Planning A Trip To Mexico
- Thread starter Dubversion
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sheothebudworths
Up the bum - no babies!!!
))) JTG 
(((
(((i got it 
sheothebudworths
Up the bum - no babies!!!
((( JTG ))).
))).
sheothebudworths
Up the bum - no babies!!!
Morning! 
sheothebudworths
Up the bum - no babies!!!
It always makes me giggle when I have to phone up a helpline or the like and they say 'Good morning, British Gas, this is Jan speaking, how may I help you?' and it's 4 in the afternoon.
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sleaterkinney
Well-Known Member
Mexico is great, it took me about five minutes out of the airport to love the place. 
Oaxaca is great, lots of good(mexican) nightlife there, you should try and visit Puebla as well, if you want to see ancient stuff go see the pyramids in Teotihuacan and Monte Albán. Mexico city is ok but polluted. I finished off in Puerto Escondido as well which is a nice place on the pacific, Is there anything in paticular you want to see over there?.
Oaxaca is great, lots of good(mexican) nightlife there, you should try and visit Puebla as well, if you want to see ancient stuff go see the pyramids in Teotihuacan and Monte Albán. Mexico city is ok but polluted. I finished off in Puerto Escondido as well which is a nice place on the pacific, Is there anything in paticular you want to see over there?.
chilango
Ha! Ha! Armageddon
Fly into Cancun - its cheaper.
If you fly into Mexico City - you could bus it down...or you could go to Toluca Airport (30 minutes from my part of DF) catch a cheap flight down to Cancun with Interjet (http://www.interjet.com.mx) who are an excellent low cost airline here for around 50 - 100 dollars and save yourself a 12 hour bus ride. From Cancun head south to Tulum, the Sian Kaa'n biosphere take in the cayes in belize head across the jungle in Northern Guatemala and down a river into Chiapas and then fly back to Toluca on Interjet from Tuxtla Guittierez for another 50 dollars.
Thats our plan for the summer anyway.
Safety? You`ll be fine, Chiapas is full of tourists. Friends of mine visited Oaxaca during the insurgency and had no problems. Take 1st class "lujo" buses - they`re dead comfy reasonably cheap and take the safer toll roads where you're less likely to be held up.
There are a lot of guerillas in Oaxaca and Chiapas at the moment - they do hold people up, but only to give out propaganda and maybe solicit a small "donation to the cause", but they`re not a threat to tourists.
If you fly into Mexico City - you could bus it down...or you could go to Toluca Airport (30 minutes from my part of DF) catch a cheap flight down to Cancun with Interjet (http://www.interjet.com.mx) who are an excellent low cost airline here for around 50 - 100 dollars and save yourself a 12 hour bus ride. From Cancun head south to Tulum, the Sian Kaa'n biosphere take in the cayes in belize head across the jungle in Northern Guatemala and down a river into Chiapas and then fly back to Toluca on Interjet from Tuxtla Guittierez for another 50 dollars.
Thats our plan for the summer anyway.
Safety? You`ll be fine, Chiapas is full of tourists. Friends of mine visited Oaxaca during the insurgency and had no problems. Take 1st class "lujo" buses - they`re dead comfy reasonably cheap and take the safer toll roads where you're less likely to be held up.
There are a lot of guerillas in Oaxaca and Chiapas at the moment - they do hold people up, but only to give out propaganda and maybe solicit a small "donation to the cause", but they`re not a threat to tourists.
Structaural
in Chatsubo
I went to the Yucatan peninsula and you can get to Palenque pretty quickly (24 hours from say, Tulum). Once you get the fuck away from Cancun (like a Mexican Las Vegas - Benidorm for Americans) it's beautiful, lots of Mayan ruins (Tulum has a Mayan temple almost falling into the sea). Sand made of microscopic coral - very white and doesn't conduct heat. Calm Caribbean Sea (unless you're unlucky enough to get caught in a hurricane, which happened to a friend of mine) and much to do in the interior like visit Chichen Iza, Merida, Coba and you can get to Cozumel real quickly from Playa de Carman (we started off there and travelled South).
I went for 3 weeks back in xmas 1999 and it remains one of my best holidays - we barely scratched the surface of Mexico.
I went for 3 weeks back in xmas 1999 and it remains one of my best holidays - we barely scratched the surface of Mexico.
PieEye said:
It's all good. I definitely want to make it to Oaxaca whatever we do
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Oaxaca is brilliant. I can recommend the grasshoppers. Women sell them in the streets. It's the local delicacy and makes a really tasty snack.Dubversion said:It's all good. I definitely want to make it to Oaxaca whatever we do
chilango
Ha! Ha! Armageddon
phildwyer said:
Pah!
You can get them in the mariachi bars in Garibaldi square in mexico city, full of japanese in cowboy hats.
Cuernavaca is a waste of a day imo.
I live 1 hour away and even i can`t be bothered with it.
My top 10 (non-southern) mexican towns:
1/ Amecameca
2/ Guanajuato
3/ Cuatrocienegas
4/ Veracruz
5/ Mexico City
6/ Taxco
7/ Jalcamulco
8/ Saltillo
9/ Tijuana
10/ Malinalco
avoid:
1/ Acapulco
2/ San Miguel de Allende
3/ Cuernavaca
i'm really torn with this whole trip. I don't want to do too much and while I really really want to go to oaxaca and thereabouts, I also would love to check out the bordertowns and all that.
Tough one
Tough one
Structaural
in Chatsubo
chilango said:Yup Tulum.
The cenotes are meant to be pretty cool too.
That route is becoming increasingly backpackerified though...
Yeah that's true, in our last week we couldn't find a cabana for love nor money (we slept in a rowing boat on the beach one night).
Cenotes are the underground fresh water system of Yucatan btw, they don't have any rivers, you can swim through them with scuba gear - like underwater pot-holing. Scary (for me anyway). They break through the crust with big lakes or sometimes like this:
fuck, I wanna go back now....
Structaural said:
I think I read something about them over christmas in some wonders of the world book. Whole settlements grow up round these deep sinkholes instead of on the banks of rivers. Must be some mad geology going on round there....
Had you done scuba before you did that?
Structaural
in Chatsubo
PieEye said:I'm going to eat grasshoppers and use a burro to carry my stuff instead of a backpack. I need to actually look into this trip as well - thus far I've read some Cormac McCarthy, did GCSE spanish an eon ago and like tequila
If you get into the real interior - no-one speaks anything but million-words-a-minute spanish, definitely worth brushing up on it (Look for Thomas Michel on OinK - you just listen and repeat, he's excellent oink link)
Structaural
in Chatsubo
PieEye said:
No I didn't do the scuba bit (not trained, I was supposed to do some rudimentary training one morning - but the previous tequila, mexican weed fueled night out put paid to that
. We explored the more cavey ones similar to the one pictured - absolutely amazing, beautiful, otherworldly; can almost bring tears to your eyes, we ended up deep inside the structure, the guide turned out the light and we couldn't see a thing, an almost tangible blackness - I couldn't even put a lit cigarette to my lips, I was too disorientated.I've a real passion for the Yucatan, my gf and I were making plans to go and live there and everything... then reality hit
It's still a dream of mine..We've been toying with going over Xmas so we can go for longer and take less holiday.. but i get the feeling everything rockets in price round then. Anyone know?
also - cabanas in places like Tulum
a) are they in any way secure?
b) reckon you can just roll up and get one?
also - cabanas in places like Tulum
a) are they in any way secure?
b) reckon you can just roll up and get one?
Structaural
in Chatsubo
We went early in December and came home about the 4th Jan - it really started to fill up after xmas, we came back from Palenque and couldn't find anything in that area at first (the beach is around 2 miles long in Tulum with lots of cabanas).
They're not particularly secure but lots of the owners are friendly and will watch stuff for you - we travelled as backpackers, carried everything on us (not that you need much, it's very hot, I ended up giving stuff away, like my boots for the return to England, bit crap when we got to Tulse Hill Station and I'm wearing just a mexican shirt, short and sandals in -7 degrees
We managed to find cabanas everywhere we went, we had trouble once and were about to head somewhere else when we noticed this family of about 5 build about 3 as we watched (took them about 5 hours), we went up and paid them and stayed there for 3 days - about 10 metres from the sea
But as I say after 26th December a lot of German and Italian backpackers turned up.
If you get to Tulum - try and stay at the cabanas near the ruins - it has a really big cheap fish restaurant, we were at the other end and walked there everyday, we had to proper drag ourselves away from Tulum in the end... spent a week there and then came back at the end. Bloody paradise (I've never been anywhere near Thailand, I may change my mind).
Sorry that turned into a long one, better go home now....
They're not particularly secure but lots of the owners are friendly and will watch stuff for you - we travelled as backpackers, carried everything on us (not that you need much, it's very hot, I ended up giving stuff away, like my boots for the return to England, bit crap when we got to Tulse Hill Station and I'm wearing just a mexican shirt, short and sandals in -7 degrees
We managed to find cabanas everywhere we went, we had trouble once and were about to head somewhere else when we noticed this family of about 5 build about 3 as we watched (took them about 5 hours), we went up and paid them and stayed there for 3 days - about 10 metres from the sea
But as I say after 26th December a lot of German and Italian backpackers turned up.
If you get to Tulum - try and stay at the cabanas near the ruins - it has a really big cheap fish restaurant, we were at the other end and walked there everyday, we had to proper drag ourselves away from Tulum in the end... spent a week there and then came back at the end. Bloody paradise (I've never been anywhere near Thailand, I may change my mind).
Sorry that turned into a long one, better go home now....
