The Top Ten Things I Learned On My First Trip To Mexico (Ep. 13)

Transcript

Drew (00:12):
Hello everybody and welcome to Travel Fuels Life, the show we share story, tips and inspiration to help you live a travel lifestyle. I'm your host, drew Hanish, and this week, well, sometimes things don't go exactly the way that you planned. I had done two dream trips back to back my trip to Hawaii and Las Vegas, and then following that up after four days by going to Cancun and going to Mexico for the first time. And that was a lot all kind of tied up together. And I got to admit, I did not record any shows ahead of time. So I mean, I had a show to fill last week, but this week all of a sudden it got late in the week and I realized that I didn't have any of my guests confirming. So I've got a lot of people coming up over the next couple of weeks, but unfortunately none of them are recorded yet.

(01:08):
So that put me in a position and I said, okay, so what am I going to do? Am I going to maybe just skip a week and have you guys hear crickets? Not the same crickets that you heard a couple weeks ago when I did my Hawaii trip, and you got to hear frogs and crickets and all the rest, but just silence me not even being there. But I thought, why don't I share something about my trip to Cancun, my first trip to Mexico. So this week's episode, these are the 10 things that I learned on my first trip to Mexico. And some of these are informative, some of these a little lighthearted, but I have fun when I go on trips and I try to take things with a grain of salt and not get too serious about them. And I know on the show that I'm usually kind of looking and digging for facts along the way, but travel should be fun and there should be some things that you look at and go, okay, I can look at the ridiculous side of that and kind of just flow with it, right?

(02:16):
So I'm going to do a top 10. This is kind of like David Letterman's top 10 though, if you remember that. He never really put them in any kind of rank order. He just did 10 things. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm just going to go through and talk about the 10 things that I learned on my first trip to Mexico. But before I get to the official list, I had a lot more than 10. So I thought I would throw a couple in here at the beginning that aren't quite as in intense, I guess. I don't know what the word is I'm looking for. But anyway, these are all things that I learned on my way to Mexico. And in Mexico, number one, well, this is number one, sorry, this is just my little short list before we get to the top 10.

(03:05):
One of the things is don't throw used toilet paper in the waste basket. This was a very curious sign that I saw at my Airbnb, and I didn't know exactly what it meant. I'd never come across anything like that before. I mean, who puts their toilet used toilet paper into the trash can? But I actually posted that up on as a question somewhere. I, it's such a blur of a week. I don't remember where I posted that. But somebody said, well, it's not for Americans coming to Mexico. There are countries, or there are places where they have low flow systems, low water pressure, and by using toilet paper in your toilet, it can clog the pipe pipes up. So they recommend that you throw it in the waste basket. So that very curious sign, I learned something new. I learned that everybody throws their toilet paper into the toilet.

(04:06):
I guess we could call it waste paper, basket paper or whatever for those places. So that was one thing I learned. I also learned that you have to take your hat off for the border patrol. So I was wearing a hat because I wanted to keep the sun out of my eyes and I don't wear sunglasses very often. And I noticed people ahead of me taking their hats off, and when I got up there, I yanked mine off of my head. They just want to see what you look like. Maybe they want to know whether there's contraband underneath your hat. I don't know what that's all about, but yes, you have to take your hat off when you go through the border patrol. Something else I learned, maybe I already knew this. Adults go to Cancun to get drunk for an entire week. It's true.

(04:51):
I'm sorry. It happens. I saw it firsthand. I get off an airplane, I'm trying to get my bus pass and all of that stuff sort of facilitated. How am I going to get into town? And the people lined up to get on the bus there. There's a group of three guys who are all, they got beers in their hands already. I'm like, okay, the party has already started. Where did they get this beer? Right? I got to get to town before I'm going to get some beer. So it happens. Some people, they're very crafty and they could figure out how to get that beer way ahead of me. Another thing that I learned is that gringos cannot pronounce the name of the town that I stayed in on my second night. It's by Bayada. I say, I even hearing somebody say it, I couldn't say it back.

(05:42):
Okay, it's spelled V A L L A D O L I D. Okay, write that down now, try to say it. Well, first of all, what confuses it is that in Spanish they pronounce V like a B. So I got to try to get my brain around that. Then the two L sounds like a Y by BA did ba, I don't know. I did not it. I went through the whole trip and I had to meet my collective o, collective O. I'm again, I'm a gringo, so I'm allowed to mispronounce this stuff, but I was trying to get onto the collective O, and I heard the guy asking, where is this collective O going? And the driver said something and I couldn't understand what it was that he said. So I figured it must be the right collective that I'm getting onto. And luckily it was so, hey, so much for my powers of deduction.

(06:51):
Kind of worked in my favor on that. One thing that I will say when you go to this unpronounceable town ba, I think that's it. Maybe I'm sure somebody will correct me on that. If you go to this town, you cannot go there without going to the chocolate museum. If you like chocolate, that is the place to go. It's inexpensive. You can buy chocolate when you get in the door. I had something like cinnamon and pepper and dark chocolate they had. Oh man, it was so good and I really had planned to sort of take it with me and not eat it. But as I was walking through the museum, I took one bite and then I had to take another bite, and then I had to take another bite. And I realized when I was leaving that I had ate the whole thing. So the chocolate museum, cool thing, go check it out.

(07:51):
All right. Something else that I learned is that there is a thin strip of the Yucatan Peninsula, which if you're not familiar with where that is, that's where Cancun is, right along the Caribbean edge of the Yucatan Peninsula. There's a thin strip right there on the coast that is in Eastern time, but the rest of Mexico going the other direction as far as the eye can see is in central time. And this came into play for me because I was riding a bus from Tulum on the coast over to this unpronounceable town, and I decided to take a nap on the way. And it seemed like we got there awfully fast. I wasn't wearing a wristwatch, so I was just dealing with what my phone was, was telling me. And it just seemed like, wow, man, it didn't seem like much of a nap and we're already there.

(08:54):
And then on the way back from that town to Cancun, I took a nap. And I mean, that trip didn't seem like it was ever going to end. And it wasn't until I got back to Cancun that I realized that I had switched timezones and that my phone just kept up with the change. So I was none the wiser, but it definitely answered some questions for me. So that's a good thing to know. Something else I learned is that TV in Mexico is in Spanish. Yeah, I should know that, right? I did know that. Everything, I'm expecting to see Telemundo everywhere you can get English though. I figured out how to get English. I was watching Jerry Maguire in Spanish, and I realized that all I had to do was kind of hunt around on the settings and then just like you can sometimes find the Spanish track using the language buttons on your US tv, you can do the same thing there.

(10:00):
And so I probably messed up life for the next person that stays in that hotel room, but I was able to actually get it set up to where I could listen in English. And then the state of the union came on right after that. Of course, that was in English. I didn't have to worry so much about that one, although I probably didn't want to hear it anyway. But sometimes when you're hearing Spanish all day, you kind of want to hear a little bit of your own language. So I put up with that and watched it. Something else that I learned is that it's good to download Google Maps. So we talked about this before, downloading your Google Maps for the area that you're going to, because what you're going to learn is that there are areas within that country where there's not a lot of people, and so there's no cell service, but GPS does tend to work on my Android phone just about anywhere that I go.

(10:58):
So that will give you the option to still use your phone like a regular GPS and map system. And so I just downloaded that territory. And so that kept me in the know for most of the trip. And later on in the show, you're going to find out why that was important for me. And do know that there is not internet everywhere in Mexico. And if audio, which is the bus system tells you that they have wifi on the bus, I would not believe that I was on multiple buses. I did not at any point get internet access while on the bus. So just keep that in mind and plan accordingly. And the last of these pre items that I'm going to tell you before we get to our top 10 is I learned how to pronounce Tulum. Tulum, right? It's spelled T U L U M.

(11:59):
I thought when I looked at it, I said, oh, is that Tulum? And so I kept calling it Tulum, Tulum, Tulum. And then when I was in line getting money at the money exchange place, I had another English speaker, US citizen behind me, and she said that she was going to, and then she pronounced the town. I forget how she pronounced it, but I said, I think it's Tulum. I mean, I said, I think it's Tulum. And then when I went to Tulum, I was walking in to see the Mayan ruins. And as I walked in, I heard a guide say, it's Tulum. It's not Tulum, it's Tulum. So know that you won't sound so much like a gringo. And that's, that's good. Also know that when I was in Tulum, I saw a lot of police cars going down the street or police vehicles with a bunch of policemen standing up in full uniform and machine guns that this is sometimes normal because the waiter didn't seem to be bothered by it at all, although he kept looking out at it.

(13:09):
And so I finally said, what's the deal with this? And he said, well, the taxi cabs are getting a little riled up in the area, and so they're just out here for protection. So when I was in by the lid, I think something like that, when I was out there, I saw a policeman on every single corner I walked on. I did not feel unsafe in that town at all. But I just want you to know that could be something that you'll see while you're there. Just feel confident that there are people there sort of watching out for you, I guess because that end of Mexico is supposed to be pretty safe. We hear stories sometimes we go a little far with our stories. But anyway, I did not feel uncomfortable in any of the places that I was at in Mexico while I was there.

(13:59):
So that is my pre-list. And now it's time to get into my top 10 things that I learned on my first trip to Mexico. Number 10. This may seem like an odd one, but bring a pen. Now, I learned this or should have learned this when I went to Hawaii because while I was flying to Hawaii, they gave me an agricultural form on the plane and I needed to fill that out before we landed. And I did not have a pen with me. And so I had to look over with the puppy dog eyes at the person sitting next to me and say, can I borrow? May I borrow your pen? In which case I got the pen and that was fine. However, I did not learn my lesson. That was too easy for me. I needed a stronger lesson to remember to bring a pen with me.

(14:55):
So what I did was I got on the plane to Mexico again without a pen, knowing that there would probably be a form I would need to fill out when I got on the plane. And lo and behold, soon as we take off, we're going to be passing around two forms that you need to fill in. And one is a Mexican immigration form. And so go ahead and fill that out and have that ready for us because when you get off the plane, you're going to need it. Well, I had this lovely young lady sitting next to me and I had started to chat with her, but she just gave me the, I don't want to talk to anybody. Leave me alone. I have my earbuds in kind of attitude thing going on. So I didn't really talk to her. And then there no was nobody else in front of me.

(15:45):
And there was somebody behind me and I asked them and they said, well, I don't have a pen, but we're borrowing the pen of the person behind us. And so then I had to say, do you mind asking them if I can borrow your pen? Because they were too far back and it was just a massive inconvenience, right? It's uncomfortable. It's like I feel unprepared. So I got the pen, I filled everything out and got that all taken care of and gave the pen back and everybody was happy. And then two minutes later, the girl who's sitting next to me whips out a pen and starts filling out her form. Nice. So bring a pen with you because you're going to have to fill out some forms. And the other thing to remember about that Mexican immigration form is that you will need to, they're going to hand that over to the border patrol.

(16:43):
They're going to look over it, they're going to rip off the top part. They're going to give you the bottom part, and you need to remember to hang onto that form because I was told I could not get back into the United States if I did not have that bottom part of the form when I got back to the airport to fly off to my next destination. That sounded a little scary. And so I took extra precaution to make sure that my passport and my Mexican immigration form were both together in the same pocket of my laptop bag so that I would have that so I could get out of Mexico. So good things to know. That's number 10. Number nine, there is water to drink. Okay? So one of my worries when going to Mexico was would I be able to find any drinkable water without having to constantly buy water bottles?

(17:42):
I mean, there's part of me that doesn't want to be constantly polluting the environment with more plastic. And I thought about a water bottle with me, but I had no idea how things would go. Well, here's the deal. First of all, why can't you drink the water in Mexico? Well, they have this thing called montezuma's revenge. You can look it up online. It will basically create a very uncomfortable situation for you where if you drink the water, you may not leave your Airbnb for a while because you will be, you'll reading that sign that tells you not to throw your toilet paper in the waste paper basket. So keep in mind it's a good idea for you to avoid. And actually, I was told don't open your mouth while you're taking a shower. Really? Okay? So this montezuma's revenge thing is a serious thing. And so when I got to my Airbnb, they had a big jug of gallons of water for me to drink.

(18:48):
They also had water in the refrigerator for me. So people in Mexico are prepared for you. Now, here's the one thing that I'm not sure on because they said you can drink hot beverages like coffee and tea and you can use ice cubes. But then somebody else said, no, don't use the ice cubes. So I'm not sure on that one yet. I guess I'll find out somewhere down the road, but I didn't want to test it out on this particular trip. So just understand that ice cubes probably off limits for you best to avoid them if you can. And for the hot beverages, I did have coffee while I was there, so I guess that's fine. No real problem. The other thing I noticed is that I ate a lot of Mexican restaurants and Italian restaurants, and those seem to be the only two types of restaurants that I went into.

(19:44):
And the thing about Italian restaurants and Mexican restaurants is that you eat a lot of cheese. And so that creates kind of the opposite problem of montezuma's revenge. And it got me thinking actually at one point in my trip that maybe a little ice cube here or there might not be a bad thing, but the locals don't want to touch it. It's probably best that you don't touch it. Number eight, those are not wild beasts at Chichen, okay? Those are not wild beasts. You will hear screams and calls and stuff that will make your spine crawl, right? Because all of a sudden you hear a wild cat off in the distance. Well, guess what? They're not real. Those are just vendors who are trying to get your attention and you'll see them laughing. I mean, I think the ultimate people watching probably would be going to and just hanging out by one of those vendors and watching people getting the crap scared out of them because they're looking in the trees to see if there's a cat coming out at them or something.

(21:01):
So anyway, just be don't one of those gullible gringos when you go on the trip, you want to make sure that those are not wild beasts. It's just a vendor trying to get your attention. And that's what that's all about. Now, I got to say, you if you listen to my episode a couple weeks ago when I went to Hawaii that I didn't get to see the nays or the sea turtles, and so that was disappointing. What's funny is now I'm starting to think that animals really don't like me because I went to El Ray, which is one of the oldest Mayan ruins that you can still go visit. And I saw signs everywhere that said, don't feed the iguanas, don't feed the iguanas, don't feed the iguanas. And I didn't see it in iguana anywhere. I mean, I looked all around and then when I flew from there to Dallas and was hanging out with my brother and sister, my brother, as soon as I mentioned El Re said, oh, did you see all those iguanas?

(22:03):
I did not see a single iguana. So I don't know, there's something going on here, but for some reason I'm not having any luck with finding these particular animals. So we'll see. Hopefully one day I'm just going to have a rush of animals coming at me or something. It's just, it's got to even out somewhere down the road. So here's the thing about Chich that you should know. If you don't want to have all of these wild animal calls coming at you, the best thing for you to do is get there early. Now, I got there, I was actually planning on taking a bus from Cancun out to Chichen on my second day, but they weren't going to get me out there until probably about 10 30 or 11 o'clock in the morning. And I bumped into a blog, and that blog said, you do not want to be there at 10 30 or 11 o'clock just getting started because every bus in the world is coming in and they're going to overrun the park.

(23:07):
It's very busy. It's one of the most popular attractions in Mexico. And so what I did was I planned to stay in the town I cannot pronounce for the second evening. I mean, my Airbnb was so inexpensive that I just, and the hotel was inexpensive for the middle night. So I decided to just go ahead and I plan out my trip to where I would go to Tulum in the morning and then I would ride the bus up to the town I can't pronounce, and in the morning go take a what's called a collective out to chia and be there as early as I could. Eight o'clock would be fantastic. And so that's what I did. And it was a great plan because the vendors, they come in with all of their goods, I mean boxes and boxes of goods, and they are so meticulously wrapped and they have to unwrap one of these items.

(24:10):
And literally I saw them unwrapping for two and a half hours to get their tables set up. And so while they're setting their tables up, it's very hard for them to start barking at you and do their animal noises. So what happens is if you get there at eight o'clock, you pretty much, I won't say you got the place to yourself, there's still a lot of people there, but it's the smart people and it's also the instagramer posers posing. And so you'll get a little bit of that as well, but they got everything roped off so you can get some clear shots of some of the ruins as you're going through. So eight o'clock, good time to go, takes two and a half to three hours to go walk through and see what you want to see if you do it without a guide and it's very enjoyable.

(25:00):
And then by the time you're leaving, if you want to go ahead and buy a trinket from somebody, have at it because they're all set up and they're ready for you and you got your picket of litter, okay? The other thing is that when you go to Chichen Neta, you can hire a tour guide because they are everywhere. But what I will tell and in every language known to man, but what I will tell you is that I cannot guarantee the quality of that tour guide. And you can negotiate with them and try to get their price down, but they may truncate your presentation because of you not paying as much money so that they can get onto the next person. I mean, these are not, I just think people just go, oh, okay, well, I'll just show up and start telling people, Hey, I can do a tour for you.

(25:47):
And maybe they're telling you the truth and maybe they're just making it all up. I don't know. But it's very interesting kind of a setup there. So that's number eight. Number seven, audio. And I did pronounce that correctly, I'm pretty sure because I kept hearing it over the loudspeaker. Audio buses kick greyhounds, but, and I put emphasis on that. I want an exclamation mark because I have ridden greyhound before and I have horror stories. I have never seen such a disorganized company in my life, and if you've ever been in the Greyhound bus terminal, then you know exactly what I'm talking about. So the Mexican bus system, they got their act together, all right, the audio buses. Now they've got different tiers and you'll see the different tiers mentioned there, but audio buses are inexpensive. So I mean, I would not avoid going on one of those buses.

(26:47):
And so if you get there and let's say, okay, so here's an example side by side. If you try to get on Greyhound and you buy a ticket for say, eight o'clock, you may not get on the eight o'clock bus. You may have to wait for the next bus. And the reason is because they oversell, you do not get an assigned seat. And you may be standing in a big long line with people from the seven 30 bus who haven't gotten on their seven 30 bus who are now getting on in your place on the eight o'clock bus. No kidding. That is the way that it goes. And I have seen where they've just said, oh, your plans say you go here, but no, get on this bus instead. And it's like, what are you doing? But then you go to audio and while everything is in Spanish, and it may be a little bit hard to get your bearings straight at first to know if you're in the right line or not, once you get in the line and then you get up and you talk to somebody, even with limited language, you've got very well instructing signs up there, digital signs that will tell you what buses and where they're going and all of that.

(27:58):
And then when they give you a ticket, they assign you a seat on that bus. So where you're supposed to go, the number of the bus, the seat, and no problem. Plus they have USB ports on there and electrical outlets. And as far as I could tell, especially on the buses, the Mexican outlets are the same as the us. So no real big problem there. But I do understand there's some variation with some Mexican outlets for power, not in the voltage, but just in the configuration of the plug. So that's something to keep in mind. But I didn't run into any issues with anything I needed to plug in. And so I was able to recharge my phone while I was, and I have a turbocharger, so I was able to use the turbocharger as well. They even show you a movie while you're on the trip.

(28:51):
Of course it's in Spanish. So I saw some movie with Emma Watson and Tom Hanks in it, and I mean, I guess it wasn't Alfred Hitchcock. I couldn't really kind of figure it out without the language, but I sort of got the gist of it. I don't know if I'll watch that movie in English, but it was interesting to sort of have it passing by between naps. And so that really kind of worked out for me. All I had to do was get there about 20 to 30 minutes ahead of time, go up, purchase my ticket, and I was able to do that without a problem. One thing to keep in mind though, the audio buses do not accept Visa or American Express or MasterCard, sorry, visa, you're not always everywhere I want to be. So make sure that you bring some cash with you because that's the only way you're getting on an audio bus.

(29:50):
Number six, this is going to be very handy for you. I sort of came up with this little idea in my head while I was trying to figure out how to understand how much a peso converted to a US dollar, because that peso is going to blow your mind when you first see it. I mean, it's a bloated number. And then they use the same dollar sign that we use. So the first thing I see when I go into a grocery store is that they are selling Corona for $55 for a six pack. Now, I don't know about you, but I'm, I'm not spending $55 on Corona. However, once you realize that $1 buys you 19 pesos, suddenly now it starts to sound a whole lot better with the deal you're getting with that Corona. In fact, that Corona it, a six pack is costing you $2 and 75 cents.

(30:52):
Imagine that. I mean, roughly, okay, so this conversion method that I came up that with that you can use yourself is something that I learned from Bob and Doug Mackenzie. Now, I don't know if you've heard of Bob and Doug Mackenzie, you've probably heard of Rick Morans. He's been on some, he was in Parenthood, the Steve Martin movie and also some other things. But Bob and Doug Mackenzie was a skit on S sctv and they were Canadians and everything was a and donuts and crawls and that sort of thing. But I bought a record of theirs way back when they sold records and it said they had a little segment on there where they were telling people how to convert Celsius into Fahrenheit. And the way that you would do that is that you would double it and add 30. So let's say it was five degrees Celsius, then you would double that 10 degrees and then add 30, which is 40 degrees and it'd be 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

(32:01):
This, I mean, it's a couple of degrees off, but it actually works. So I kept, I've had that in my mind and it's always gotten me through whenever I had to try to figure that conversion into my head. So I thought, could I do the same thing with pesos? And so my rule with pesos is double it and add a zero. So if it's one US dollar, then double that to two and then add a zero. Are you sticking with me on that? Right? So one US dollar becomes two and then add a zero. That's so one US dollar equals 20 pesos. Now that's not the actual conversion rate that it always changes. It fluctuates. And this may not work forever, but right now it's pretty handy because it will get you close. Because right now I think one US dollar equals 19 pesos, but you'll have a good rough estimate there.

(33:01):
And you can do it the opposite way as well, which is to have it cut in half and then drop the zero. That's a little more complicated, but it, it'll work. So let's say you take a 10 peso coin and half of that is five, move the decimal point and that becomes 50 cents. And then you can kind of staple that in your brain and say, okay, well, I'll just consider that this big 10 peso coin is pretty much the equivalent of 50 cents. And then just roll with that and maybe get a couple of different denominations straight in your brain. So 500 pesos have it, that's 250. And then drop the zero, that's 25. So 500 pesos is pretty much $25. It's in that range. Now, when I got to Mexico, it was just me traveling by myself and I was thinking, how much money should I convert?

(33:59):
So I converted a thou to a thousand pesos, that's about $50, and that was good. I mean, honestly, I was in Mexico for three days, did a whole bunch of traveling around, used my card in a lot of different places for meals, but mostly everything else that I needed to take care of. That $50 almost completely covered it. I ended up though going to an exchange place where I changed 20 more dollars because I was a little bit short. And I got to tell you, it's a bit of a hassle to go to these exchange places. They're going to require a passport, and then you sit there for 20 minutes waiting to get the change for $20. So what I found was actually going to a grocery store or going to a bank and just using the ATMs, I will say the best ATMs to use, the ones I would feel most comfortable with would be Bonko Santander, which is a large bank in Mexico, B B V A or Scotia Bank, which I thought was interesting that that was in Mexico because that's actually a Canadian bank, but if you find an ATM for one of those three banks, I would feel pretty comfortable pulling money out of those, even at a grocery store.

(35:14):
So hopefully my little system kind of works out for you, and that helps you get through that peso nightmare. And then it's going to help you be able to understand that six pack of Corona at 55 pesos is quite a deal. And you might actually step up like I did and go ahead for the 80 peso six pack of Dos Equis because I'm splurging at my $4 for a six pack. I mean, honestly, that's a heck of a deal. So something to keep in mind. Something else on the last couple of tips that I mentioned to you. Also to keep in mind, I arrived at the airport and I had to stand in line waiting to buy my audio bus ticket. And then they told me they didn't take credit cards, so I was going to have to pay cash. So then I had to go wait for 20 minutes over in the money exchange line to get some money exchanged just so I could buy a bus ticket, and then I had to go back and wait for the audio bus again in the line.

(36:21):
So here's what I would suggest to do differently than me. Go to your bank a week ahead of time and get a thousand pesos or however many you think that you need, go ahead and order them because your bank may not have them on hand and they'll need to get 'em from another branch or something like that. But go ahead and order those pesos ahead of time and have those in your pocket ready to go. That way you can just go straight to the audio, take line and move on to get your snack, get your doki six pack like my buddies coming down for a long weekend or long week did. And then you'll be able to handle things that way and just get right into your trip instead of trying to figure all of this stuff out while you're in a different culture and just trying to get yourself situated.

(37:17):
All right, number five of the 10 things that I learned on my first trip to Mexico. Mexico is the best place to buy local. That's right. Think about that Corona that I bought, Corona's made in Mexico. I mean, since it's made there, then they don't have to worry about import duties and all the other stuff that goes with that. They can charge whatever the locals will pay for it. So for instance, I went into a restaurant and I saw that they had Johnny Walker Black available at 115 pesos. Now I'm going to pay 115 pesos for one drink versus buying a six pack of Dosse Equis for less than I'm paying for this one drink. And here's the other thing. Normally when you order a scotch, you get it poured in either a Glen Carn glass, scotch drinkers will know, or you'll get it poured into a regular drinking glass, kind of like what you drink out your orange juice out of in the morning.

(38:26):
That size glass Tumblr, I guess is the word I'm looking for. But in this particular case, because tequila is more popular in Mexico, I got my Johnny Walker Black in a 1.755 ounce shot glass and a tall skinny one, which is a really hard way for me to enjoy a scotch because it's not really, you don't shoot scotch, you enjoy scotch. So I paid all of that extra money thinking I was getting a normal size scotch, and instead I was getting half of my normal dose and I could have bought a whole six pack of Doce equ, which I did anyway, but just so you know, when it's coming from somewhere else, they're going to mark the price up to be able to pay the supplier whatever the price was in the country of origin. So if you buy local, and I'm telling you food is very inexpensive, I would say that with Tip, the most expensive meal I had, and that was the one with the Johnny Walker Black was $20 with tip.

(39:38):
The meals that I had were between 120 pesos to 240 pesos. They were great meals. And so that would be the equivalent of about seven to $14. So your dollar will go a long way when you're in Mexico, especially if you are buying local. Here's the other thing, my lodging was very inexpensive. I only paid $31, 31 US dollars a night at a very nice Airbnb. It was a gated community. The room had air conditioning in it. It was safe, secure, and clean. And I mean, you can't beat that. And then it actually was so inexpensive that when I went to the town I can't pronounce and stay, I decided I'll just stay there overnight. What the heck? Even though I've paid for a night in Cancun, and that one was a really nice hotel, a little confusing, but a very nice hotel and I paid $50 to stay there for a night.

(40:44):
And so that dollar goes a long way in Mexico, especially if you buy local Number four, you got to know when to collect TiVo. Okay, where do you find them? First of all, that was probably the hardest issue that I had. Now, if you don't know what a collect TiVo is, a collect TiVo is a little, what would we call it? Just like a little collective bus, right? It's a van with seats across it where a bunch of people will get in and ride from here to there. It's a little less formal than going on the bus. You don't know whether you're going to get a seat or not get a seat. However, the big buses don't stop everywhere. So chia, to be able to get out there on an audio bus, I pretty much had two or three times of the day that I could have gone and I wanted to get out there early.

(41:46):
So in by, I believe that's it. When I was there, I found that there was a collective down the road, and it was a little hard to find because apparently they've changed their signage up, but it was right near the bus station. And so when I got in there, I was able to, there was a collective O that was filling up and I got to sit on that, and I basically paid 35 pesos to get to chia. And if we do our math, ooh, doing this off the top of my head, cut it in half, that's 17 move. I paid a dollar 70 for that ride, and that was a good 30, 45 minute ride out to, and I paid the same coming back. So it's definitely worth doing. And the only issue that I ran into is that they liked to fill those things up.

(42:44):
And so when I was in, I was a little bit confused as to where to go to get back onto the CLE devo, but I ended up going back to the spot where they dropped me off. There's no signage whatsoever. I listened to the guy, it sounded like he was going where I wanted to go. I got onto the LEC Devo and I watched my gps and we were going the wrong way and I almost freaked out, but I didn't. I kept my cool. I said, I'm going to wait till we get to this next town and see what happens. And lo and behold, we stopped. He picked somebody up. Then we turned around, we went back to, we waited and picked up more people and then we finally got back. So it takes a little bit longer, it's a little more unpredictable, but you'll get where you need to go and it's pretty inexpensive.

(43:37):
Number three, make sure that you buy some mosquito repellent, but don't believe that you're going to get away from Mexico unscathed. This is what I bugs like my legs. I don't know why bugs my legs. Somebody said, well, your legs are always warm. You're kind of warm-blooded. And so they kind of attract to that. Well, I went, the first place I stopped when I got into Mexico was to go to a grocery store to buy myself some off. And in Mexico, we are wimpy here. We only have 15% de there. They got 25% de. So I felt really confident that nothing was going to bite me while I was there. Well, guess what? I got to Tulum. I was eating in an outdoor cafe and all of a sudden the bottoms of my legs started to itch and I had sprayed this stuff all over me and my legs were still itching.

(44:35):
They weren't mosquito bites. That was, I guess that was the comforting part of it. Whatever it was, sand gnats or no seams, or whatever the heck they are, they were just gnawing at my feet. And so I actually was carrying in my pocket my can of off and sprayed my legs again because I thought, well, maybe it's wearing off. They just kept eating it my legs. But the good news is that whatever it was that was gnawing on my legs, it's not like mosquitoes or spider bites or any of that sort of stuff. After two hours, I didn't even realize anything had bitten me. But definitely good to get yourself some mosquito repellent when you go there. Understand, you're probably still going to get bit by something if you're somebody like me who just seems to have the flavor that they like, but I came home fine, no sickness.

(45:29):
If you are somebody who, if you're pregnant or the people who would really be affected by Ezekiel virus, you probably will want to put off your trip to Mexico until you're not in that position. Because yeah, I didn't have any issues with mosquitoes, but something's biting me down there. Don't know exactly what it was. And it's better to be safe than sorry. Number two, it's cool to ride the buses in Cancun, but be aware, these are the things you need to be aware of. Well, first of all, the price seems to be going up and up and up because I first read that it was nine pesos, then it was 10 pesos, and somebody was complaining that it was getting more expensive. When I got on the bus, it was 12 pesos, so it's still cheap. I mean, that's 60 cents per ride, so that's not too bad.

(46:25):
The driver quality can vary that sometimes they're very, I don't know, they all looked very aggressive to me. And the other thing is that they don't always stop completely. I saw them roll to almost to stop, open up the doors and somebody's getting out of there already rolling off. I'm like, whoa. Right. Unexpected. And they'll just stop anywhere. There are bus stops that are marked, but if you wave your hand and you're in the middle of a straightaway, they may still stop for you. And the other thing I learned is that you definitely don't want to push that little red button to let them know that you need to go to a stop if that stop is right in front of you because they will stop. They'll be going 45 miles an hour and then you push that button and they're almost passing the place and they will slam on the brake and all passengers will be face planted into the window when they get up there.

(47:27):
It's pretty crazy. So it's great. They're always driving by. You can always find one. It's very easy because they go through the whole entire hotel zone without any issue going in the opposite direction. They go to downtown Cancun or they'll go to the Walmart and you can tell on the bus, on the front of the bus, it will tell where they go to in big letters on the front. So it's pretty easy to get around on those. But I don't know, sometimes I was feeling like this, this wouldn't be good for somebody who has a heart condition or something because it can be a little aggressive there. But again, great to get around in Cancun, no real issues. And the number one item out of the top 10 things I learned on my first trip to Mexico, it's good to know some Spanish. Now, we bring this up in a lot of episodes and all of my guests, when we have them on, we kind of broached the subject from one point or another.

(48:30):
It is, it's good to have a couple of words in your back pocket. And I'm always reminded of the skit that Steve Martin did where he was talking about his first trip to France and he said, these French have a different word for everything, right? It's true, it's true. And that you can talk about your gnats and there are certain words that you'll be able to sort of figure out. But just for kindness and being able to get around, there's a couple of words you probably should learn. I was confused at first. I was trying to remember, bueno Diaz, bueno, what should I be saying? And I forgot that all I have to do is say Ola and everything is good. So Ola is an excellent word to know. Steve Martin also was pointing out in his skit that Spanish is easy to sound out, whereas French, you could actually maybe die in a tongue twister accident trying to pronounce a French R or something like that.

(49:30):
So it's not too hard, except in the case of boar D or whatever that town is that I can't pronounce. But some things like dta, that's, that's a really good phrase to know where is right? And his point was what he would say was Dta caa de peppe. Well, that hasn't helped me very much because I don't met a lot of guys named Peppe. But if I want to find, let's say the bathroom, then you could say, and they at least know you're looking for something and then maybe you can just give them a intense space or something and they'll figure it out from that. Or you can just learn it's ban you, right? And then you're supposed to put whether it's a male or female item that you're talking about. And that's a little confusing with the bathroom because I think all bathrooms are boys, something like that.

(50:26):
But anyway, dta, that's a handy start to anything DTA restaurant, they might be able to figure that out. So work on that. Por favo is please. So that's a good one, and Gosia a good one. And that's, thank you. And see now me knowing French, you say we, but some will also say see. So I'm trying to get universal on that and just say, see for yes, for any foreign language and maybe I can get away with that for a while. Another one is Donata. I've just gotten used to saying that because I keep hearing people say it back to me when they say thank you. When I say thank you, they say Donato, which is like, no problem. So that is something extra to throw in there to make me feel good about myself. That no more than just three words. Hand signals were work in a restaurant. I've done like made the Czech symbol and people get it. So you can kind of get away with that. The one word that I needed to look up on Google Translate that I didn't though was in French, you say, excuse pardon for if you bump into somebody, and I must be a clutz because I kept thinking over and over again. I wish I knew how to say, excuse me, because I keep feeling like I need to say it. Pardon?

(51:57):
Is that it? Par Perone. Perone. Okay. Alright. Something like that. I think if you say, pardon me, they're, they're probably still going to get it out of that. But anyway, my Spanish is not so great, and you can tell, especially since everybody probably knows how to pronounce this town in Mexico that I can't pronounce. So those are the 10 things that I learned on my first trip to Mexico. I don't know what little nuggets you're going to find in there that are going to save you some headaches down the road, but hopefully there's something in there that can help you out. It was definitely an interesting experience for me. It's the first time I ever went south of the border. And so it just seemed like a really good time for me to get those initial impressions. I think the only other thing that really struck me was when we were flying in from the US into Cancun, was the amount of trees there are.

(52:56):
I mean, when you're flying in over the airport, you're just flying in over nothing but a sea of trees. And I have never been anywhere where I saw that many trees with no human beings anywhere in my view. So if you haven't been, it's worth a trip. Kind of get the experience, and I hope you have fun. I had fun. It was definitely something new for me to get into. And I know there's a lot more places south of the border that I would like to go visit. And so I feel like I got sort of a start. And sometimes it's just getting used to a place and having that first experience that opens you up and makes you want to explore it even more. And I know there's some great places around Mexico City I'm wanting to go. That's probably going to be something, not for this year, but maybe next year and I'll get a chance to go do that.

(53:50):
So I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Again, a little bit different from what I normally do, but I thought it might be fun to bring a little levity to the whole first trip to Mexico thing and give you my impressions as a gringo, doing my first trip down there. And it was a lot of fun for me. Go online, go to our Facebook group, travel Fuels Life. You can find it through travel fuels life.com and go to the show notes page and you can leave some comments there, or you can go to the Facebook group as I was saying, and join up and let's have a conversation and you guys can teach me how to pronounce all of this stuff that I don't know how to pronounce so that I don't feel like an idiot next time I go to Mexico. How about that? Deal? Deal. All right, good. Well, thanks everybody for listening to another week of Travel Fuels Life being my audio Guinea pigs on this special episode. And make sure to follow me on facebook.com/travel fuels life to see my pictures from Mexico and more, or instagram.com/travel fuels life. And I am constantly posting pictures up there of all the different places that I go to and love sharing those with you. And until next time, have a great week. Safe travels and thanks for listening to Travel Fuels Life.