Five Hours in Mexico City

Can you do it? Is it worth the effort? How risky is it to even try to get to El Zocalo with such a short layover? I asked my colleague who lives and works in Mexico City all of those questions as we started to make our plans. You see, we had a scheduled layover of 4 hours and 50 minutes and the distance to travel is only 7 km and about 20 minutes according to Google maps. We didn’t want to miss an opportunity to take in the local sights with that long of a layover and historical destinations so close. Against my friend’s suggestions we figured we would give it a shot. It’s not like we’ve never taken a chance like that before. Bella wrote about it when she took the Maglev in Shanghai and in Finland, we wrote about renting a car in Warsaw, and I took the train in Amsterdam. “This is different” my friend said. “Don’t forget the awful traffic”.

As usual we prepared by not traveling with any checked baggage. Bella checked Google maps frequently to get estimates of travel times. We calculated that we would need 30 minutes for customs and immigration, an hour for cabs back and forth, and an hour for security upon return, leaving us with 2:20 in El Zocalo. We planned to check traffic after immigration and decide at that time. We set a deadline alarm for 2:55 before take off to either flag down a cab or, worst case, tell the one we’re in to head back to the airport. What could go wrong?

The first problem we had was that our flight from Toronto to Mexico City was on Aeromexico and our departing flight was Latam. Despite purchasing them all on the same reservation they had different ticket reference numbers and we weren’t able to check in and get boarding passes for the Latam legs while in Toronto. No worries, that shouldn’t be too big of a problem.

We arrived nearly half an hour early. That was unexpected. Immigration was a breeze, less than ten minutes. We just needed to check in to feel comfortable before heading out.

Changing airlines meant changing from terminal 2 to terminal 1. Finding the tram station, riding to the other terminal, and then checking in still had us on track. Finding a cab meant a 20 minute walk all the way to the other end of the terminal to a taxi stand, though. That was frustrating.

The cab ride was 240 pesos or $12.25. And it was a bit of a white knuckle affair, too. We were watching our progress (or lack thereof) on our phones and every turn added time. We nearly chickened out and pulled the plug but suddenly we were there.

After a 45 minutes ride we felt we were really cutting it close. With no chance to grab a bite and a beer, we headed to the Cathedral.

El Zocalo is a hopping place with a lot of car and foot traffic, so getting a cab should be easy.

We were able to see El Templo Major.

We were still pretty anxious so we flagged down a cab and paid 350 pesos or $17.86 for our return to Terminal 1. That was actually a lot easier and the driver was able to get us right to the end of the terminal where we needed to be saving us the long walk from the taxi stand.

So we answered the question. Yes it can be done and yes it was worth it. Our sons had never been to Mexico City before so this was a rare opportunity for them to take in the world class site and experience the thrill of getting to a place on a tight schedule like that. We knew we wouldn’t be able to do it justice and see everything in the short time but we saw enough. The taste gives them an idea of what to see next time they’re in town.

~ Freddy