There were fond farewells and hurried hugs before we struggled up the steps - late, as usual - wrestling our well-worn cases from the bowels of Haywards Heath station. Hurling ourselves onto Platform 2, we were just in time to witness the departure of the 7.52 to Gatwick. Curses! And, again, curses! We spent the next few moments catching our breath. Then came the slow, guilty minutes of smugly comparing ourselves with the sullied ranks of Monday commuters, deadpan and office bound. It wasn't long before I was squeezing aboard the 8.12 just ahead of Wendy, uncomfortably aware that sensible sardines don't carry suitcases.

The Sussex mists, burnished and burnt slowly away by the sun, were already becoming faded memories by the time we boarded the British Airways mumbo-jumbo jet to Miami. Once again the miracle had been achieved, of fitting four hundred malodorous holidaymakers into a metal tube made for midgets. I got to sit next to a teenage lout who had evidently consumed baked beans for breakfast, a silent but deadly companion. We spent the next half hour on a taxiway, awaiting take-off clearance, Air Traffic Control having been caught unawares by the scheduled 10.50 flight - or perhaps it was just that the fog had been slow to clear.

I had always been led to believe that Miami was a sparkling, glitzy place full of bright lights, and I was not disappointed. If there had been a Richter scale for electrical storms, then this one would have been around magnitude 7, a sound-and-light show to beat all. Our onward flight to Cancun was cancelled. They said the aircraft was unserviceable but I reckon it was just frightened. The ground crew certainly were. No-one was going out in that storm to refuel any damned aeroplane, and so we had the pleasure of two hours in the departure lounge, watching a major international airport collapse gradually into chaos. Airline staff did their best to keep the steadily mounting horde of stranded passengers amused, by directing all those waiting at Gate E21 to go and wait at Gate D2, and all those waiting at Gate D2 to go and wait at Gate F19, thus causing a constant flurry of people on the move and the illusion that some of them were going somewhere. Our replacement aircraft at Gate D2 was so frightened that it didn't show its nose cone until half an hour after the storm was over. We climbed aboard, pulled pillows out, and went to sleep.

An hour later we were awoken with a start. There were airport lights shining through the little square window. The captain was making some announcement about disembarking. Are we there already? Wow! That was quick! Well, no, actually. Our new aircraft has a technical fault and we are still sitting on the ground at Miami. Never mind though, we are all going to get out now, to go and find another one. There is apparently a flight due in from Kansas City in 15 minutes that will take us to our destination. And - surprise, surprise - it does.

That is how, after a super day's excitement, we got to arrive at Cancun, Mexico's answer to the Gold Coast, and how we got to meet up with our American friends in the foyer of the Hotel Caribe International. It was now 3 o'clock in the morning and they had just finished drinking the case of beer they'd brought to celebrate our arrival. Their flight from San Diego had apparently landed early in Mexico City, enabling them to make a better connection than planned and they had arrived 4 hours ahead of schedule. This just goes to show that where there's a yin, there's a yang. Let's just hope it's a snug fit, for we're all going to be together for a while.