Hola, amigo! Vacation in Mexico, not all-inclusive

We just got back from our trip to Mexico, and as per tradition, I’m writing a post about how we spent our time there and how much it all cost.

Why Mexico

I’ve always had mixed feelings about choosing Mexico as a vacation destination. Most people go there for all-inclusive resorts, and we’re not really into that. A big part of our vacations is exploring nature, but I was always told that it’s unsafe to rent a car in Mexico and drive around on your own. Because of that, we always avoided going there.

Originally, we planned to go to Thailand to meet up with family, but that didn’t work out, so we had to pick a closer destination. But we really wanted a warm tropical vacation with a warm sea!

There aren’t that many direct flights from Vancouver to such places; basically, it’s either Hawaii (USA) or Cancún (Mexico). There’s also Mexico’s western coast, but that’s the Pacific Ocean, which isn’t that warm in that area—it’s nothing like the Caribbean Sea.

Hawaii, as usual, turned out to be very expensive in terms of accommodations. But after asking around, including Mexican friends, we realized that renting a car in Mexico isn’t as scary as it seems. At some point, I opened Airbnb for Playa del Carmen (not far from Cancún), and for the same price that would get us a questionable one-bedroom place in Hawaii, we could rent a two-bedroom apartment with an amazing ocean view and a great location. So, we chose Mexico! I can’t say it was a super cheap vacation, but it wasn’t more expensive than our 2021 trip to Banff, and it was slightly more expensive than Hawaii.

Choosing the Location

This was probably the easiest step. Cancún is mostly full of all-inclusive hotels, so we ruled it out immediately. Tulum seemed beautiful, but after reading Reddit, I realized that it’s full of tourist scams and is generally very expensive. Playa del Carmen turned out to be the perfect middle ground, plus we got tons of recommendations from friends who had vacationed there a couple of times.

We ruled out Mexico’s west coast due to the cold ocean. We really wanted to swim in warm water and hoped that Sam would finally start to enjoy being in the water, haha.

Flights

Of course, we got sick a couple of weeks before the trip, but we were sure we’d recover in time. In the end, we flew while still half-sick, and I got hit with an awful pain that started in my nose, ran through my eye, and down to my teeth. Advil didn’t help, so D. ran around the plane looking for Tylenol. No one had any. After 30 minutes of searching, a kind woman asked if I was looking for medicine for a child. When D. said no, that the mom had a terrible headache, she offered some T3 tablets—Tylenol with caffeine and codeine (which is actually an opioid painkiller). Oh, those pre-Sam days when I thought I’d never take such strong painkillers, hahaha. Two pills later, I felt better, though later I did have a bit of a mental crisis about taking them, haha.

Flight cost: $779 CAD per person, so $1,550 CAD for two (kids under two fly for free).

This was a direct flight from Vancouver to Cancun during a popular season. We arrived on a Monday evening. Reddit warns about long passport control lines in Mexico, but we got through in about 10 minutes. There’s no priority line for families with kids.

Getting to and from the airport in Vancouver: $80 CAD. This time, we used Yellow Cab, which costs the same as Uber but is guaranteed to show up if booked in advance. Our flight was early in the morning, so we had to leave at 5 AM. In Vancouver, Yellow Cab has a fixed price for airport trips. We could have taken the SkyTrain, but it doesn’t go to Kitsilano, and dragging ourselves (and a toddler) to the train and then taking a bus at 5 AM didn’t seem fun. On the way back, we landed at 11 PM, so again, not the best time for public transport.

Accommodation

Cost: $3,238 CAD for 9 nights.

We splurged on this one, haha. We could have rented a cheaper one-bedroom, but I saw an amazing two-bedroom apartment with an insane ocean view in a perfect location—right on the edge of the tourist zone and close to different beaches. The price was the same as the tiny studio we once rented on Vancouver Island, so we decided to go for it. Since I was comparing it to Hawaii at the time, it actually seemed very reasonable for such high quality, so I didn’t think twice (though maybe I should have, lol).

Unfortunately, Sam had the worst luck—his crib looked very old and uncomfortable. But he handled it like a champ, so huge thanks to him.

Food

We mostly ate at small local cafes—something in between touristy and authentic. The food was delicious, varied, and reasonably priced.

Americans, though, have completely spoiled the locals when it comes to tipping. In some places, they would literally shove the payment terminal in our faces with a tipping screen already set up. But if it was a small family-run place, they didn’t do that.

Touristy restaurants were at least twice as expensive. We ate at one restaurant in the tourist zone once—it was beautifully decorated like a jungle, but the food was mediocre, and we paid twice as much as usual for a smaller portion. Our usual meals were tacos, burritos, grilled chicken with vegetables, and fresh fruit smoothies. We had breakfast at home.

On average:

• Lunch average cost: 300 MXN ($20 CAD)
• Dinner average cost: 450 MXN ($31 CAD)
• Fresh coconuts: 35 MXN ($2.40 CAD) each—we drank them daily.

Total food costs:

• Groceries (including diapers for Sam & beer for us): $257 CAD
• Eating out: $712 CAD

Language

Almost no one spoke English, so we had to rely on hand gestures and broken Spanish. By the end of the trip, we actually learned a few words, haha. Mexicans reminded me of Russians who don’t speak English: they assumed that if you just spoke loudly and slowly in Spanish, non-Spanish speakers would magically understand. Somehow, I did manage to understand some things.

Activities

Beaches

Every morning, we went to the sea to a super nice little beach. This beach was a 20-minute walk from our home, but we liked it because it had showers, a toilet, free stationary umbrellas, and the beach itself was clean. In general, all the beaches were constantly cleaned of seaweed, so that wasn’t an issue. On weekends, this beach was hugely popular among locals, who love blasting Bluetooth speakers with all sorts of local and not-so-local pop music (which drives me crazy!). I usually went up to them and showed a ChatGPT-translated text asking them to lower the volume or turn it off. In general, people agreed, but the only problem was that behind me was always Sam, dancing, haha. It’s hard to ask people to turn down the music so we could enjoy the sound of the waves when our child is in the background dancing and vibing to their music.

The staff at this beach was funny; they all had a strong security-guard mentality, especially one woman. She always made sure not a single extra drop of water was spilled in the showers. Once, when Sam was playing with the water while I was trying to rinse my feet, she immediately ran up and asked me to turn off the water.

This beach also had an accessible wooden walkway so that people in wheelchairs and with strollers could get a little closer to the sea without walking through the sand. But this walkway was regularly cleaned of sand and then closed off so that no one would walk on it and spread sand around (on a beach, lol), even people with strollers—like us! Once, I asked them to open the walkway, but they pointed to a sign that said it was for people with disabilities only! And we, with our stroller and baby, could easily walk through the sand. Generally, we found this whole situation hilarious.

Other beaches were also clean, but they were much more crowded (since they were closer to the tourist zone) and didn’t have showers.

Cenotes

Cenotes are small karst lakes, often turquoise in color, mostly found in caves. They form when the ground collapses over an underground river, making it slightly less underground. There are a lot of cenotes in this region, and I had dreamed of visiting one for a long time. They are indeed beautiful, but what we didn’t like is that it’s an incredibly commercialized attraction. Every cenote is a privately owned piece of land that charges an entrance fee (starting at 150 MXN and going up infinitely—we saw prices as high as 1,500 MXN). Because these are small plots of land, there’s no real hiking or jungle exploring, which we love. Basically, you arrive, pay for entry, swim/look around, leave, and go to another cenote, pay again, and repeat.

If instead of this setup, there were national parks—even paid ones—where you could pay once and spend the whole day, it would have been much nicer and more interesting. That’s how we explored the jungles in Belize, Thailand, and Hawaii.

Also, as always, Americans have ruined even cenotes with their tipping culture. Tips are expected everywhere, even for visiting nature, so locals now expect tips from everyone. For example, in one cenote, we swam through a cave with a guide for four minutes. Another group, consisting of American women, immediately started discussing whether to tip $10 or $20 per person after exiting the water. For four minutes of swimming in an already paid-for cenote!

So yeah, cenotes are pretty, but they aren’t worth the money, at least those small ones. And there’s basically nowhere to hike in the jungle in this region.

To be fair, there is something resembling a giant park, run by the company Xcaret— the one with everything branded with “X”. But it’s more of a Disneyland-style network than a national park. It’s the most Americanized type of tourism, words can’t describe it. Just driving past, seeing a dozen of their hotels around cenotes and water parks, plus their ads literally every hundred meters along the Cancun-Playa highway, was enough to keep us away from any of their parks.

In total, we spent $101 CAD on the four cenotes we visited.

Mayan Pyramids

A lot of people go to see the Mayan pyramids. We decided to skip them this time because we had already seen many in Belize, and walking around in the heat with a toddler didn’t seem appealing. Also, it was nice to listen to and read about the history in English-speaking Belize, and we weren’t too eager to decipher signs in Spanish.

Car Rental

Everyone warned me against renting a car in Mexico: police demand bribes, roads are bad, and drivers are reckless. If you were born and raised in the U.S. or Canada, that might sound scary. But do you think that would scare someone who grew up in the post-Soviet world? 😆

We decided that a car was necessary to explore the area. Plus, my Irish friend had just returned from vacation and recommended a local car rental company called Localiza, we had a great experience with them. In the end, no one stopped us, but yeah, the driving is a bit chaotic. Still, no worse than in Belize, Thailand, or some parts of Russia, lol.

Final costs:

• Gas: $60 CAD
• Rental: $387 CAD, including mandatory third-party liability insurance. We had our own insurance through a credit card.

Other Expenses

This time, instead of Airalo, we tried a new app, MobiMatter (promocode NATYX37204). The rates were slightly cheaper. I constantly used Google Maps, which eats up data like crazy. Plus, the Airbnb had crappy Wi-Fi, so I had to use mobile data.

Total cost for mobile service: $51 CAD for both of us.

We mostly paid with a credit card. Yes, there was a small transaction fee from the bank, but overall, it was still the best option. We withdrew cash a couple of times from an ATM with a $5 CAD fee. Withdrawing local currency from an ATM is cheaper than bringing cash and exchanging it at currency exchange offices. The key is to decline the ATM’s currency conversion offer because their rate is 15-20% worse than the market rate.

Also, in Mexico, almost everything can be bought over the counter at a pharmacy. We flew out while feeling a bit sick, and after the flight, I developed an ear infection. I immediately bought the drops that usually help me. We also bought a few other things.

Total pharmacy expenses: $50 CAD.

Traveling with a Toddler

Haha, traveling with a toddler is a unique kind of fun. Though at 15 months, maybe he’s not a full-fledged toddler yet, but he’s getting there fast. Our son is generally very active and incredibly social. The flight there was six hours, and he napped for just one of them. The rest of the time, he ran up and down the plane, waving at everyone. We were already exhausted from the airport since he kept running away from us everywhere, so by the time we got on the plane, we were completely drained, lol. But overall, it wasn’t too bad.

As far as the vacation itself, I think it went as well as it could. Sam absolutely loved the sand and was hugging everyone on the beach. He probably hugged around ten strangers a day. Mexicans seem to really love kids—teenagers, men, women, everyone played with him, shared their toys, etc. So, our super social child was happy, and we were at peace. There were no issues with food in Mexico—chicken is everywhere, and he loves it. For example, my friend struggled a bit with her kid on a trip to Maui, Hawaii, because most of the food there is raw fish (poke), and it was hard to find meals for a toddler.

Of course, we really missed having some downtime. The only time we got to relax was when he was sleeping, just like at home. The first few days, we couldn’t understand why we even thought it was a good idea to go on vacation without grandma, haha. At one point, we saw our neighbors arrive with two kids and TWO grandmas—now that’s proper vacation planning! But after a couple of days, we got used to it, fell into some kind of routine, and it didn’t feel as hard. Plus, he fell in love with the sea and the sand, as well as the stroller, which he usually refuses to sit in at home, so we could actually go for walks. The only downside—he wanted to go out for a walk as soon as he woke up at 6, sometimes even at 5 AM. But at some point, you just get used to the constant screaming—it turns into a kind of white noise.

Some people told us that there’s no point in spending money on a vacation because traveling with a baby or a toddler isn’t really a vacation. But I wouldn’t say that’s true. It’s an amazing change of scenery, which I personally REALLY needed. And it’s still nice to swim, explore, and see new places, even if relaxing physically is nearly impossible with a little human attached to you.

The flight back was tougher. Not so much the flight itself but the waiting beforehand. We decided to go into the business lounge since we had access, and Sam immediately started destroying everything and bothering everyone. We couldn’t sit still for a second. The people in the lounge were so uptight, as if they hadn’t just been on vacation! Almost no one waved back at him, and he got sad. The only exception was a small group of African American guys who were super positive and played along with him—huge respect to them! But D. and I were so exhausted that we downed five margaritas between the two of us, haha. The first three hours of the flight, he was running up and down the plane again, but then he finally crashed for the night, and life got easier. 😀

Total cost of the trip: $6666 CAD. A devilish vacation, haha.

Thoughts on Mexico

I can’t speak for all of Mexico—it’s a huge country—but overall, I really enjoyed vacationing in Playa del Carmen at this stage of life. If it weren’t for the lack of hiking options in the jungle, it would’ve been perfect! The Caribbean Sea is unbelievably warm, and swimming in it is pure joy. We felt very safe—honestly, I’d say safer than in downtown Vancouver. The locals are friendly as long as you’re not in super touristy areas (there, they’re really pushy about selling stuff, which I don’t like). Americans have definitely ruined the region, but oh well—people say the same thing about Russians in Thailand, lol. Renting a car isn’t scary, the food is delicious and affordable.

Now I really want to go to Mexico City and see a more authentic side of Mexico—its architecture and culture. I’m also really glad we didn’t do an all-inclusive (which, by the way, we couldn’t find cheaper than $6-7k for some reason). Staying in one room with a toddler, eating hotel food, and hanging around the same pool all day? No, thank you. Overall, I loved the trip, and I already want to go back to the ocean!