Car Ferry Home

We found the entrance to the car ferry. It's also a truck ferry with 18 wheelers lined up to go to Cozumel. We got the Tracker in line and then the folks there have the cars form several lines. We arrived about 1 3/4 hours early, which is good because you want to get on the last ferry of the day! A man comes and inspects your vehicle, writing down the license plate number, type and size of vehicle, number of occupants, etc. He gives you copy and you take that copy of that to the office and pay. We paid about $45 USD. Then, we waited until the loading began. Loading is slow as there are a lot of cars to organize and park. The ferry has 2 parking decks; cars go up to the second floor and large trucks go to the first. The ferry has doors on both ends so that big semi trucks drive on and then drive off. Cars have to turn around a bit. After entering the ship, you see the ramp that cars have to ascend to the upper floor. It's steep and wet. Almost as wet as Peggy's palms were when she saw it and said "Sheee It!". It took some convincing her not to get out of the car!  Cars ahead of us were spinning their wheels on the way up. The smell of burning rubber was present. The car in front of us stopped half way up which is a bad mistake (especially if you have a standard transmission) because you gotta slowly back down the ramp and do it again. Ed told Peggy to close her eyes, hang on tight, and think pleasant thoughts. Not to worry! The Tracker did great- making it up with a minimum of tire spinning and w/o 4 wheel drive. No time to put to lock in our hub caps and really, we never reviewed the manual. We got out of the Tracker before the ship's doors were closed and real monoxide fumes develop. We went to the passenger lounge but  the din raised by playing kids became too much for us and we moved outside to the upper seating area. A pleasant voyage over. It took about 2 hours. The passenger ferry does it in about 35 minutes. Exiting the ferry is slow, but was orderly. First on, last off. But, an exciting trip and the Tracker did great. We loved it.  And we loved writing these last posts, too!

 Sorry we don't have a picture of the ramp.  Peggy's hands kept sliding off the camera.