From December 21 to 27 of 2022, the extended Fischer family celebrated Christmas at the Wyndham Alltra resort in the Zona Hotelera of Cancún in Mexico.  My name is Mark Fischer, and my wife Bridget and I got up at 4:30 AM and were out the door of our home in Camarillo, driving to LAX, by a little past 5:00. We arrived in the new LAX economy parking lot, designed to hold more than 4,000 cars.  We had made an online reservation and the turnstile opened when a camera scanned our license plate.  It was 6:00 and we were by ourselves on the shuttle from the lot to terminal 7.

United Flight 1276 took off promptly at 8:20.  We flew over the southwestern USA and landed at the Cancún Airport about 3:00 PM Eastern Time.  The airport serves the entire Mexican state of Quintana Roo, named for one of the heroes of the Mexican Revolution.  There we spent about a half hour going through immigration, and another 15 minutes to collect our luggage.

When we exited Terminal 1, it was bright, sunny, and tropical.  There were crowds waiting for rides, but no driver holding up a sign for “Mark and Bridget.”  Luckily, we spotted Carl Fischer and Corey McEleney in front of a bar called “Margaritaville.”  Their drivers and ours had been delayed by traffic due to road construction.  They had already been waiting one hour.  Soon we were joined by Paul Fischer and Hayley Gray-Hoehn.

Finally, David Fischer and Zhi-Ning Liang and their daughter Lilah, along with Zhi Ren Liang and his wife Jenn Karel, arrived.  They had landed in Terminal 2 (the domestic terminal, since their party had flown from Tijuana).  Maribel Smith, our travel agent, had contacted their driver and asked him to pick us up at Terminal 1. All eleven of us climbed into a single large bus, and the driver conducted us through bumper-to-bumper traffic to the Wyndham Alltra.  We checked in, dined at “Ventanas” (the buffet restaurant), and tumbled into bed.  Our destination for the next day was the Caribbean beach beside the hotel.