My time in Mazatlán was over on Friday morning 😢.
My stuffed axolotl from the Gran Acuario Mazatlán gift shop went into the suitcase with my clothes, and now I am at Mazatlán airport.
I will try to get a few airplane pictures before we board.
Update at Sat 12.30 am:
I made it home.
That connection to Seattle for international arrivals into LAX is quite something.
We arrived at the gate at LAX at 5.55 pm.
The flight to Seattle was going to leave at 7.40 pm.
First, there is a very long walk through a labyrinth of walkways and hallways to get to the US Customs and Border Control point. I said to a friendly official that they need to put more signs up for us, to which she replied – oh, but you should ‘just look for open doors’ if you don’t know where to go next.
(The problem was that I had no crowd to follow. A group of people in front of me on the airplane took so long to disembark, that the rest had disappeared completely out of sight by the time I stepped off.
Where did everyone go? 😱)
Anyway, there was no Global Entry kiosk open at Customs and Border Control (they are part of the partial government shutdown that still has not been resolved). So instead, there was a facial recognition photo check for everyone, regardless if you had Global Entry credentials or not. The camera did not recognize everyone and those were then directed to an official for a manual passport check.
Now I still had to pick up my bag from the international arrivals carousel for rechecking it for the flight to Seattle. That took a very long time as well, after which you get ejected into the public area at Terminal 6.
So now you go up the escalator, to go through the standard domestic flight security check again— which ate up the remaining time I had for the connection.
My flight to Seattle was already into boarding Group E by the time I had gone to the restroom and taken a few bites out of a sandwich and banana that I had bought hastily.
The axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) is a species of paedomorphic mole salamander. They mature into the terrestrial adult form without undergoing metamorphosis; the adults remain fully aquatic with obvious external gills. This trait, although somewhat unusual among the majority of amphibians, is not unique.
Axolotls originally inhabited a system of interconnected wetlands and lakes in the Mexican highlands. They were known to inhabit the smaller lakes of Xochimilco and Chalco, and are also presumed to have inhabited the larger lakes of Texcoco and Zumpango. These waterways were mostly drained by Spanish settlers after the conquest of the Aztec Empire, leading to the destruction of much of the axolotl’s natural habitat, which is now largely occupied by Mexico City. Despite this, they remained abundant enough to form part of the staple in the diet of native Mexica during the colonial era.
Today, due to continued urbanization in Mexico City, which causes water pollution in the remaining waterways, as well as the introduction of invasive species such as tilapia and carp, the axolotls are now near extinction. The species has been listed as critically endangered in the wild, with a decreasing population of around 50 to 1,000 adult individuals.
A large captive population of axolotls currently exists, though, with the specimens being used extensively in scientific research for their remarkable ability to regenerate parts of their body, including limbs, gills and parts of their eyes and brains.
