So by 4 am we had risen, taken care of some last minute tasks, showered, shaved, and were in the SUV for the drive to the Leon airport. (Actually, I was up and about by midnight.)
Anyway, the trip started off just fine. The shuttle was a bit early, but we were ready for it. It got lost finding the house of the other person on the shuttle, but we left town in good time, reached the airport on schedule (even though two rabbits tried to slow us down on one of the roads - eewww), we checked our bags at the counter and went off to a new waiting room that we'd not used before.
The flight was fine - full, but we had our two aisle seats and it's only a 2 -3 hour flight. Lots of people at the Tijuana airport waiting for luggage, but we got our bags, found a taxi, and arrived at the border, only to find a line of about 2,000 people snaking around, down the hill, across a park, and disappearing into the distance. Drat! we had a plane to catch, Paula and Tim were waiting for us on the US side, and we were supposed to catch breakfast together.
So we backtracked and found a taxi/van to take us to the border gate, skipping the wait in line. Or so they said. Of course we had to wait until the van was full (waiting) and then we drove up to the border crossing point. But they couldn't let us out at that point (we'd have had a tussle on our hands from the folks who'd been standing in line for hours!), so we sat as the driver waited our turn in the 'Bus' lane (wait, wait, wait). By the time we reached the front of the line four hours had passed. We couldn't call Paula or Tim 'cuz our US cell phone was in the luggage on the top of the van and there was a big, heavy, old man who spoke only Espanol sitting between us and the door, so we couldn't rescue the phone and call them.
So four hours later we reached the front of the line and were unloaded into the side door for the US Customs & Border Patrol review -- which took about 5 minutes.
Called Paula who scooted back to the border to pick us up. We had talked ourselves into missing the plane and having to take a later one to Albuquerque, but Paula said, Oh, let's try to catch this one; you'll make it!
So when we reached the airport moments later, we dashed inside, SouthWest's agent sent us to the checked baggage counter right away, Michael had to go to the other end of the counter to print out our boarding passes (I had not found them when he printed them at home the previous night, so we did not have them with us), then zipped back to the baggage check counter and our bags were tagged 'Late Check-In' which absolves the airline from any responsibility if they don't make it! The agent said she thought we'd make the flight; she wasn't sure about the bags.
Luckily, Southwest in San Diego has a very nice set up with their own TSA screening agents and we easily made it to the gate before they called the flight for boarding. The change of planes in Phoenix went smoothly, and we landed in ABQ to find that our bags made the flight along with us!
After shuttling to the car rental area, we picked up our car (they didn't try to upgrade us this time) and were on our way to Santa Fe. Found the B&B easily (we took our GPS with us) and figured out how to get into our room since the owners had left (we got there kinda late), which involved lock boxes, multiple keys, directions, et cetera.
After freshening up, we walked to one of our favorite restaurants in Santa Fe, Rio Chalma - which we first discovered when we took a restaurant walking tour with a local culinary school. We've returned each year for our first meal in SF. They also have a rather good bar with Hendrik's gin and a decent selection of tequilas. Oh, and the food is superb, too; dinner included pulled buffalo sliders with foie gras....
At this point we had been up for twenty-four hours, so we toddled off back to the B&B and fell into bed.
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