TL&DR Mexico

Aloha!

We are Sarah and Philipp and we left Germany in October 2023 to live in Canada for a while. Since we couldn't renew our one-year visa, we decided to travel the world. We chose Mexico as our starting point and plan to travel through all countries in Central America and then fly from Costa Rica to Chile. Sarah lived there for a while and I'm looking forward to visiting the places from her semester abroad with her. The highlight for us here will be hiking in Patagonia. Afterwards, we'll escape the cold to Argentina and work our way to Brazil. In May 2026 it's off to Asia. The end of our trip is planned for October 2026. Until then, I plan to publish experience reports with helpful tips for each city or region. This post is meant to be a summary of the tips. We hope you enjoy reading it.

TL&DR for Mexico

• On average we spent around 1327 MXN per person per day. This calculation includes under the "Transport" category not only public buses but also the flight from Canada to Mexico and the flight from La Paz to Mexico City. This significantly raises the average. To save money, we shopped at supermarkets or markets whenever possible and cooked in our accommodations. When we visited restaurants, we mostly went to those that locals also visit, even though sometimes a pizza was necessary for variety. We rarely relied on tour operators and instead reached many places with collectivos or regional buses. So ask at your accommodations where collectivos or buses depart from. I will also link the locations again with Google Maps in the individual posts.

Category	Amount (MX$)
Transport	44233.39
Rent & Fees	24961.36
Restaurants	19650.88
Activities	15058.98
Household	3450.92
Health Insurance	828
Clothing	425
Souvenirs	250
Total	108858.53
Average (41 Days) per person	1327.54

• We used Instagram to research travel routes and information about cities. Search for "Itineraries" together with the place you want to research. In the Reels, people give really good tips.
• Other blogs helped us a lot, here's a short list:
  • Merida
    • https://adventuresofaplusk.com/merida-to-uxmal-ruins-by-bus/
  • Valladolid
    • https://exploredbymarta.com/travel/mexico/cenotes-near-valladolid-mexico/
    • https://www.myfreerangefamily.com/chichen-itza-self-guided-tour/
    • https://www.myfreerangefamily.com/valladolid-to-ek-balam-ruins/
  • Tulum
    • https://tulumtravel.blog/tulum-itinerary/
    • https://tulumtravel.blog/tulum-instagram-spots/
  • Belize:
    • https://www.backpackerswanderlust.com/chetumal-to-caye-caulker/#ferry-from-chetumal-to-caye-caulker
    • https://www.nayawalk.com/belize/mexico-border/#crossing-by-shuttle
    • https://alittleadrift.com/crossing-border-belize-chetumal-mexico/
• Looked at travel routes from travel agencies
• Find obscure places with Atlas Obscura, meaning smaller attractions that aren't listed in Lonely Planet. We used the app the most in Mexico City.
• Used HostelWorld, Booking and Airbnb to find suitable accommodations
  • Hostels aren't always cheaper than private rooms or Airbnb, even if you would take a bed in a dorm. So compare prices!
• I found most eSIMs through esimdb.com. I always buy one eSIM per country. This is cheaper than buying a complete package. For Mexico we got a SIM from Telcel.
• Santander Bank always had the lowest fees for withdrawing money. We have a Wise account with which we exchanged our CAD to MXN. Unfortunately Wise itself has fees for withdrawing money. At this point it helps to have a credit card. This saves you the fees.

AI-Assisted Research:

I bought us an e-book about Mexico and Central America from Lonely Planet and extracted the HTML pages with Calibre to then convert them to Markdown. With the help of Claude Code Shell Agents I then had a suitable route and travel plan created for us. I cross-checked the results with Google Maps to be safe and of course also just read the book. In parallel, I specifically asked Claude about individual cities and nearby tours. I then cross-checked these research results with the extracted pages from Lonely Planet to verify the information. That AI can also quickly mislead you which happened to us in Mexico City. We missed the parade as we had relied too much on the AI.

Transport:

We always took buses from the company ADO for long distances. You can easily buy the tickets through the website. These are then checked on-site by the driver with a QR code reader. My tip: always download the QR codes to your phone. The ADO app sometimes logs you out. This happened to us once right when we wanted to board a bus. Luckily we had already downloaded the codes. Movies are often shown on the buses, which are often really good. However, I find it a bit strange when I got to watch a horror movie on one of the rides. On longer trips the buses stop at a restaurant so the drivers can switch and everyone can stretch their legs. In my opinion, the buses are safe during the day. Nevertheless, we never put our backpacks up top. We also didn't take any night trips for fear of theft by other travelers. While we were in Mexico, we heard about a theft that affected other travelers on a night trip.

For short distances we mostly traveled with so-called collectivos. These are either cars or minivans where people ride along for shorter distances and can ask for a stop at any time. We reached many attractions outside the cities with them and saved a lot of money. However, collectivos are hard to find because the routes are shared informally. So it helps to ask the locals about the routes. Look at the posts about the respective places. I will try to mark the stops.

Food:

The cheapest restaurants usually have more vegetarian options. Get the HappyCow app for recommendations. With it we always found vegetarian and cheap restaurants very quickly.

Hiking:

Use the AllTrails app to find hikes.

Our Travel Route Through Mexico