They don’t call those midnight flights “red-eyes” for nothing!  After our daughter’s wedding on Saturday, we flew out of SFO at midnight Sunday night and landed in Mexico City.

1. Customs and Immigration.  During the flight we were handed two documents to fill out – immigration and customs.  I filled them out sometime in the wee hours of the morning.  When we landed we observed most of the passengers going into a long queue – and we almost joined them – until we saw a sign saying “Foreigners” – and almost no one in line.  After a perfunctory inspection of my passport, the control officer stamped the bottom of my FMM form, wrote 180 days, then stamped it. I need to keep this as ID and show it when I leave Mexico – else you pay $$.  So – I’m now good for 180 days in our southern neighbor!

2.  Money changing.  I knew we’d need initial taxi money so I went to the airport money changer window.  I knew the rough rate was 13 to 1, but got about 11 to 1.  Oh well – it’s the price of doing business as it were.

3. My first decision.  We brought enough stuff to live in Mexico for a couple of years – we didn’t pack like this was a 10 day vacation. Because we had several large suitcases I first got a courtesy cart ($5 in SFO) loaded up our stuff and tried to figure out the taxi business.  Prior internet searches said to use one of the companies in the airport because they weren’t “bandits” and the prices were fixed based on the zone of the city you were going to.  So I arbitrarily walked up to one taxi company (several there) and showed a printed address of the guest house where we’d made arrangements.  Then came my first faux pas…

4. My first faux pas.  I started to wheel out our luggage cart when a man came running, gesturing the cart couldn’t go outside to the taxi. Now what?  How was I going to shuttle all those 50 pound suitcases outside after I hadn’t had any sleep, had bloodshot eyes and felt intimidated (vulnerable?) not knowing Spanish? After lots of gesturing I learned there was an inside cart and an outside cart – and the outside cart came with a porter who looked at my paperwork to see which taxi company we’d paid for.  He got us into a line and again I felt vulnerable because I didn’t know how much to tip.  Am I a cheap American or a rich gringo?  Anyway, I tipped him without knowing where I fit in the “bell curve” of tips.

5. Too much luggage to fit into the taxi.  After waiting for maybe 15 minutes a man approached us with an air of authority, asked to see our taxi paperwork, looked at our luggage and got the message across that if all the luggage couldn’t fit in the trunk we’d have to pay more for a van.  What to do?  I paid more for our own personal van! I showed the driver our address and off we went as the sun was rising on our new city.