Taking Flight

On a sunny but cool fall morning in October, Trevor's mom and stepdad drove us to the Seattle-Tacoma airport with our cats and luggage in tow. It had been a lot of work to prepare our house for sale, plan the move, and sell all of our belongings. So it felt really good to finally walk out the door for the last time and drive away towards a new chapter in life.

Overall, we were blessed with a smooth trip from Seattle to Oaxaca, with a scheduled overnight layover in Dallas. There were no delays or weather issues, which is a big win in my book! Our two biggest concerns were our cats being cleared to travel and the weight of our baggage.

The Cats: I knew from my research that Mexico no longer requires a Health Certificate for cats entering from the USA. However, the ticket agent at American Airlines didn't know that. She was a bit confused by the guidance in her portal and it took some convincing and help from her colleagues to realize that all we needed was their rabies vaccine paperwork. I have heard stories of people being turned away at check-in or upon arrival in their destination for not having the right documentation, so we were relieved to pass this first step. See more on our experience flying with cats in my post: Flying with Cats.

The Luggage: Did you know that American Airlines does not offer free checked bags from the USA to Mexico? Did you also know it's much cheaper to check another bag ($45) than to incur an overweight baggage fee ($100)? If you read my post "From the Beginning", you know that our goal was to check one large suitcase and just carry on one roller bag and one cat carrier per person. Well, the day before our flight we realized we simply could not fit everything in. So we broke down and used a large duffle bag. I also stored one extra duffle in my suitcase just in case. And we definitely needed it because two of our three bags were overweight when we checked in at the airport. Luckily I was prepared for this, and we were able to redistribute everything to fit in the additional duffle bag. Despite paying for one more bag, it still seemed like a pretty good feat to fit our whole lives into six bags. Our goal for the next move is to eliminate at least one of those duffels!

Getting ready to check in at SeaTac airport- Thanks Mike for the heavy lifting!

*Photos on this page courtesy of Elaine Raymond