It’s summer time, and the almost 3 months of holidays I’ve got, allow me to see my boyfriend, who is living in France. We get to see each other twice a year, so we make sure it’s always special and this summer won’t be the exception. Maybe another day I’ll write about the other trips we have done (mostly in France and once in Mexico as well).

In february we started thinking about our next adventure and we realized we had many things yet to see in the south of Mexico, so we started the brainstorm and a lot of beautiful spots came up to our minds. He has 3 weeks off his work (because… french <3) and even though it’s a pretty good time to go on a vacation, not everything we wanted to do could fit. At first we thought about Guadalajara, Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico DF (because one does not simply ever finish wandering about DF), Puebla, many spots in Oaxaca, some places in Chiapas we haven’t been to, and of course, Chichen Itzá and isla Holbox  which we didn’t get to see last time we went to Riviera Maya.

I even started a pinterest board with articles and ideas of each of these places

Elizabeth Elizondo SalinasMéxico MágicoFollow On

It seemed like a pretty good list, but it was too much. Getting from one city to another might take a loong time and buses sometimes are quite costly. In the end we decided Guadalajara, Guanajuato and San Miguel (along with other cities..) could make a good excuse to be back, so another time it’ll be…

Putting the dots together wasn’t easy. Most of the city-to-city transportation in the center and south of Mexico is by bus. Renting a car wasn’t an option for us, since it could be expensive and specially risky (as we were to take some overnight buses, the roads aren’t always on its best conditions, getting lost is SO easy in the “sierra”, etc). So we started doing our research. Unfortunately for carefully-planners like us, the buses scheduled for those days weren’t yet in the online system, so we had to estimate them through our Mexico’s guide book (Le guide du routard) and several internet websites. By that time we just had to make sure it was possible to reach every place we wanted to visit through public transport.

In the end, the map looked like this:

1. México DF
2. Puebla
3. Oaxaca: Cd. de Oaxaca, Monte Albán, Árbol de Tule, Teotitlán, Hierve el agua, Mazunte
4. Chiapas: Cañón del sumidero, Lagunas de Montebello, Yaxchilán, Palenque
5. Yucatán: Mérida, Valladolid, Isla Holbox

The next step was searching which hotels we’d be staying at. Once again, Mexico’s guide book was our base reference, though we thought there might be other options missing, so we took a look at trip advisor.

The type of hotel we look for is basically:

• Not luxury… because who needs cable TV or a pool when you have beautiful MÉXICO out there? We rather spend that money on local traditional foods, a tour or something
• Clean and functional (warm water pls..)
• Location: close to the center or the bus station
• With or without AC, a fan will do I guess.
• Good service (so we have to read the references of each)
• I have a special preference for the ones that have “patios” with lots of plants, flowers and somewhere to sit outside and just relax, but that would be a plus.

We spent a long time doing our research in order to choose the best option. It’s been a long process and we have just decided to change again two of the hotels so I’m still on it. After this trip I’ll be reviewing each one. I hope we get good surprises over there.

Then we would make a list of things to do, visit and eat in each city, evaluating if it was really necessary to pay for a tour, etc. This takes a looooot of reading, believe it or not. I’ve been spending the last few days reading visitor’s comments about what to do and what not to do, what to visit first, etc. So by now we’re looking forward to do the following:

In Mexico DF we will only spend two days. We’ll visit:

• The National palace
• Bellas Artes
• Alameda
• Watching the sunset at the Mirador Torre Latinoamericana
• Plaza Garibaldi
• Coyoacán (Frida Kahlo’s casa azul)
• Ride in a Trajinera at Xochimilco
• Sunset walking by Calle Regina
• Dinner at a local market

We have been to Mexico DF before, that’s why Teotihuacán, Chapultepec, etc.. aren’t in our list. Even though there are maany more things left to do in DF, we can’t spend that many days here in order to have enough time for our next destinations.

In Puebla we will only spend one day so we’ll hang around Zócalo, the cathedral and Barrio del artista, try mole (of course…)

Then we head off to Oaxaca where  we’re going to:

• Zócalo
• Museo del palacio
• Catedral
• Mercado 20 de noviembre
• Iglesia/Centro cultural Santo Domingo
• Alcalá

The 2nd day in Oaxaca we’ll take a bus to Monte Albán

The 3rd day in Oaxaca we are going to take a tour to:

• Teotitlán del valle: where they make beautiful textiles colored with natural pigments
• Árbol de Tule: The widest tree in the world, estimated to be at least 1400 years old
• Hierve el agua: A breath taking natural infinity pool

The 4th day we take a bus to Pochutla, then take a colectivo for Mazunte, where we’ll stay 3 days and visit:

• Mazunte
• The turtle preservation center
• Punta Cometa
• Tours into the the vegetation where we will be able to see crocodiles and lots of different types of birds.
• San Agustinillo Beach

After our 3 days stay in Mazunte, we will move on to Tuxtla Gutierrez. Then we are going to Chiapa de Corzo, where we’ll take a lancha to go across Cañón del Sumidero.

The next day we will go all the way south until almost reaching Guatemala, to the park Lagunas de Montebello. There are more than 50 lakes in that area, divided into two parks: Montebello and Tziscao. We’ll stay 2 days over there and we hope to see:

Parque nacional de Lagunas de Montebello:

• Agua Tinta
• Esmeralda
• La Encantada
• Ensueño
• Bosque Azul

Parque Tziscao:

• Pojoj
• Cinco Lagos
• Tziscao
• Lago internacional

Then we take a minbus that will go by the border until we reach Frontera Corozal. We’ll take a “balsa” to get to the ruins of Yaxchilán.

We take the same minibus to reach Palenque, where we will visit the ruins… which I missed last time we where there because I got the flu just before arriving

Afterwards, we’ll go to Mérida, where we’ll stay 2 days. We haven’t yet defined what we’re doing over there, but we would like to go to:

Celestún

Cenotes (we don’t know yet which cenotes are the most worthy ones, we’ll see the tour options over there)

And there in Mérida we get the last ADO bus to Valladolid. A small town between Chichen Itzá and Cancun. We’ll visit Chichen Itzá and then head off to Isla Holbox, this little paradise where we’ll spend the last 3 days of this dream trip.

So we’ve got an overall idea of what we’ll be doing, the details about what and where to eat, which tour should we hire, or even which hotel we’ll end up sleeping at will be defined throughout these weeks.

I’m really excited about seeing my boyfriend again and having the chance to get to know the roots of my culture beside him!

Later on I’ll be writing about how to pack for this (I reaaally need to figure that out….)

Have you ever visited any of these places?

Do you have any advice for us?

Thanks for reading !

Love

Liz