There are so many stories about travelling in Mexico that we thought we’d put together a summary of our time there.  We spent six months in total, from September to March, travelling the length of Baja from Tecate before heading to the mainland where we turned south, then east across the Yucatán peninsula and finally exiting Mexico into Belize.

Security

Probably the first thought for anyone thinking of driving to Mexico – we had plenty of warnings about cartels and corrupt police!  We do take our safety seriously and set ourselves up to receive warnings from the UK Foreign Office to receive security updates on the country via email.  We also had a map of the country downloaded from both the UK and Australian governments to give us a visual image of the areas to be avoided due to cartel activity.

The police and military are highly visible and we’d see pick up trucks carrying armed personnel on a daily basis.  Checks on the road are common but we were not stopped very often and when we were, we were asked a couple of routine questions before being waived on.  

We had a plan between us for dealing with any difficult situations but we can gladly say that we never had to use them and felt safe for our entire time in Mexico.  

Roads and driving 

It’s safe to say that covering long distances in a motorhome in Mexico takes far more time than any sat-nav will tell you.  The toll roads are not too bad but other than that expect roads littered with potholes and topes (speed bumps).

Fuel stations are plentiful and we’d heard plenty of stories of scams operated by the attendants.  We almost exclusively used Pemex because their diesel was ultra low sulphur and they accepted credit cards.  One of the scams involves not zeroing the pump but the attendants we met usually pointed out that the pump showed zero.  They also bought the card machine to us so our card was never out of our sight.

Weather

Along the coasts it was either very hot or very hot and humid with nighttime temperatures of 23° to 28°C.However by heading inland and getting up into the mountains we found the perfect combination of warm days and cool nights.

Shopping

It’s probably quite shameful to say that we mostly shopped in Walmart and Costco, mostly because it was easy and we knew what we were getting. We did top up in some local markets but was a bit hit and miss with the small stores as to what stock they carried.

Food

We loved the food here and as it was so cheap, we ate out often.  We also learned not to be put off by the appearance of a place – we had some great food out of small family restaurants that you could easily walk past. 

Water

Even the locals don’t drink the tap water in Mexico and instead buy large 20l garrafones of water from a purification shop.  We were able to find plenty that had hoses so we could fill the tank directly.  We spent about £10 a month on water and we use the water from our tank for everything in the van – drinking, cooking, washing up and showers.  We do have a filter system and everything that comes out of our taps is filtered so in a few places we did fill up on campsites without any issues.

Campsites

Most of our favourite campsites were run by Europeans and former travellers – they know from experience what makes a good place to stay.  That’s not to say that non-European run sites were bad (some were exceptional), they were just different – usually not so well organised or maintained to such high standards but there’s nowhere we would not go back to.

For those with cassette toilets, dump stations are rare; we have a separating toilet which makes things a lot easier and emptied our grey tank on wasteland away from towns and rivers. 

Van storage 

We came home to the UK for a short visit and left our van on a campsite without any problems.  Many campsites offer this service. 

In Mexico we had a 10 year Temporary Import Permit as we are registered as a Motorhome on our registration document. We did not need to suspend our TIP.