A $500 Mistake

I'm trying to catch up with all the events of the past month, so these posts are a little out of order. This post is about the end of my trip to Mexico. I'll do another about the rest of my visit to Mexico City.

My plan for leaving Mexico City was to take a 7am flight directly to SFO which would arrive at 9:45am which would leave plenty of time to go to San Jose to get a rental car for our trip to Tahoe the next day and then run a few errands before having to pick up the kids.

The bus service that I had paid for picked me up at the hotel at 3:30am, very early considering that at that time in the morning it took all of 15 minutes to get to the hotel (normally it can take up to 1hr to get to the airport in rush hour traffic). So my bags and I arrived at the airport at 3:45am and then had to wait 20 minutes for the United check in counter to open up.

Once I got up to the counter and handed over my ticket info and passport, the woman asked for the departing form. FORM?? It was the piece of paper that they tore off the entry form when I first arrived. I remember that form and I distinctly remember tossing it away the day before. Usually I save all that kind of paperwork, but this time I wasn't thinking. Fine, the woman said, you then need to go to immigration downstairs to get a new form. Immigration opens promptly at 7am. 7AM???!!! Exactly when my flight was supposed to leave and at 7am, it wasn't likely to be delayed. The next flight is at 6:30pm and gets into SFO around midnight. I felt my stomach sink. This would ruin all of my plans for the day, all over a stupid mistake.

I took my bags downstairs to immigration and sat by the door. I started to think about when I actually threw that piece of paper away. Maybe it was in the afternoon, after the maids had come in to clean the room? I was actually near the taxi stand and as it turns out, I had an extra ticket to take a taxi from the airport to the hotel. So I grabbed a taxi and headed back to the hotel. Fifty dollars later, I was back to the airport but no departing form. I was feeling just a little panicky just now. I went to the ticket counter to see what else I could do.

The ticket counter lady confirmed that the next direct flight would be at 6:30pm at an extra cost of about $200. Wasn't there anything else, even something that would go through Chicago or some other big city? She indicated that it could cost up to $700 more to do something like that but then she started looking at different options. The first option she came up with would take me through Washington DC and get me into SFO at 7pm. Well, that was better than midnight. She did some more checking. Finally she came up with a 8:30am flight on Mexicana airlines to LA and then LA to SFO, getting in at 2pm. Great! And how much extra was this going to cost? An extra $400. Definitely better than $700, so I booked it.

Then I got to wait in line at Immigration. It took another 20 minutes since I was no longer first in line, plus I had to go to the ATM just outside the office to get more money to pay the $50 to get a new card. But I was able to make my new flight. I got to sleep a little plus they served breakfast (green tamales) which I wouldn't have received on United. A short stop in LA with time to get lunch and I was back in the Bay Area around 2pm.

It then took 2 hrs to take a shuttle bus down to San Jose to pick up the rental car. I had just enough time to swing by the house and pick up my car which has all the car seats, get a few things for the kids to eat and then go pick everyone up. I had planned on taking them to the park to eat dinner so that part went smoothly.

Since we were headed up to Tahoe the next day, I was up until about 11pm getting stuff together. I think I was up for about 22 hours in all, a very long day.