Miguel Hidalgo International Airport – Guadalajara

I always like to share a “happy ending” story with my readers or as CNN would call it “The Good Stuff”.

A very good friend of mine was travelling up to Canada to visit her new “friend”.  This was a very important and much anticipated visit which was planned on short notice to co-ordinate a very small window of available dates.

Several days before the flight my friend went to get out her passport and it was not in it’s usual place.  She searched her house and office but it definitely was not to be found.  Her house looked like it had been hit by a tornado as she refused to believe it was not there as she had always prided herself on the careful looking after her passport.

She feared the worst so she emailed AnaLilia.Bara@international.gc.ca who is our person at the Canadian Embassy in Guadalajara and Ana Lilia emailed her what would be necessary for an Emergency Travel Visa.  If she was able to complete this extensive list she would have to renew her passport in Canada before returning to Mexico.

All the items on the list had to be ready by 10:00 am the next morning and presented in person to the Embassy in Guadalajara.  The problem was that many of the necessary items would take more than 24 hours to obtain such as studio photographs and a police report to name a couple.

At this point hair was being torn out and tears started to flow as it seemed a Herculean if not impossible task to get all the documentation necessary to obtain the Emergency Travel Visa.

At that point her father suggested that she contact the Guadalajara Airport as someone might have turned it in.  She must have had it there to be able to reenter the country from her last trip up north earlier in the year.  My friend poo pooed this idea as she feared if it was left there it would be lost or stolen.  Her father persisted and she made the call.  The number of the Lost and Found in the Airport in Guadalajara is 01 333 688 5238 ext. 30112.

She tried for a very long time to get an answer but they must have been out to lunch.  However, she persisted and finally got an answer.  Fortunately, my friend is fluent in Spanish and after a great deal of back and forth, with total skeptism on the part of the person at Lost and Found, it was finally and joyfully revealed that they did, in fact, have the missing passport.  What are the odds?

Evidently it had been left at the customs desk and they had put it in a safe place.  The airport will not seek you out if a passport is left there but they do look after it until it is collected.  Naturally, you need identification to retrieve your passport which suprised me as the picture in the passport in question is you.  Nevertheless, you will need a piece of identification and a sample of your signature on some document.

We have a word in Spanish for miracle which is milagro.  This, to my mind, is a perfect example of a true “milagro” and, of course, the power of prayer.

My friend, will soon be winging her way up north passport firmly in hand thanks to the care of the customs officer at Mguel Hidalgo International Airport in Guadalajara.