Click on a photo to enlarge it.
Helen flew to Mexico City where she had a long wait for the long haul flight to Paris. This flight was then delayed and she was already told she would miss her connection to Birmingham. So a later flight was booked.
When she arrived in England, her bag did not arrive with her!! She had flown to England to go to her niece's wedding in the Lake District (north western England). Her brother Mark has four children and Naomi (aged 20) is the second eldest.
This would be the first wedding of the next generation of the family. Helen only had one day at her father's house and then she would be leaving to travel north with her father for the wedding and then Christmas at her brothers house also in the Lake District.
Arriving without luggage was an absolute disaster! All she had were the clothes she was wearing to travel in - no wedding outfit, no clothes for Christmas and not even any spare underwear!! What a mess!!
Her carry on luggage was full of Christmas presents, most of which had to be wrapped and packed up to send off to Germany the following day.
She arrived at 9-30 pm and the following day was chaotic - constantly phoning up Air France about her bag and getting the Christmas presents sorted out. Needless to say her bag did not arrive.
So she went into Marks and Spencer´s (the British equivalent of Macy's) and shouted "Help!!! You've got 2 hours to get me a wedding outfit and something to wear for Christmas".
The assistants parked her in the ladies changing rooms and brought her everything to try on. Great service. She was trying lots of different things on including about 10 different pairs of shoes, some of which were extremely expensive! But Marks and Spencer´s saved the day and Helen was the last to leave the shop complete with a wedding outfit (including handbag and jewellery), something to wear for Christmas and underwear, socks, bras etc and all at reasonable prices with a lot of discounts!
Early the next morning she drove with her father 200 miles north to the Lake District where the wedding would take place. She told Air France to deliver her bag there but that didn't happen and it was delivered to her fathers´ address, too late for the wedding and 200 miles away from where she was!
The wedding went really well and Helen even got someone at the hotel to do her make up and paint her toe nails as she had open toed shoes. She looked completely different!
She stayed in the Lake District for Christmas and then returned to Birmingham for the New Year. She was due to fly back to Mexico on the 5th January 2009 the same day that England (and Europe) got hit by a snow storm causing havoc!
Her flight from Birmingham was delayed and she sat on the runway for a long time before the pilot announced they were returning to the airport because the runway was closed! She finally flew 3 hours later and arrived at Paris Charles de Gaulle where there was even more chaos.
It took two hours to get through the queue to speak to someone and was then given vouchers for food and a night in a hotel as she had missed the flight to Mexico City and would have to wait until the next morning.
She finally managed to send an email to Kirsten to tell her not to come and pick her up at Obregon airport because she wouldn't be there and hoped that Kirsten read her email before setting off on a wasted 2 hour drive.
Every hotel in Paris was booked that night because there were so many stranded passengers. Some even had to stay in the airport because there was no more room! The hotel was good and there was plenty of food at the hot buffet but the room was freezing even with the heating turned up to full. Well it was 5° C below freezing outside! And Helen didn't have her bags either because they were somewhere in the airport and with all the chaos there was no way to get them!
The next day there were more delays because of all the snow and by the time the flight left, she had already missed the connection to Obregon and wondered whether she would ever get back!
There was no sleep because there were too many children and when she got to Mexico City she was told that the next flight to Obregon wouldn't be until the next morning AND Aeromexico would not pay for the hotel or food!!! Great, just brilliant.
Anyway, she waited to get her bags which surprisingly enough had arrived with her!! Then through customs and off to the Aeromexico information desk to sort things out. She got them to send an urgent telex to Obregon airport which actually went to the airplane she should have been on and they delivered the message just as Kirsten was asking why Helen hadn't arrived on the flight!
So Kirsten stayed in Winnie at the airport whilst Helen had to find a cheap hotel and get a taxi. In the end Helen had only 6 hours at the hotel and wondered why she had bothered in the first place! But she was already exhausted from the "Trip from Hell" and didn't want to invite further problems by falling asleep in Mexico airport and having her things stolen!
Helen finally arrived at Obregon at 8am on Wednesday 7th January, two days late!!
She was immediately put to work to help finish painting the inside of Winnie. Kirsten had already done most of it all by herself - a mammoth job seeing as she had to take everything out so she could paint.
So by the following week everything was done and Winnie looks wonderful. Now all we need are some new blinds and seat covers to match! But that had to wait because we had the website to sort out!
The time went so unbelievably fast and before we knew it, the music festival was starting! This was the third time we had been in Alamos at the time when the festival was happening and there was a lot of work going on because of the landslide a couple of months ago caused by too much rain. There was considerable damage to the town and unfortunately some people had died. There were still a lot of people who had lost everything, including their homes.
The festival this year had far more opera music and singers than before and we missed the variety of the previous years. The indigenous dancers in their colourful costumes were moved to the Artesanias which is about 3 miles from the campground and outside of town so we didn't walk out there to see them.
There were still a lot of things to see though. The highlights this year were the Sonoran choir who performed in the church; a super percussion group who played xylophones and did some very unique performances - using only their bodies as percussion instruments and then using kitchen utensils and a kitchen table to do one particular piece. Very entertaining! The final highlight was a pop/fusion band called Buena Fe which was really good.
We also caught up with all our friends. We had a surprise visit from Brian and Lily who we met five years ago in the Baja, Mexico. They have been keeping up with our website and knew we would be in Alamos so they came by. It was great to see them after all this time and they enjoyed the first days of the festival with us.
Esther and Sharron also came to see us. We did some house sitting for Sharron last summer in Huatobampito where Esther also lives, so it was really good to catch up with them.
We also had a very entertaining evening with Rosemary and Andrew (Helen's violin teacher). We were invited to a meal at their house along with Peter from Canada, as long as Helen did the cooking and made her famous Shepherd's pie! There was enough left for Andrew for the next three days!!
