12:15, Señora Lourdes drives me to Tulum's bus station, where I wait in vain for my 12:40 bus to Playa del Carmen. Luckily I'm allowed to hop on the 13:00 ADO bus in stead (44 Pesos), arriving in Playa around 14:10, just in time to catch a Riviera bus to Cancun's airport (80 Pesos), another 70' ride. Having been dropped off in terminal 1, I take a free shuttle bus to terminal 3, only a short, as in 1', distance away.
15:35, LTU's counters are manned but they're totally ignoring the waiting queue of early passengers until 15:50, i.e. exactly three hours before departure. After that it goes pretty fast, leaving me enough time for an overpriced Starbucks coffee, before heading to security.
As expected I'm required to open my backpack and show them my dive lights, as these inevitably get the X-ray machine to black out, a sure way to get a lot of attention from paranoid security people. In this case however they are unwilling to let me through and, not wanting to take any responsibility, actually send me back to check-in, as it's apparently not allowed to carry suspicious batteries on board? Thing is, I wouldn't have tried to do so, if LTU hadn't specifically told me to.
18:40, Boarded. 18:50+25', Take-off into thin air as the night falls, enveloping everything into darkness...
