Tips
for traveling in Mexico
By
Stephanie Bernhagen
Roads
and maps
Communications
Insurance
Language
Highlights
We traveled to Mexico with our rig for the first time
this winter. What an adventure! I would recommend you not even consider
going without Church's Traveler's Guide to Mexican
Camping. I don't know
how you would ever find the campgrounds without this book!
Plan on spending $11 to $22 a night for campgrounds that
often do not have sufficient power to safely plug in. We dumped 5 gallon
jugs of purified water in our tanks. Using the public showers helped
conserve our water. Some of our group used tap water with bleach added and
had no problem.
You do need to get stickers for your motorized vehicles
and tourist visas when you visit Mexico. This is time consuming, confusing
and a hassle. And you have to return them when you leave Mexico or they
may not let you in the next time you want to visit. Church's book also
gives you good information on crossing the border.
There are a lot of restrictions on what food you can
take across the border. Check before you go to see what the restrictions
are at the time. Beef was the big one this time, but we also had been told
no chicken, pork, eggs and most produce items. But don't worry, grocery
stores in the larger communities were as good or better than many of those
in the states. Markets, which are in the downtown areas, varied a lot. We
would buy produce, fish and cheese at some and not touch it at others. You
will know which ones you feel comfortable buying at.
We had been told to take paper products as they were not
as good in Mexico. We took toilet paper, but bought paper towels and
Kleenex in Mexico. The Kleenex was okay, but the paper towels were not
great. Napkins are also much smaller than what we get in the US. I guess
they don't make as much of a mess when they eat as we do!
We also found we could not buy good pickles in Mexico.
Salad dressing was limited in choice and came in very small bottles.
Peanut butter also only came in small containers and only came in creamy.
Produce is priced by the kg, which is 2.2 pounds. The cost of produce was
very inexpensive and meat was generally less than in the US. You do need
to soak produce in a product like Microdyn, which you can buy at any
grocery store. I took a bucket just for soaking produce so I could recycle
the water Microdyn solution for several bunches of produce.
ROADS AND MAPS
Roads are something else to consider when going to
Mexico. There are libres or free roads and cuotas or toll roads. We had
three motorhomes and two fifth-wheels in our group. The motorhomes quickly
decided they wanted to travel the cuotas as they were struggling with
rougher, narrower roads. The topes, speed bumps, were especially hard for
the motorhomes and most towns had topes. The topes were better marked than
I expected, but you still had to watch closely because there were topes
that were not marked and were hard to see in some towns. The cuotas took
vehicles around the towns. The drawback was they were expensive, some as
much as $1 for every three miles.
Paul and I traveled the libres almost the entire time.
We wanted to experience the country and felt like we would miss a great
deal by traveling the cuotas. The only time we had a major problem with
things shifting was actually when we traveled on a cuota that was rough.
Maps are not like US maps. We would look at different
maps and no two maps have the same highway number for the same road. And
none of the maps agreed with the signs on the actual highway either. One
of the couples traveling with us got a Mexican Atlas from Amazon.com. It's
in English this way instead of Spanish if you wait until you get to
Mexico. It gave more detail than a foldout map and helped a great deal
with the big cites. Money well spent. You also need to know which towns
are on the route you are traveling because signs tell you where the road
goes by town names. The signs are not consistent with which town goes on
the sign for a particular route so one may say one town and the next may
say another town.
Another driving tip is being aware that the left turn
signal is often used to help the person behind you pass. We thought this
would be confusing, but it was a huge help both for us and those behind
us, on the libres. You also need to be alert to where left turns are made
from. Some are made just like in the US and others are made from the right
hand lane or a special road to the right of the road you are traveling.
This didn't cause a problem, as long as you were alert to what the method
of turning left was in the different areas.
Some parks offered laundry service where you drop it off
in the morning and get it back in the afternoon. We enjoyed letting
someone else do this chore! It was interesting to find you had to pay to
park as some of grocery stores and even Sam's Club in Mazatlan! And if you
didn't have to pay to park you were expected to tip the parking lot
attendant who goes around blowing a whistle helping you find a parking
spot and get in and out of the parking lot. More often than not you were
also expected to pay a few pesos to use the bathroom.
COMMUNICATIONS
Communications with the US were easier than we expected.
Before you go to Mexico you should do two things.
We also did e-mail several times a week at Internet
cafés. Even the smallest communities normally had an Internet café and
some RV Parks had a computer or two available. The cost was generally $1
to $2.50 an hour. I generally did some e-mail in MS Word on my computer
and put it on a floppy disk to transfer into e-mail at the Internet café.
This was a real time saver. It also gave me a method of copying e-mails I
wanted to read later. One couple traveling with us took their computer to
the Internet café and connected via an Ethernet cable. Two others used
PocketMail with their calling cards.
Several of us were concerned about elderly parents in the US. One of the
couples traveling with us had a daughter who teaches Spanish, so she was
recruited to act as a go between for our parents and us if they needed to
call us at a campground that did not speak English. While we never needed
to use this resource we traveled with fewer worries.
Insurance
As a minimum you will need to get liability insurance
for your rig and tow/toad vehicle. Prices vary from company to company.
Know what you have for coverage in the US and be sure you confirm it by
reading the policy yourself. One of the couples traveling with us had been
told they had comprehensive in Mexico for their tow truck by their US
insurance company. Just before leaving she read the policy and discovered
that wasn't they case.
Also check out what the Mexico insurance policy offers
in travelers assistance coverage. Paul's mother died while we were in
Mexico. His plane ticket home was $1200 and it took 3 days to get a flight
out of Mazatlan. While we are still trying to process this cost through
our travel assistance coverage - which added an additional $20 to the
policy - it appears we will be reimbursed. Another friend’s mother died
while she was in Mazatlan and their Mexico policy did not have this
coverage.
Language?
You do not need to speak Spanish to travel in Mexico,
although it would make your trip much richer. We carried a Spanish -
English dictionary in the truck and would look up what signs said as we
traveled. We found that we didn't pronounce Spanish correctly in the
Mexican's eyes. Therefore it was often easier to translate our questions
on a piece of paper and let the person we were talking to read it. The
Mexicans were very kind about trying to communicate with us, and even
helping us learn a few words. It was quite an experience to speak in a
combination of Spanish, English and hand language. We only had one time
when we didn't get what we ordered in 6 weeks however. What was really
strange was when someone would speak to me in English and I automatically
responded in Spanish before it hit me I had been spoken to in English.
Highlights
Here are just a few of our highlights:
From Creel we drove to Batopilas at the bottom of the
canyon. The road to Batopilas is 64 kilometers of gravel, which is easily
driven with a high clearance vehicle. However if you are not comfortable
narrow rough roads with steep drop offs you may want to consider hiring a
guide to take you down. (To read the full account go to A trip down Copper Canyon)
While we didn't, you can take the train from Creel to El
Fuerte and back. Some people really enjoy this trip and others feel it is
much too long. However you can break it up by stopping in a couple
communities along the way though. The train is inexpensive at $50 for the
first class train and $25 for the second class train one-way if you buy
the ticket yourself. If you buy a package it will cost a lot more.
Will we return to Mexico? Probably someday. It took 10
years for Paul to get brave enough to go, but the very first day we both
knew we would be okay traveling alone in Mexico. It isn't necessary to
spend the big bucks to go with a caravan, just go with a few friends who
have been before and who you know will stick with you until you feel
comfortable. The experience is well worth the challenges you will face!
Back to A trip down Copper Canyon
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