Maya Through the Looking Glass

January 16, 2008

Photo: Flickr/Da Sauce

I had spent nine years living out my childhood dream of following in Jacques Cousteau’s footsteps and filming in the incredibly beautiful waters of Cozumel. It was a huge privilege, particularly as a foreigner, to have been able to do so.

When the time came, we nearly didn’t make it off the island, which was playing its part in keeping us trapped on the other side of the looking glass, by producing a torrential rainstorm. In some ways this made matters easier. Hidden beneath its mantle of rain, we didn’t get to suffer that one last look at what had been our home for nine years. It was impossible to see anything at all.

Despite the constant effort to remain ‘in the present’ and not to get lost in the details of moving from one country, well, one continent to another, we had both reached a state bordering on hysteria; not helped by the fact that the 40 minute margin we’d left to make it to the ferry had ticked perilously close to the limit. Over the years we’d come to the conclusion that Cozumeleños and the Mayan people in general are afraid of shrinking if they get wet (and they’re not the tallest of people to start with), so are rendered absolutely hopeless by rain and traffic grinds to a total standstill - hurricanes - not a problem.

Traveling with Princess Maya Cady Cadom Montrose (our normally highly strung cat) was miraculously trouble-free. I can only attribute this to our constant visualization of an easy trip, the miracle that was Princess Maya Cady Cadom Montrose (again, our normally highly strung cat) traveling. On her ‘training rides’ (Oh God, we’ve become one of those childfree couples that uses their cat as an infant substitute), she had howled ceaselessly. If we could have given her the pet equivalent of Valium we would have done so, but had been advised against it by all the professionals we had consulted. So we had become resigned to the fact that she was just going to have to cry for the whole 20 hour trip from Cozumel to Granada, much, no doubt, to the delight of her fellow passengers.

Just as I was trying to smuggle her on to the bus, we were jostled in the rush to board by those afraid of shrinking in the rain and Maya started to cry a little. To drown her out, and to the alarm of those around me, I burst into song “Ay, ay, ay, ay, canta y no llores”. We were given a wide berth by our frightened fellow travellers from then on. Once safely ensconced on the back seat, on a bumpy trip full of jolting stops and starts, we were extremely grateful.

We’d set out from Cozumel with six hours to spare until check in time, intending to be the first in line to battle for a place on board for Maya, we ended up being the last. Over the few months that I’d been making preparations for taking her with us, I had been unable to get a definitive answer from the airline as to whether she would actually be allowed on board. According to their website animals up to 6kgs in weight, including their carrier, as long as they weren’t snakes, spiders or cockatoos, were allowed in the cabin but the many, many calls I’d made to the airline once I’d purchased the ticket based on this information, had all given me different answers.

The decision to accept Maya on board , seemed to boil down to whether the captain decided to permit it. On arriving at Cancun airport, my husband Pablo had taken charge of the situation and whisked Maya off to have her papers checked; this was a moment I’d been dreading, though I’d tried hard to ignore those doubts and visualize smooth sailing, literally, as far as the unpredictable and sometimes very choppy ferry crossing was concerned. As with the airline situation, I’d been unable, despite countless calls and emails to Consulates, both Spanish and Mexican, travel websites, pet care websites, veterinarians, and airlines, to get a definitive answer about the regulations regarding pet entry into Spain from Mexico, particularly regarding the rabies blood test which takes 3 months. I didn’t have the time to do it. Although concerned, I was almost certain that it wasn’t necessary but , there still remained a nagging doubt. Actually even after making the trip, I’m still not entirely sure. It took just three minutes for Pab and me to complete our FM3 immigration formalities, so, when Pab had been gone for nearly an hour with Maya I was envisaging him being arrested for trying to hand over 2000 peso bribes to get her out of the country. Either that, or him making calls to friends in Cozumel to come and get her.

It turned out to be the case that they had simply run out of ink for the printer and had to go to another terminal to complete the forms, but by this time I was convinced that she wasn’t coming with us. I am eternally grateful to the kind and sweet waiter in the bar where I was drinking coffee, who came over to ask if everything was OK. He assured me that there must be a long queue in the office and that all would be fine and didn’t show the slightest hint of thinking that I was a crazy gringa or calling security. The head official in charge of animal regulations came over to apologize personally for the delay due to the printer, the immigration officer was patience personified when I couldn’t read the small print on the form - everything is magnified 25% underwater, I didn`t realise that I needed glasses. So our exit from Mexico was marked by kindness, concern and politeness, a very fitting reflection of a culture and people that had treated us with such respect and that we left holding in the highest regard.

When we finally made it to check-in, Maya’s two month restricted portions of Whiskas diet paid off, she, along with her state of the art carrier, weighed 5.6 kgs. With no worrying sign of the peaked cap and uniform of the plane’s captain, she was without any hassle issued her own pet ticket, we just had to pay US$40 per kilo - maybe I should have put her on a stricter diet!

We had been truly blessed in Mexico to have both lived out our underwater dream and to have made some wonderful life-long friends. On one of our last nights in Mexico, a farewell dinner had been organized by our neighbors, who had unfortunately omitted to tell us about it. In ignorant bliss, we had already made other plans. In the end, it was a long night but we managed to combine celebrations and fit it all in somehow, appreciating every moment. I hate to say goodbye to people, who doesn’t? One of my aspirations in Spain was to have a permanent base for the first time ever and to have a welcoming home for our families and all these wonderful people to visit.

Once on board the plane, the positive visualization was still having its effect, you could almost forget that Maya was there. It had been hard not to imagine scenes out of the spoof film ‘Airplane’ with the captain grappling with a hysterical cat pinned to his throat. During take off - which had been the moment at which I had thought she might come bursting out of her carrier and make straight for the captain’s throat - there were a few pitiful meows and that was all. Later, she started to get restless so I picked my way over the feet and legs of all the lucky sleeping passengers and to the bemused looks of the very few on- board insomniacs made my way to the bathroom carrying a massive moving canvas bag (it was by no means evident that it was a cat carrier) and a rucksack full of Princess Maya’s accessories on my back. Once safely in the bathroom, from this bag I produced one folding cardboard box, a huge bin liner and a large Ziploc bag of cat litter (to the person that put this suggestion on the Pet Travel website, many thanks from both Maya and myself). In my sleep deprived state I was half convinced that Maya could be sucked down into the rubbish chute which I tried to cover with my rucksack while she explored the confines of an airplane bathroom. Finally,she settled down and made herself at home in the washbasin( ** washbasins are one of her favourite haunts as you can see from the picture). Meanwhile, while I sat on the toilet (closed so that I wouldn’t be sucked down into it either, I’d heard stories of people getting stuck and having to be extricated, how mortifying) and stroked her, laughing at the situation, hoping that none of the insomniacs who had seen me enter half an hour earlier could hear me chortling away to myself. Poor Maya had been a little airsick but I produced out of my bottomless bag of tricks, a replacement padded liner for her luxury accommodation.

Having spent an hour in the bathroom, she’d decided enough was enough and actually made her own way back inside her carrier. I had not heard any knocks on the door and had assumed that even the few on board insomniacas had finally succumbed to sleep. So I was startled to see about 15 curious faces staring at us as we emerged, I hoped they hadn’t all been waiting to use the loo!

Landing was mercifully uneventful, not a peep out of Maya. We arrived in Madrid ahead of schedule. I felt sick watching Pab go on ahead of me through immigration - an Argentinian with Mexican working papers, no credit card and a dubious looking hotel booking but amazingly he went through before I did. Now would come the extensive check of Maya’s vaccinations, microchip, pet passport, paw printing etc. etc. I nearly walked right out of the arrivals hall looking for the offices but went back and asked the guardian civil on duty to check her papers as I didn’t want to smuggle her illegally into the country. He was a little confused as to why a European was bringing a Mexican cat into Spain and then came the a question about a rabies blood test and had I done this in the US (?). This threw me but I feigned concern over Maya having been airsick, so I still don’t know the answer to the blood test question. It was Sunday after all, and the bemused guardian waved me on through. I should point out that she had had her rabies and many other vaccinations and posed no risk to any other animal or person, including airplane captains.

So we were actually all together in Spain and I knew it wasn’t just another dream. Everyone looked so animated and tall and almost every single one of them had a mobile phone implanted in his or her ear. The car ride with our friend Canchi to his house an hour outside Madrid was utterly terrifying. I hadn’t seen a motorway in nine years and I felt as though we were in a video game shooting past cars at high speeds, others merging and weaving around us. Maya proceeded to howl all the way to his place. Still, we’d made it, all three of us, back through to the other side of the looking glass.

About the author: Deborah, the author, and her husband Pablo, left the UK and Argentina respectively, to follow their passion for underwater video. More details on their work at : http://www.oceanfootage.com/sellers/pbarco