off. There must have been like 8 planes that left off a crap ton of passengers to all go through customs at the same time. They had like 4 agents working the desk and once we finally got up there about 8:20pm - our agent said that their computers were being slow. All wonderful combinations for a hot freaking mess. We ran to find our suitcases, drop them with American Airlines agents, run to get through security again, and miss our flight. We missed our flight. It was sitting at the gate with the walkway still attached. They were closed and not opening the door. I cannot tell you the anxiety or just overwhelmed feeling that came over me. I couldn’t talk, let alone attempt to work all this out with one of the agents. Lucas stepped in because he knew I was going to lose my crap on a person that had nothing to do with it. The only decent solution we could come up with was to stay the night in the Hilton attached to the airport, get on a flight Wednesday (because at this point it is like 9:00pm) at 8:30 that goes to White Plains/Westchester (2 hour and 15 minutes away from our truck at the airport), rent a car, and drive home. I really can’t make any of this up. It was a complete mess and it doesn’t end there. We asked the agent on Tuesday night if we could get our baggage since they didn’t make the plane either, we go to baggage services and that agent tells us they are getting put away to get on the flight in the morning so no luggage for us. We ask the agent at the gate the next day if the luggage was going to be on this flight. She said yes. We get to White Plains and we have no luggage. I was HOTTTTTT at this point. We both were just pretty much silent on the way home to pick up our truck from the Albany airport. We finally get home about 3:30pm and I get a call from American Airlines saying that our luggage is…wait for it…in ALBANY!! It was sent to Albany. Like what?!?!?! We didn’t even fly into Albany. Anyways, the light at the end of the tunnel was was that the luggage was delivered last night to us at our house.

This all happened Tuesday and Wednesday and here it is Thursday and I am a zombie. My brain hurts from having to deal with all of it and my body hurts from probably being super tense for 2 days straight. I did realize on this trip that I am definitely 39 years old. Like from the walking/running through the airport, zip lining and walking up the stairs to be able to do it, to just even walking up stairs at the resort. I would just winded SUPER so easily and definitely the couple times we had to full on sprint to the gates I had a full blow asthma attack. I really do think that a lot of that is COVID remnants/related because even though I don’t like to run, I never really go into full blown asthma attack mode. Has anyone still had COVID related things weeks/months after it is gone? I also did something to my right hip. Who the heck knows what I did and could be a lot of different things or maybe all of the things put together, but dang it is sore. Even though I am feeling my age, we had so much fun on this trip. It is such a different trip traveling with teenagers/tweens. You aren’t all over them making sure that they are right next to you at all times. You can give them some freedoms that you can’t give younger ages. We also both realized that traveling just the 4 of us is probably starting to fizzle. They want to be with their friends, it is just the way it is and while they had a ton of fun - they definitely would have enjoyed it more with friends. We aren’t opposed to it at all because we have been there!! Will we still take trips just the 4 of us? Of course because that is important to me even if they are miserable/hate it most of the time, but moving forward we need to think about going with groups for vacations or just including their friends in our vacations. Are there any teen/tween parents who feel like inviting friends to come is inevitable? Lastly, we just had so much fun on this trip. We have never been to Puerto Vallarta and wanted to start seeing some other places than just Cancun. We really liked the west side of Mexico. The beaches were gorgeous and it just felt a little more safe. This trip was not without it’s struggles, but dang I love spending time with these 3 people. The loves of my life! <3

I will be doing another blog post with some of the pics I took while we were there - all iPhone, but I love them nonetheless. Stay tuned.

Until next time, love all the Ahl’s <3