The journey from Japan was an exhausting one. We landed in LA six hours before we took off in Tokyo after minimal sleep. Our second flight from LA to Mexico was not for six hours and so we spent our time half asleep in the most infuriatingly confusing airport ever with only the welcoming smiles of US immigration for company. Marvellous. We weren't going to write a blog about somewhere that we only spent a few hours in transit but it was such an awful few hours that we thought we'd give it a mention.

Being America everyone is guilty until proven otherwise and are therefore treated as such. Not a smile or friendly look was shot our way at any stage as we were herded through various queues before being interrogated by an angry immigration officer, despite that fact we had no intention of staying a second longer than we had to, and had all our onward transport booked. Eventually, when he had clarified everything and was confident we weren't planning a huge terror attack, like pissing in his cup of tea, we were allowed through. Every other transit we have done (and we have now done several) has not required us to collect our bags or leave the airport. But the US being what it is we had to do both of these. We collected our luggage and carried it through some scanners before putting it back on a random conveyor belt before being directed out onto the road. Brilliant, after all that security we could have just jumped in a taxi and started a new life as illegal aliens. Lucky for Obama we had no intention of doing this but instead set about searching for the AeroMexico check in area in another part of the airport. We had been emailed regarding our flight a few weeks ago to say the times had changed and we would now have only a three hour transit instead of six, much to our relief. However, as the immigration procedure had taken the better part of a lifetime to complete we were very aware we had a rush to check in. When we arrived at the deserted AeroMexico desks though this seemed like a difficult task. Eventually, Claire pinned down a miserable AeroMexico employee who told her to wait over there, the time of the flight had changed. Charming.

When we finally checked in it transpired that the flight had changed to the original time and so we had a few more hours to kill. We spent this wondering around the terminal, which was under repair/construction and so had very little to do...not even a bar! It did have a Starbucks though, obviously, and so we managed to fuel up on caffeine to stay awake. We were entertained whilst waiting for our coffees by the group of overweight American teenage girls buying what looked more like puddings than coffees before complaining and insisting on fresh ones after they found out their mocha frappuccino had been made with a coffee and not a double cream base! It was honestly the most horrifying example of suffering and pain we'd seen on our travels.