Ya Voy, Voy Llegando, Ya Casi: Mexican Spanish for Being Late Without Panicking

Every foreigner in Mexico eventually decides that voy llegando is a lie. Someone sends it, you go downstairs, and you stand on the sidewalk for eleven minutes feeling like a fool.

The message wasn’t dishonest. It just wasn’t about time at all - and once you see what it’s actually reporting, the whole system turns out to be more informative than the ETA you were hoping for.

These phrases report a stage, not a position

Voy llegando is a verbal periphrasis - ir plus a gerund - and the RAE’s grammar describes what that construction does: it presents a process unfolding in successive stages that accumulate toward an end point. It’s progressive and cumulative, dynamic rather than static.¹²

So voy llegando doesn’t claim I have arrived or I am near. It claims the arriving is underway. Someone in the last leg of a trip, on the right avenue, ten minutes out, is describing their situation with complete accuracy.

The same shape runs through the whole set:

Read as a clock, these are maddening. Read as a journey ladder, they’re a running commentary on someone’s actual progress - which is arguably better data than a made-up number.

One phrase does not belong on this ladder, and it’s the one people confuse with it. Ahorita voy isn’t a stage marker at all - the -ita ending is a softener, and the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua’s dictionary of mexicanismos files ahorita under the diminutive rather than under time.³ Ya voy reports movement. Ahorita voy reports goodwill. (There’s a whole separate post on what ahorita is really doing, because it deserves one.)

1. not moving yet Ya voy saliendo. I'm heading out now. The most underrated message here. It tells you the trip hasn't begun, which is genuinely useful and rarely a lie.
2. in transit Ya voy en camino. I'm on my way. Could be five minutes out, could be forty. This is where you ask ¿por dónde vas?
3. somewhere near the end Ya casi. Almost. The one rung with no anchor at all - it compares the journey only to itself. Treat it as a mood.
4. last stretch Voy llegando. I'm arriving. Right neighborhood, wrong assumption if you go stand outside. Wait for the next one.
5. genuinely here Ya estoy abajo. I'm downstairs. This is the one that means come down. In a city of gated buildings, it's the phrase that actually opens doors.

The vagueness is not cultural. It’s traffic.

There’s a lazy version of this topic that treats loose Mexican timekeeping as a national personality trait. Here’s the less flattering, more useful explanation.

Mexico City is the most congested city in the TomTom Traffic Index. In its most recent edition, a kilometre that would take 1 minute 57 seconds on free-flowing roads takes 3 minutes 27 seconds in real conditions - the average trip stretching by roughly three-quarters.⁴⁵ Coverage of the ranking notes speeds collapsing to a crawl on major arteries like Insurgentes and Periférico during peak hours.⁶

Now put yourself in that traffic and try to answer how long will you be? Any number you give is fiction. A phrase that reports where you are in the journey is the only honest thing you can send.

Ask for a place, not a time

This is the single habit that will change your experience of waiting for people in Mexico.

¿En cuánto llegas? asks someone to predict the worst traffic on earth. ¿Por dónde vas? asks for a street name - something they can see out the window, that they have no reason to shade, and that you can convert into a real estimate yourself because you know the city.

Apologizing for being late, the Mexican way

The English instinct is to explain. The Mexican shape is shorter and lands better: a light apology, a landmark, and an estimate flagged as an estimate.

One more thing worth saying plainly: you can still give a real time. Llego en quince is completely normal Spanish and nobody finds it rude or robotic. When there’s a reservation, a doctor, or a flight involved, say the number and expect one back - es que tenemos reservación a las nueve makes a direct question entirely fair. The looseness belongs to casual plans, and it evaporates the moment something is genuinely at stake.

None of this is an argument that you should enjoy waiting. It’s an argument that the messages you’re getting are accurate reports of a genuinely unpredictable trip, in a city that has earned its ranking. Ask where instead of when, wait somewhere with a drink, and let ya casi be what it has always been - a small kindness sent from a car that isn’t moving.