That horror travel story!

Everyone's got one.

That story about the time where everything went wrong....well we've just had a cracker!

Like every good travel horror story, it starts well - an awesome flight from Sydney to LA and even a friendly welcome from immigration. It was then that things started to go downhill.

I need to backtrack a little here.

About a week ago we got a message from American Airlines to say that our flight from Los Angeles to Mexico City had been rescheduled from 11:25pm to 6pm. Now considering our flight from Australia only arrived at LAX at 5pm, we had to reschedule it.

After some time of the phone with Expedia who were friendly, we found out our only option without having to overnight in LA was to take a 7:20pm flight to San Francisco and connect for a flight down to Mexico City. Not happy about the extra flight, but without any alternative, we had to go for it.

So anyway, we're at the airport in LA and check one of the flight noticeboards only to discover that our original flight to Mexico City (11:25pm on American Airlines) was still scheduled to go. Of course our bags were already checked to go to San Fran then Mexico, so American Airlines, the bastards, had in place of a relaxing, leisurely wait at LAX, given us an extra 2 hours of flying.

Ho hum. There are worse things. We were still feeling patient.

So we boarded the flight to San Fran.

I was sleeping most of it, until the point where I was woken up by a Captain's announcement that we were being diverted to San Jose instead of San Fran. I'll make the rest of the long story short.

1. 3 hour delay at San Jose, refuelling and waiting for a slot to go to San Fran
2. 11 minute flight to San Fran
3. Sprinting through San Fran airport with all carry-on luggage
4. Missed San Francisco - Mexico City flight by 1 hour
5. Mexicana are AWESOME and, even though their Guadalajara flight is closed and already scheduled to have departed, somehow they get us on the plane.
6. Flight to Guadalajara. Everyone gets handed a face mask on arrival at the airport.
7. Connection to Mexico City - Mexicana awesome again as my boarding card was lost but they just let me walk on.
8. Arrive Mexico City. No bags. Smelly. 36 hours of travel already passed.

I guess we get used to this sort of thing when travelling a lot. The bags will probably be here in a day or two (we hope) so for now we've got to go out and buy some new clothes and toiletries ahead of our first meeting in the afternoon.

Another perfect reminder about why it's critical to have travel insurance!