- Quick facts
- Total days on the road: 586
- Currently in: USA
- Miles Driven: 36821
- Countries Visited: 17
- Days Camping: 389
- Days Indoors: 202
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Mexico
Join us as we explore Kobus’ home country on a journey of rediscovery. We fly into Johannesburg spend some quality time with family over Xmas and New Year. Then we drive north to the Kruger National park and head south to the mother city, Cape Town.
There will be no budget or wifi reports or accommodation listings. We will however have tales about our journey of rediscovery.
Mexico Budget Recap
{jcomments lock}This article is part of our Budget and Money Report series.
Our per diem expenses cover food, lodging, gas and other supplies and travel costs for three people. We travel in a 1997 Toyota 4Runner, tent camp in paid facilities roughly 70% of our nights and eat less than 10% of our meals in restaurants. This budget does not reflect personal spending money, which is mostly used to buy souvenirs and booze. We don't track this money, but we do know we have not come close to spending our budgeted amount of $10 per person per day.
Welcome to part two of our exceptionally exciting series of articles describing in excruciating detail the monies we have spent during our trip to Argentina. This article covers our 70 days and 4500 miles through Mexico. Why should you care? If you're our typical reader, you probably don't want to know how much money we spent doing laundry. Pray forgive me this dry interlude and stay tuned for our next travel updates from Belize.
If you happen to be one of the few planning to repeat our travels or at least do a bit of road tripping in Mexico, it's my hope you'll find this information most useful to your planning. We keep these details for your benefit more than ours, and we are able to do so because there are three of us. As the third wheel I'm delegated the less-glamorous tasks of keeping the books and cooking most nights. Since you can't enjoy my cooking, may you at least marvel at my mastery of spreadsheets.
For those of you who want to delve a bit deeper, you can download my spreadsheet here. Expense are recorded by hand in a notebook, usually once or twice a day, then entered into the spreadsheet so Excel can work its magic. If you need explanation, feel free to leave a comment.
Mexico Wifi Report: Plentiful, But Not Reliable
This article is part of our Internet and Phone Report series. {jcomments lock}
General Availability: Very High
Quality of Bandwidth: Like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get. Quality and reliability is higher in internet cafes than in hotels.
Frequency of internet in hotels: Medium most places. High in touristy areas.
Frequency of internet in campgrounds: Zero in campgrounds. Medium in RV parks. High if there is a hotel associated with the camping/RV area.
Average cost to connect: Usually free. Places with fee usually charge around $10-20 pesos ($.75-1.50) per hour
Our Perspective on Mexico's Safety Problems
{jcomments lock}I'd be lying if I said we weren't concerned about the security situation in Mexico before we left home. In the US it's hard to go two weeks without hearing a report of headless bodies hanging from freeway overpasses or newly discovered mass graves. It's news you can't ignore, and yet it's dangerously easy to sensationalize.
I did my fair share of homework before we left, until I got to the bottom line: common sense and a bit of research is all you need. We planned our route to avoid the problem areas and stuck to a few simple guidelines. And here we are 70 days after crossing the border. No problems. None. Not even a hint.
Chicken Pizza
Start: January 4, Chichen Itza (Chicken Pizza){jcomments lock}
Finish: January 10, Tulum
Mayan Ruins Visited: 3
Tourists Seen: Too Many
Collapsing Palapas Avoided: 1
Nights Spent Camping: 7
Continuing our whirlwind tour of the Yucatan Peninsula, this week brings us to three more Mayan archeological sites - two of which are without a doubt among the most visited tourist attractions in Mexico.
After several nights spent recuperating in Merida, the Yucatan's largest city, we head east towards Cancun and stayed a few nights near the ruins of Chichen Itza. Deemed one of the new seven wonders of the world, it is home of the most famous Mayan pyramid, thousands of tourists and miles of souvenir stands.
While in Chichen Itza we also visit the less-impressive (although much less tourist-laden) ruins at Ek'Balam. Then it's around Cancun to the Caribbean coast and the white sand beaches near Playa Del Carmen and Tulum. Having learned our lesson at Chichen Itza, we head out early to see the picturesque ocean-front ruins and manage to just miss the caravans of tourist buses. We're glad to be done with ruins for a bit - although in less than two weeks we'll be at the grandaddy of all Mayan cities, Tikal in Guatemala.