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05/16/09
Oh Mexico, UK Concedes and Let’s Her People Go
Filed under: Cancun Casa Blog, Cancun Tourism, Island Sounds, Cancun Swine Flu/AH1N1
Posted by: Dangers @ 5:00 am

 Somebody set up a round, I’m buying, and please make mine a double, tequila is fine, we’re drinking tonight.

 In the short span of 8 hours today I went from angry blogger to pleasantly amused blogger as the powers that be started unleashing the world’s tourism business regarding Mexico, specifically Cancun and the rest of Quintana Roo, from the banality of the swine flu scare, currently tracking with the Battle Creek cute, “novel H1N1″ pseudonym. This morn, North American time, as I chatted with the folks already working past lunch from the United Kingdom on the Cancun Trip Advisor Forum, I was advocating civil protest, public complaint and insurrection. I headed off to work plotting travel company boycotts and a very large shout out from this corner of the cyberspace blog planet in defense of the stranded at home UK travelers, many with future bookings at Riu Resorts in Mexico.

 Stranded because of an excessively, elusive, travel warning, hiding like a red herring, amongst the UK tour businesses. The British Foreign and Commonwealth (FCO) office had been hanging on to it’s non essential travel warning to citizens, and the major tour companies in the UK, Thomson Travel, First Choice and Thomas Cook, all had lined themselves up behind the see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil mantra and halted their UK flights to Mexico for legions of UK travelers, causing mass confusion, disruption, and negative economic impact to their clients, and their clients final destination Mexico, itself.

Then it happened, without warning, the FCO went out to a four pint lunch, slid into their afternoon loungers for a short Friday getaway, and announced publicly, it was suddenly safe to travel to Mexico.
 http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travelling-and-living-overseas/travel-advice-by-country/north-central-america/mexico

The UK all clear had sounded even if their backtrack was toned with multiple negatives in a sentence that would make this blogger proud. But, hey, we’ll take good news at this point wherever we can get it, the people involved in tourism in Mexico have been getting hammered financially, and the people from the UK, trying to get there, had been treated with all the kindness and respect of a new recruit on Paris Island.

 We’re talking serious issues here.

 Almost, as suddenly, the U.S. Center for Disease Control, after chasing the cleaning crew and dusting off an old State Department spreadsheet, announced the all clear for citizens of the U.S. to travel to Mexico, http://wwwn.cdc.gov/travel/content/travel-health-precaution/novel-h1n1-flu-mexico.aspx provided they don’t touch the natives or share the bathroom tissue.

 The U.S State Department folks left early for the weekend and weren’t able to change their pass the buck statement from the CDC until Friday night when they fell in line with the new swinepedia verbiage.
http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/pa/pa_3028.html

 The Canadians must not have gotten the word from Her Majesty’s FCO, they were still posting the non essential travel warning to Mexico and Quebec. http://www.voyage.gc.ca/countries_pays/report_rapport-eng.asp?id=184000

 Canada’s Sunquest Vacations, still behind the curve, has canceled flights until December, 2012 to Mexico and will soon be selling beach trips to Thunder Bay for those interested in sunbathing with skates until the Maya’s version of the Aporkalypse occurs.

 Now, what’s there to be angry about?

 I was all set to rave on about Argentina, Peru and the Swiss, God love them, the Swiss that is, removing their non essential travel bans over the last couple days, while ranting about the Brit’s and Canuck’s failing to do so, at least the Canuck’s didn’t let me down.

The strange thing is, in the U.S., unlike the UK, businesses and private citizens saw the CDC advice and thought either, I’m scared senseless, and me and my family are going to have a Wii vacation or we’ll just have to take our chances and tough it out along the Mexican Caribbean, with those 90 degree temperatures, boat drinks and Mexican Hospitality until the credit card runs out. To their credit, most of the major tour operators in the U.S. offered their clients options for new Wii games or told them, you’re going or we’re keeping your cash, and the U.S. never once closed her borders to Mexican or American citizens alike during the entire crisis. Americans really don’t give much credence to their government when it comes to chasing life’s pleasures. Try to take our money, guns, booze, cars, drugs and T.V. evangelists and you’ve got a big problem.


(Courtesy of Carnival Cruises)

On the Mexico front also came more good news as Carnival Cruises announced late today that Mexico’s popular ports of call are now back on their agenda as quickly as they can set them back up which is terrific news for Cozumel, Majahual, and other Mexican ports. http://www.carnival.com/cms/fun/cruise_control/Travel_Advisory.aspx?icid=CC_HMPG_21

Hopefully, the other major vendors, like Royal Caribbean will be doing the same in short order.

Tonight, since we’re all blogged out, and we’re sipping tequila and downing Bohemia’s, we’ll leave our friends out there, especially the newly liberated from the UK with some parting music…

Start packing folks, Mexico’s calling.

(Courtesy of YouTube/JT)

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