Mexico

Our Honest Guide to Mexico: 33 Days from Mexico City to the Jungle

Mexico ended up being one of the longest single-country stretches of the whole trip, 33 days this time around, on top of three weeks in the Yucatán the year before. Here's the route we took and what actually stood out.

Mexico City: Day of the Dead

We landed right in the middle of Día de los Muertos, which meant flower markets thick with marigolds, giant skeleton displays in the main square (the same one used in that James Bond helicopter scene), and a parade with tacos al pastor eaten streetside as the floats went by. We also discovered a local bakery where you pile pastries onto a tray, we underloaded ours the first time, embarrassed ourselves, and came back properly stocked every day after that. A day trip to Teotihuacán delivered genuinely awe-inspiring pyramids, and also, unfortunately, food poisoning, most likely from a tourist-trap salsa near the ruins.

Puebla and Cholula: A Pretty town and a Pyramid

Once we'd recovered enough to venture out, nearby Cholula was worth the wait: a Mayan pyramid so overgrown the Spanish mistook it for a hill and built a church on top, meaning it can never now be excavated. The town square gave us an unplanned but spectacular Voladores performance, four men descending a pole tied by rope, spinning upside down against a backdrop of volcano and church.

Oaxaca: The Food Capital

Oaxaca lived up to its food reputation. A street food tour covered twelve local dishes including crickets and Oaxacan chocolate, and a full-day tour took in the world's widest tree, traditional candle and textile workshops, the petrified waterfalls at Hierve el Agua, and a mezcal distillery where we picked up a pistachio mezcal to save for New Year's.

Mazunte: The Coastal Reset

After weeks of moving constantly, Mazunte gave us an actual week to just stop. A £16 boat trip delivered close-up humpback whales and hundreds of dolphins, one of the best value experiences of the entire trip. Beach evenings, a hilltop sunset hike, and a laid-back village vibe made this one of our favourite stretches in Mexico.

Chacahua: Off the Beaten Path, On Purpose

Only 15km up the coast from Mazunte, but a seven-hour journey across seven separate legs of transport to get there, buses, boats, and a fair amount of stubbornness at bus stations that tried to overcharge us for our backpacks. A 45-minute boat ride through mangroves at sunset was one of the most peaceful moments of the whole trip. Chacahua itself, a remote Afro-Mexican village with intermittent electricity and patchy phone signal, felt genuinely cut off from everything. Worth the effort, though we'll admit we debated whether to even write about it, it's the kind of place that stays special partly because so few people make it there.

San Cristóbal de las Casas: Our Favourite Stop in Mexico

This one surprised us. San Cristóbal, in the more Mayan, less-visited Chiapas region, became our favourite place in the country, more than Oaxaca, which most backpackers rave about. A genuinely excellent walking tour covered the town's history and the Zapatista movement, and we found ourselves returning again and again to the same hillside café for smoothies. We seriously considered staying on for a week of Spanish lessons here before logistics ruled it out.

Palenque: Ruins, a Guide Named Victor, and a Bus Breakdown

The journey in wasn't fun, a bus breakdown added two hours to an already long ride. But the ruins themselves, and a local guide named Victor who talked us down to half price and then led us deep into the jungle to hidden temples most tourists never see, made it one of the most memorable archaeological visits of the trip. We finished with a swim at Roberto Barrios waterfalls, turquoise pools, howler monkeys overhead, and barely another tourist in sight.

Mexico gave us some of the best value experiences of the entire trip (that £16 whale watching tour still stands out) and some of the worst luck (food poisoning cost us several days in Puebla). If there's one lesson, it's that the places requiring the most effort to reach, Chacahua especially, tended to be the ones we remember most.