Travel bargains in The Other Mexico
When the writers for “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” put out the satirical textbook “America (The Book),” they included a two-page spread with a map listing five Mexican tourist destinations as “Mexico’s Major Cities, as Far as You’re Concerned.” For most of the people who visit Mexico’s beach resorts each year, this isn’t too far from the truth. Around 75 percent of visitors to the country go to one of five areas: Cancun, Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, Los Cabos and Mazatlan. Most fly into one of the Americanized beach resort areas for three to seven days then fly right back out, seldom venturing beyond the beach, pool and buffet table.
As a result, these crowded resort areas are no longer much of a deal. Hotel prices are on a par with resorts in the U.S. and they no longer offer much of a savings over those in the Caribbean. Prices for taxis, excursions and restaurants in the tourist zones are set at whatever the market will bear, and with hotel occupancy rates hitting 95 percent in Cancun in mid-March, the market is easily bearing regular rate hikes.
Fortunately, these areas of Mexico are the exception rather than the rule. Once you get away from the package-tour magnets and visit “The Other Mexico”, you can really stretch your travel budget a long way.
This other Mexico has many attractive towns and cities with postcard-perfect Spanish Colonial streets and buildings, including Valladolid and Merida in the Yucatan, Campeche on the Gulf Coast, and Oaxaca City in the south. Then there is the beautiful colonial center of the country. Yes, San Miguel de Allende has gotten pricey (more than 10,000 Americans now have their homes there) but less famous towns like Guanajuato and Zacateras are still a bargain.
What you pay for food, lodging and transportation in these areas is dramatically less than in the tourist traps. On a recent beach trip with my family, I got a standard room at the best hotel in Valladolid, right on the central plaza, for less than $65 including tax. The most expensive room available — a suite with a private terrace big enough for a party — was going for around $200. In Merida there were dozens of hotels offering rooms for less than $100 a night, and it would be hard to pay more than $200 a night at the others unless you stayed in a suite. The two-room suite we got at Luz en Yucatan, with plenty of room for three, cost less than $75.
In Guanajuato, where I later went on an assignment, the majority of hotels had published rates between $50 and $150 a night, and budget backpacker digs were going for as little as $25 for two with breakfast. My 40-minute taxi ride from the Leon airport to my Guanajuato hotel doorstep was $36 including tolls, and my 1.5-hour executive bus from Guanajuato to San Miguel de Allende was $10. The bus had only three seats across, plenty of legroom, a bathroom and complimentary snacks. I never spent more than $5 on a taxi ride in either city. An hour-and-45-minute shuttle from San Miguel back to the Leon airport cost $29 — less than what a short airport taxi ride costs in Cancun.
San Miguel de Allende is loaded with expensive restaurants serving the expatriate community and free-spending tourists, but in the other cities it was hard to spend more than $25 on dinner, even with a couple beers. Four of us sat under a restaurant’s beach palapa for hours in Progreso on the Gulf of Mexico, eating seafood and drinking margaritas. The tab came to around $75 — with tip. If you join the locals in the markets and eat where they do, $3 to $5 will leave you stuffed from lunch.
Mexico has plenty of coastline, so finding a reasonably priced beach away from the tourist zones isn’t difficult. Not far from Puerto Vallarta is Sayulita and a long stretch of other thinly populated beaches farther north; to the south is the equally empty Costalegre area. On the Gulf Coast to the west of Cancun, you can rent a four-bedroom beach house with a pool for less than $100 a night through sites like VacationRentals.com. Southern Pacific beach areas like Zihuatanejo, Puerto Escondido and Huatulco generally have more Mexican tourists than foreign ones, so rates are not dictated by what “the crazy gringos” are willing to shell out.
As a bonus, the spots away from the foreign tourist zones have more interesting food and far better shopping. Visit “the other Mexico” and you will feel like you are in a foreign country instead of in some knock-off of Florida. You will come back with better souvenirs, more vivid memories and more dollars still in your pocket.
Tim Leffel is author of the book Make Your Travel Dollars Worth a Fortune and co-author of Traveler’s Tool Kit: Mexico and Central America. He also edits the award-winning narrative Web ‘zine Perceptive Travel.
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4 Responses to “Travel bargains in The Other Mexico”
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While trying to make the point of how reasonable cities such as Valladolid and Merida are, the writer was living on the high end of the scale. He obviously visited the only expensive hotel in Valladolid—I pay 35 dollars a night for a very nice hotel with all the amenities. The same for Merida where I pay less than 40 dollars for a beautiful hotel with gardens, pool, etc., all in central Merida. A good article but the writer missed the true values in these cities.
What a breath of fresh air! As someone who lives in and writes about The Other Mexico on a regular basis, I am often horrified by what the people who visit Cancun or Playa del Carmen (both less than four hours from Merida) see when they visit “Mexico”… and what they pay! On the other hand, sometimes I think the prices they have to pay are due compensation for the grief they visit on the workers serving them, most of whom are hard-working Mexicans supporting big families and looking to advance in their careers, etc.
We write our website in hopes that it will encourage more people to discover and even move to the real Mexico, we pray not to change it but to allow it to change them. That has certainly been the case for us…
Yeah, it’s curious that some people only move their feet as far as it will take them to what everyone else is doing. Seems to be theme among several parts of our world.
Oh well.
Thanks for this highlighting of some interesting places.
Merida, Valladolid and the entire STATE of Yucatan (not to be completely confused with the PENINSULA of Yucatan) are jewels that while we want and need tourism…we don’t want too much, so that they doesn’t loose their charm.
So, for all the people who like cruise ships and all-inclusives on the Riviera Maya - keep going there! For those who want the real Mexico and can get into the relaxed mode to enjoy it - welcome.