Our
trip started off at 3:30am on July 11, when the Airport Limo came and picked
us up for the ride to Pearson International Airport. Wow - that is
early. If you have never had to wake up at 3:00am, trust me.
You don't want to.
Soon after arriving at the airport, Ryan and Mike met our travelling companion for the next two weeks - Ryan Larsen from the 2nd Malton Thunderbird Rover Crew in Mississauga. Ryan was an old hand at this kind of thing, having been to the last two World Jamborees in The Netherlands and Chile respectively. He was also looking forward to arriving in Mexico!
An uneventful plane ride, including an hour stopover in the beautiful Eden-esque town of Detroit and a quite lovely omelette for breakfast brought us to the largest city in the world. There, a pair of very eager, and somewhat less than english proficient Mexicans in bright red Rover uniforms met us.
We ended up waiting in the airport for a couple of hours (foreshadowing things to come) before finally getting on a bus with a whole lot of crazy Argentineans! Singing, yelling and Argentinean music filled up the next few hours as we waited in the parking lot, and then travelled to the main Moot site at Theothuacan. And that's where the pictures begin:
This is the main parking lot at VillaMoot. More specifically, this is everyone trying to get into the main site on the first day... slightly organised bedlam, really.
A little while after we got into the main site, this was the scene - thousands of people trying to set up tents all at once! It didn't help that it was rainy and cold... yes - relatively cold. And this coming from someone from the northern climate of Canada! We couldn't believe that it was no more than about 5 degrees C the first night...
After the three Ontario boys introduced ourselves around to a few of the people on the Canadian contingent, and scammed sleeping arrangements for the first night (since there wasn't much room left on Canada's site for us to set up our tent) it was time for the opening ceremony. Here's a crowd shot courtesy of the official moot site.
During the Ceremony, the Scouts of Sweden, hosts of the 10th World Moot handed over this thing to the Scouts of Mexico... I'm not really sure what it is, but it symbolizes the honour of the Moot. Something like the Olympic flag I guess.
Some of the pomp and pageantry of the Opening Ceremony.
Our own Canadian flag (complements of Mike) being waved at the Opening.
After a long day that started thousands of kilometers away at 3:00am, we finally got dinner at 11:00pm (which was really midnight considering the time change.) Ahhh... a sign of things to come.
Day
2