The Mexico Guides

About The Mexico Guides

Mexico is enormous - thirty-two states, thousands of kilometres of coastline, dozens of indigenous cultures, and a food scene that operates on a completely different level to what most visitors expect. Planning a trip here means making hard choices: CDMX or Oaxaca? Yucatán Peninsula or Pacific coast? Two weeks is not enough to scratch the surface. We built The Mexico Guides to help with those choices - not by ranking destinations in a top-ten list, but by giving each place the space it needs so you can figure out what actually suits your trip. Our coverage spans Condesa and Coyoacán in Mexico City, Oaxaca's markets and mezcal bars, Mérida and Chichén Itzá on the Yucatán Peninsula, and the Pacific surf breaks around Puerto Escondido.

Who writes this site

The Mexico Guides is produced by three contributors with distinct regional expertise:

  • Our Mexico City food and culture writer lived in Condesa for fourteen months and has since returned on five research trips. She has eaten through Coyoacán's Mercado de Antojitos methodically enough to map which stalls have consistent tlayuda quality and which rely on tourist turnover. Her CDMX guides cover the neighbourhood differences clearly: Condesa is walkable, café-dense, and expensive; Roma Norte is more residential with better mezcalerías; Xochimilco requires a half-day and advance planning for the trajinera experience to work. She also covers Mexico City's museum circuit - the Museo Nacional de Antropología, the Museo Frida Kahlo, and the lesser-visited Museo del Templo Mayor - with practical entry and timing details.
  • Our Yucatán and Mayan heritage researcher has visited Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, Tulum, and Cobá across four separate trips, including two timed specifically to arrive at Chichén Itzá before the tour buses from Cancún at 9am. He has documented the cenote access situation around the Yucatán Peninsula - which cenotes are genuinely natural swimming spots, which charge inflated prices for a rope-ladder descent into a concrete pool, and which require advance booking. His Mérida coverage is the best on the site: the city's Sunday paseo, the Mercado Lucas de Gálvez, and the French-influenced architecture of Paseo de Montejo all get proper treatment.
  • Our Pacific coast and outdoor adventures editor covers Mazunte, Puerto Escondido, and the Oaxacan coast. She has surfed Zicatela at Puerto Escondido - a genuine big-wave beach that is not appropriate for beginners - and covered the safer breaks at Playa Carrizalillo a kilometre to the west. Her Oaxaca City guides cover the food scene without resorting to mole generalisations: the difference between negro, coloradito, and amarillo, which markets serve them properly, and why the mezcal you buy at the Mercado Benito Juárez is a different product from what you taste at a distillery in Santiago Matatlán.

Mexico City and the Yucatán: what we found

In Mexico City, the practical gap between neighbourhoods matters. A coffee in Condesa costs 80–120 pesos; the same quality in Doctores costs 45 pesos. The Metro runs to nearly every neighbourhood worth visiting and costs 5 pesos per ride as of 2025 - using it rather than Uber for most daytime journeys saves money and is often faster. The Bosque de Chapultepec is free to enter; the Museo Nacional de Antropología inside costs approximately 90 pesos for foreign visitors and requires two to three hours minimum to cover the Aztec, Maya, and Teotihuacán halls properly.

In the Yucatán, the cenote situation requires clarity. The Ik Kil cenote adjacent to Chichén Itzá is heavily managed and expensive (around USD 15 in 2025). The cenotes around Valladolid - Cenote Zací in town, and Cenote Dzitnup a short tuk-tuk ride away - are more affordable and less crowded. Tulum's cenotes are genuinely excellent but now require advance booking at most sites. We name specific cenotes, their access costs, and the transport logistics to reach them from the nearest town.

Our editorial standards

Every article on The Mexico Guides follows a three-stage process:

  • We visit in person before writing. If we cannot do that, we clearly indicate the guide is desk-researched and note the sources used. No recommendation is made from secondhand accounts alone.
  • We verify every time-sensitive figure against the relevant official source before publication. Entry requirements and immigration rules are checked against the Instituto Nacional de Migración (gob.mx/inm). Destination-level tourism data is cross-referenced with SECTUR, the Secretaría de Turismo (gob.mx/sectur). Seasonal weather windows are referenced against the Servicio Meteorológico Nacional (smn.conagua.gob.mx). Archaeological site entry fees are confirmed with INAH (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia) where relevant.
  • We update pages when conditions change. Mexico's tourism sector reprices frequently, and regional security situations shift. Core destination guides are reviewed every twelve months; practical guides covering entry requirements and transport are reviewed every six months.

Safety information is sourced from official advisories and stated plainly. Mexico's security situation varies significantly by region, and blanket statements - positive or negative - are unhelpful. Our guides include specific, current safety notes where they matter.

How we keep the lights on

The Mexico Guides is independently run and funded in part through affiliate links. If you book a tour or activity through one of our links, we earn a small commission at no added cost to you. We never recommend something solely because it pays a commission. Full details are on our affiliate disclosure page.

Get in touch

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