Mexico City Airport

2:39 p.m. Mexico City airport

I am in Mexico!

The descent into Mexico City was steep and swoopy. My stomach was doing flip-flops. I have never had a flight quite like it before. The plane makes a dive downward through turbulent clouds, then a long curving turn around tall buildings almost obscured by terrible smog.

We got a little shuttle tram from the taxi way to the terminal. It looked like a disembodied train car on stilts. It pulls up to the airplane, everyone packs into this little car, the doors close behind them, then it drives over to the terminal. People were friendly and good-humored despite being squished in pretty tight like a subway car at rush hour.

I had never seen any kind of transporation like it. I guess they don't have enough gates for the number of planes landing at this airport for the planes to pull right up to the terminal.

I had a little confusion with immigration. I couldn't decide whether I needed to go through the process of having my ID checked here or in Oaxaca, and they don't really make it clear on the plane, though they show you a long video in 2 languages. Like a lot of official-type videos, it was so boring and slow-moving that, by the time they got to the crucial part, no one, including me, was watching any more.

I went all the way to my gate, which was a looooong way away, about 3/8 of a mile, before deciding to go back and check one more time in a fit of nervousness. After talking to about 3 different people in my terrible Spanish, I finally figured out I did indeed need to go through immigation.

I went stand in the long and twisting line that had about 200 people in it. I only had an hour and 15 minutes on the ground.
I kept thinking "This can't be right!" and considering skipping out because obviously there had been some mistake. But there hadn't. A huge scary-looking immigration officer that looked like every movie stereotype evil Mexican cop actually joked around with me and calmed me down and told me it would all be okay.

I don't know what would have happened if I would have skipped immigration.

I got out of there with about 30 minutes to spare and ran like OJ Simpson in a car rental commercial back to my gate, finding out it is very un-Mexican to run. No one else does. I got to the gate with plenty of time to spare, since the plane left late. It was just one more excuse today to exercise my adrenal glands.