Mexico 2016 Day 1 – Thursday 04 February

Anne and I were up shortly after 03:00 and left Natchitoches about 04:30, arriving at the Shreveport airport at about 06:00 for our 08:04 flight to Dallas. We had an unpleasant surprise of a $40 checked-baggage fee for each of us.[1]  We had breakfast and passed through security. I finished transcribing various friends’ prayer intentions into my pilgrimage notebook as suggested by Taylor Marshall in an email a week or so ago, for presentation to Our Lady of Guadalupe.

We had an uneventful flight to Dallas where we first exchanged $600 US for Mexican pesos … which I would later learn also uses the “$” sign. I’m not sure what the exact exchange rate was there (it’s notoriously not that great, but we were paying for the convenience since neither our bank, nor any other that I know of in Natchitoches, does currency exchanges), but in general the exchange rate was $18 pesos per $1 US; I just used 20 as a rough on-the-fly estimate. We also grabbed a bite to eat, then boarded the plane for Mexico City a bit after they began boarding but well before wheels-up. We had another uneventful flight, except for some kind of immigration form that they only had in Spanish. Luckily, a young lady seated next to Anne was able to talk us through it. The pilot announced early in the flight that there was some turbulence at normal cruising altitude (36,000 ft.?) so he kept us low at about 28,000 ft. for the duration of the flight, which made the views of the landscape quite striking as we crossed into the rugged mountainous area around Mexico City.