Waiting, and waiting, and waiting. And then, more waiting. I hate this part of life, waiting. We were waiting in the ferry terminal until it was six o’clock to get onto the Baja Star, the massive ferry that would take us to the mainland city of Mazatlan. My mom was checking her phone and soon asked us if we wanted to read a blog of a girl name Lowe who is sailing around the Caribbean. We all happily agreed. It was way better than just sitting. We read the three blog  posts we had missed and then sat and waited some more.

Soon, six o’clock rolled around and a nice officer in a uniform told us to get in a line. We then waited some more. About 20 minutes later the nice officer was talking to a fat-not-nice-looking officer. The fat-not-nice-looking officer said something to his walkie talkie, then to the nice officer. The nice officer unlatched the thing holding the waiting people back and let the line opposite of our line go to get inspected. The line was stopped at a lady in a quiksilver hoody who didn’t look so happy about being the one stopped. Next, the nice officer waited for a couple of people to go through the inspection and then let these four bikers push their two bikes and a tandem. I was thinking to myself, ”Who would ride a tandem through Baja?” At the time I didn’t know the guy in the back had vision problems. Then it was our turn to go. We were the first people in our line so we went right on through to inspection. We put our bags on the the bad-thing-bag-scanner and walked through the bad-thing-people-scanner. I thought red lights were going to start flashing and militario guys were going to start coming in when Fin and Ollie went through the bad-thing-people-scanner with their metal water bottles. Luckily nothing went off because we were free to go. When I looked back I saw the guys with the tandem trying to push the tandem into the bad-thing-bag-scanner. We went out of the the terminal and started to walk toward the ticket confirmation booth. The lady looked at our ticket and passports and let us get into a line of people that was going into the giant vessel. We reached an area where you could really clearly see the inside of the ship and I was amazed at the sheer size of the inside where they keep the trucks, cars and various other vehicles. A man in a hardhat stopped the line we were walking in and let a Chips™ semi go by before leading us into a small door. Beyond the small door was a set of stairs winding around a rectangular space in the middle. Each of the stairs were like, way taller than normal so the incline was really steep. We went up a lot of stairs then reached another door that led us into the main hallway. From there the man let us go to a ticket login kind of thing.

We soon saw dad waiting expectantly for us by a set of double doors. He waved to us and we went over to him. We waited for some people to get their stuff sorted out at the ticket conformation booth. Then we went up to the counter and got our key to the cabin we were going to stay in and got our ticket confirmed for the bajillionth time. A porter took us to our cabin. The inside was really small with two small beds and a desk. Two more beds folded down from the wall. We had a great view from the window. We could see the other ferry getting loaded with semi trucks and cars to go to Los Mochis on the mainland. We were surprised to find a bathroom with a shower, sink and toilet inside our cabin. We put all our stuff down and set up the two beds that folded down from the walls and set off to explore the massive boat. Dad had been exploring the boat previously so he knew where things like the cafeteria, the movie room and the upper deck were. We went up to the upper deck and watched the lights of the city of La Paz, from which we left, fade away slowly behind us. Then we went back to our cabin and mom suddenly remembered that Fin needed to call her friend Regan for her birthday. We sat in the cabin for a little while and then me, dad and Ollie left to do more exploring. We found the cafeteria and tried to get food there, but a lady in a navy blue uniform told us we needed our tickets to eat. We went back to the cabin to get our tickets. Fin and mom weren’t there and the lights were off. Me and Ollie thought they were hiding in the shadows to scare us so we turned on all the lights and looked in all the nooks and crannies but couldn’t find a trace of them. We picked up our tickets and walked around the boat trying to find the girls so we could go to the cafeteria and eat some dinner. I was starving!

We eventually found them walking back from the top deck. We all headed to the cafeteria together and had the lady check all of our tickets. She gave us the ok so we jumped in line and grabbed a blue tray and fork each. We walked in a steady procession, pointing at a large variety of foods of which the servers spooned on to plates which we then put on our trays. Lastly, we went to get drinks from a lady at the end of the counter. Dad decided on a table at the far end of the room so we all headed over to it. I marveled at the fact that we were on a boat, yet eating dinner at a cafeteria and were able to wander around. After our hunger was satiated, we went back to the cabin and quickly fell asleep.

I woke up twice in the night, once to go to the bathroom and once because the ship was rocking side to side. I wondered at the size of the waves that could make such a ship rock so violently. In the morning mom got up first and went to get coffee and pan (bread). We ate in bed then packed up. We looked out the window and were sort of surprised to see the mainland looming in front of us, in what I thought was a fog bank. My mom had to get her ID back and turn the key in, so we did that and then went up to the top deck and watched the boat travel into the Mazatlan harbor. The captain of that boat had mad skills as he had to back into the harbor and did it with ease. Soon dad had to leave to get Lola (our van) and we got in line to get out of the ferry. More waiting. We finally went down all the flights of stairs we came up on, and out the small door and eventually out of the ferry. We were finally in the mainland!