What a visitor's money does in Mexico: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.
Mexican Peso (MXN) · 1 EUR = 20 MXN · 1 USD = 17.6 MXN
Exchange houses (casas de cambio) in Polanco and the Centro give better rates than the airport. Carry small notes — street stalls and taxis rarely break a 500 peso note.
Avoid: Euronet, street machines in tourist areas
Use: BBVA, Banorte, Santander, Scotiabank
Withdraw inside branches or malls rather than on the street, for both rate and safety.
A short ride in Mexico City: MXN 60–140 across town — cheap
From the airport: Mexico City airport to Roma or Condesa MXN 200–350
Cheaper and much safer than a street taxi, which is the standing advice here and has been for twenty years.
Yucatecan and better here than on the coast: cochinita pibil, longaniza de Valladolid, papadzules, and lomitos. The Bazar Municipal on the plaza does all of it for nothing; the restaurants on the Calzada do it slowly and with wine.
Chiapanecan and plain: tamales in banana leaf, pozol (a cold maize drink that is an acquired taste), and the comedores on the main street. The restaurants in the jungle lodges at El Panchán do better than the town.
Highland Chiapas: sopa de pan, tamales de bola, and coffee grown a few valleys away that is some of the best in Mexico. The market for the produce, the comedores off the Real de Guadalupe for the rest, and the mercado de dulces for sweets.
Gulf seafood and the Campechano kitchen: pan de cazón (shark and black beans in tortillas), camarones al coco, and pámpano. The market for breakfast, and the restaurants on Calle 59 for the evening.
This is the point of the trip. Seven moles, tlayudas the size of a bicycle wheel, chapulines — toasted grasshoppers with lime and chilli — and quesillo, the string cheese. Eat in the market comedores. Mezcal here is not a cocktail ingredient; it is sipped, and the good ones are not exported.
The reason to come. Cochinita pibil from a market stall before nine; sopa de lima; papadzules; relleno negro; and panuchos in the evening on the plaza. Eat at Lucas de Gálvez market and at the small places in Santiago rather than on the Paseo.
Simple and good: panuchos and salbutes from the plaza in the evening, fish from the lagoon, and marquesitas — a crisp rolled crêpe with cheese, which sounds wrong and is not. The restaurants on the Costera charge for the view.
Oaxacan cooking that arrived at the coast: tlayudas at night, pescado a la talla, and the market at Rinconada. The Zicatela strip is priced for visitors; the comedores in the old town are not.
Mole poblano was invented in a convent here; chiles en nogada in the autumn, when the pomegranates come; cemitas from the market; and camotes for afterwards. Eat at the Mercado del Carmen and on the Callejón de los Sapos.
Enchiladas mineras, the miners’ dish; guacamaya, a pork-rind sandwich with salsa; and strawberries with cream from carts in the Jardín. The market at Hidalgo for the rest.
Torta ahogada — a pork sandwich drowned in chilli sauce — is the city’s, and it is eaten standing up. Birria, carne en su jugo, and tejuino from a cart. Chapultepec and Santa Tere for the modern end.
Shrimp, in every form, from the Pacific’s biggest shrimp port: aguachile, tacos gobernador (which was invented here), and pescado zarandeado. The Mercado Pino Suárez in the morning; the Plazuela Machado in the evening.
Pozole verde on a Thursday, which is the town’s weekly institution; jumiles, a stink bug eaten live or ground into salsa, for the brave; and the fondas around the plaza. The restaurants with the view charge for it.
Enchiladas queretanas, gorditas de migajas, and a good restaurant scene in the centro that costs half what San Miguel charges. The wine route to the north is now genuinely worth a day.
Michoacán is one of Mexico’s great kitchens: carnitas from Quiroga, corundas, uchepos, and sopa tarasca. The Mercado de Dulces for ate and cajeta; the fondas behind the cathedral for the rest.
Street tacos are the highlight and are safe at busy stalls with high turnover — al pastor, suadero, carnitas. Book Anthropology Museum time and eat at a fonda for a cheap set lunch (comida corrida).
Fish tacos — Baja’s own invention — from a stand rather than a restaurant; chocolate clams; and almejas tatemadas. The malecón restaurants for the view, the streets behind for the price.
Coastal Oaxacan: pescado a la talla, tamales de iguana if you are curious, and the coffee from the sierra, which is the region’s real product. The comedores on the La Crucecita plaza rather than the hotel strip at Tangolunda.
Birria, and the carnitas stalls on the plaza. Most visitors eat where they taste; the fondas behind the church are better and cheaper. Do not plan an afternoon.
Tacos al pastor from a trompo on Calle 30 rather than on the Quinta, where the same taco costs three times as much; cochinita pibil from a market stall in the morning, because it sells out; and ceviche from the fish places behind the ADO station.
Fish tacos and ceviche on the Rueda Medina; the little comedores on Avenida Juárez, where the islanders eat, rather than the restaurants on Hidalgo; and Tikin Xic, the achiote-grilled fish, at the south end.
Cochinita pibil at the market in the morning; the Mexican places on Avenida 30 rather than the ones facing the cruise pier; and the east-coast shacks, which do fried fish and a beer with nobody else around.
Fish on a stick from the beach vendors, birria in the morning, and the best restaurant scene on this coast in the Zona Romántica. The Olas Altas market on Saturdays; the taco stands on Basilio Badillo at midnight.
A restaurant town for its size, and priced accordingly: fish, mole, and a good bakery. The taco stands on the highway are what the town actually eats.
Eat in downtown Cancun (Parque de las Palapas area), not the hotel zone. Try cochinita pibil tacos, salbutes, and marquesitas.
Lobster pizza is the island’s odd speciality and it is good; fish tacos from the shacks on the plaza; and the ceviche, which is what the fishermen eat. Everything is dearer than the mainland because everything arrives by boat.
Fish tacos from the carts on the plaza, and the market on Fridays. The restaurants on the beach are priced for visitors; the streets a block back are half.
Yucatecan food is its own cuisine: cochinita pibil slow-roasted in achiote, panuchos, sopa de lima. The good and cheap version is in the town, not on the beach road, where a taco can cost eight times what it costs four kilometres inland.
Baja fish tacos — battered, fried, with cabbage and crema — were invented on this peninsula and the roadside stands do them better than the resorts. Chocolate clams from the Sea of Cortez, and the wine from Valle de Guadalupe, which almost nobody outside Mexico has heard of.
The most restaurant-dense town of its size in Mexico, and priced for the people who moved here. The market and the fondas behind it do the same food for a fifth; the Tuesday market is where the town shops.
The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.
Mexico CityMexicoAztec ruins, world-class museums, and the best street food anywhere
OaxacaMexicoThe best food in Mexico, seven kinds of mole, mezcal from the village that made it, and the Day of the Dead
CancunMexicoCaribbean turquoise meets Mayan history
TulumMexicoMaya ruins on a cliff above the Caribbean, cenotes in the jungle behind, and a beach road that got expensive
Los CabosMexicoDesert running into the Pacific at the tip of Baja, with grey whales in the bay every winter
Playa del CarmenMexicoA beach town that became a city: a pedestrian avenue of bars and dive shops, white sand either side of it, and the ferry to Cozumel from the middle
Isla MujeresMexicoAn island eight kilometres long with the best beach in the Mexican Caribbean at one end, golf carts instead of cars, and Cancún twenty minutes across the water
CozumelMexicoThe best wall diving in the western hemisphere, an island that empties the moment the cruise ships leave, and a wild eastern shore with nothing on it
MéridaMexicoThe Yucatán’s white city: a colonial grid of courtyards, the best food on the peninsula, free concerts most nights and cenotes an hour in every direction
San Miguel de AllendeMexicoA colonial town of pink stone and bougainvillea, kept perfectly by the people who moved here for it, with a neo-Gothic church that looks like a fairy tale
Puerto VallartaMexicoA cobbled old town on a bay with jungle mountains behind it, the most welcoming gay scene in Latin America, and beaches reachable only by boat
Isla HolboxMexicoA sandbar island with no cars, no pavements and no bank: golf carts through the sand, flamingos on the lagoon, and whale sharks offshore in summer
BacalarMexicoA freshwater lagoon of seven blues over a white limestone floor, with cenotes dropping out of the middle of it and a pirate fort on the shore
ValladolidMexicoA colonial town of painted houses with a cenote in the middle of it, an hour from Chichén Itzá and nothing like the coast
PalenqueMexicoA Maya city half-swallowed by jungle, with howler monkeys in the canopy above the temples and waterfalls an hour down the road
San Cristóbal de las CasasMexicoA highland colonial town at 2,200 metres, cold at night and full of Tzotzil markets, with the strangest church in Mexico half an hour away
Puerto EscondidoMexicoA surf town on the Oaxacan coast with one of the heaviest beach breaks in the world at one end and a calm swimming bay at the other
PueblaMexicoA city of tiled facades under two volcanoes, where mole poblano was invented and the biggest pyramid on earth sits under a church
GuanajuatoMexicoA silver city crammed into a ravine, with its traffic running through tunnels under it, painted houses stacked up both sides and a student population that sings in the streets
GuadalajaraMexicoThe city that invented mariachi, tequila and the charreada, with murals by Orozco under a dome and the best food in western Mexico
SayulitaMexicoA surf village of bunting and bare feet north of Vallarta, small enough to cross in ten minutes and busy enough to feel like a festival
MazatlánMexicoA working Pacific port with the longest seafront promenade in Latin America, a restored old town of opera and ironwork, and a carnival that fills February
La Paz, Baja CaliforniaMexicoA quiet Baja capital on the Sea of Cortez, with whale sharks in the bay in winter and the emptiest turquoise beaches in Mexico up the road
CampecheMexicoA walled city painted in sherbet colours on the Gulf, with pirate forts at either end and almost nobody in it
HuatulcoMexicoNine bays and thirty-six beaches on a coast that was planned rather than grown, with a national park behind it and boats the only way to half of it
TaxcoMexicoA silver town poured down a mountainside: white houses, red roofs, streets too steep for anything but a Volkswagen Beetle, and silversmiths in every doorway
QuerétaroMexicoA colonial centre of aqueducts and shaded plazas that most visitors drive past, with the country’s newest wine region an hour up the road
MoreliaMexicoA city built entirely of pink stone, with an aqueduct running into the middle of it and the monarch butterflies wintering in the mountains two hours away
TequilaMexicoThe town the drink is named for, in a valley of blue agave that is a World Heritage site, with distilleries you can walk into and a train that brings you
Todos SantosMexicoA desert oasis town of galleries and palm groves an hour from Cabo, with a wild Pacific beach that is not for swimming and whales going past it