(and getting around)
Since we live in a smaller city, every trip includes a jump to a regional hub. Upon researching the options, the travel time and cost all increased significantly if we flew from home. Much to my wife’s chagrin, I purchased tickets that started from Seattle and committed us to the 3-hour drive to start things off with a bang. Even with the drive, we still cut hours off the total travel time. Since our departure was in the evening, we elected to reserve parking near the airport so we could drop the car and go. Our kids that lived away from home were able to join us in Seattle and we could all make the flight down together.
A RED-EYE?
Starting a vacation as a family with a red-eye flight isn’t really a great idea, but it was one of our only options for a direct flight. It also made staying awake in church the next day a real adventure! Some may question the decision to start our trip with a red-eye flight, but it actually worked out very well. We arrived with a full day to begin our adventures and most got at least some sleep. The rental car experience derailed our plans slightly (more on that later), but we recovered and got on our way.
Rental Headaches
Because the plan was to get out and see more than the normal tourist sites, we decided to rent a car. A word of warning about cars in Mexico: your insurance from the US will almost certainly not work and nor will your credit card that supplies rental insurance. I read many horror stories of rental agencies that resulted in significant upcharges and thought I had things figured out. Nope! The van I had reserved was almost 50% more when we picked it up from the agency. We had rented through what turned out to be a third party (Fox) and picked it up from Europcar.
The rental car experience was a bit of a mess. They didn’t have any large enough vans available, despite our having one reserved. Also ran into issues with the insurance plan for the van.
I think some of the issues with insurance and availability of the vehicle could have been corrected if we had rented directly from the agency and not through a separate party (then again, maybe not). They did agree to bring our van to us that evening. It made me a little nervous to accept that offer, but we didn’t have much choice and it worked out well eventually.
Driving in Mexico
Driving in Mexico was not a challenge, except for my wife’s nerves. The roads were a little rough and not always marked the best, but with navigation on my phone, it went relatively smoothly. Gas was more expensive than home (about 24 pesos a liter) and came out to over $5 a gallon when I was paying $4.50 at home. We always had our fuel pumped for us and it was fine. There had been scams in the past of not having your pump zeroed out when fueling was started and getting charged for gas that wasn’t dispensed to you. We were able to pay with pesos, dollars, or a card at the pump and never had issues with change but have heard of others who had attendants try to dispute the bills handed over by switching large bills for smaller in a slight of hand.
Highways were generally 100 km/hr, and we had good experiences with toll and free roads. The toll roads were generally in better condition than the free roads, but be advised that there is often very little space for merging on entering on either toll or free roads.
