Hello, Story Chasers.
Before I left for my Mexico trip, I was really concerned about my internet connection and
how was I actually going to be able to do work when I got there.
As you know, as a digital nomad, it's super important that you actually have an internet
connection everywhere you go so that you can get your work done.
So the next question is what do you do if you don't actually have a current cell phone
plan or data plan that will actually work in the country that you're visiting?
That answer is coming up next.
Hello everyone and welcome to Story Chasing.
My name is Amber and I sold my house and quit my job so that I could travel full-time and
chase my dreams.
And now, I'm helping people just like you to transition into nomadic life and work remotely
in beautiful places like Mexico so long as you have a strong data connection and an Internet
plan that works there.
So the question is, what do you do if you don't have a data plan that actually works
in the country that you're visiting?
We're going to get to that now.
When I was actually planning my trip to go to San Felipe, Mexico.
I was concerned about the Internet connection and so I was trying to research does my two
current data plans actually work in Mexico?
I have two plans.
One is AT&T and that is through a third-party person that I purchased off of Ebay.
I called him and he said, "Nope, it does not actually work in Mexico," based on a data
plan that he's on.
The second plan that I have is Verizon and it's the prepaid Verizon plan that I have
linked right here that I purchased back in December, and it's just a prepaid plan that
I use.
I'm still testing it out and it does actually work in Mexico.
However, you have to pay an additional $5 per day in order to get access and even then
you're capped at half a gig of data per day and that just doesn't work for me.
I actually wanted to relax a lot in Mexico.
So I was hoping to not do too much work, but just in case I wanted to make sure I had a
backup plan for my data.
Since neither of those carriers would really work in my situation over there, I decided
to wait until I actually got to Mexico and find out who their local carrier was and then
figure out what I needed to do in order to get a plan with them.
So I got over to Mexico and even the people that I was traveling with that had the AT&T
International Service, they said they just weren't really getting a great connection
for whatever reason, it just didn't work in that particular area.
So what we ended up doing is we went into downtown San Philippe, Mexico.
We found out that the local cell phone and data plan there is Telcel.
So we ended up going to three different locations to figure out exactly what we needed to do
and these were just local places inside of San Philippe.
One was actually a Telcel store.
Then we went into a local convenience store called OXXO, which is the equivalent to a
7/11 and they actually sold SIM cards there and you could actually pay them to get service
on that plan there.
But what we decided to was just go ahead and buy a SIM card, take it back to the RV resort
that we were staying at and then just go online, activate the SIM card and go ahead and load
the plan with the plan that we could pick online.
We felt like that was just the best thing for us so that we could look at all the different
plans and figure out exactly what we wanted.
So you want to buy a SIM card and these SIM cards are a little less than two US dollars
per SIM card and they come in a little package like this.
On the back of them, it has your IMEI number, your SIM card number, and your telephone number.
You'll definitely want to make sure that you keep this information because you're going
to need it to go online and load your card, or whenever you're going into the local Telcel
or OXXO convenience store to load the card.
In order to use these SIM cards, you need to make sure that your cell phone or your
hot spot or jet pack is already unlocked.
It actually comes in several different sizes in here.
It has the micro and the Nanos so it should fit any of your cell phone or data plan devices.
The other thing about these SIM cards is they already come activated.
I didn't actually know that it was activated when I bought it and I was confused.
I was trying to go online and activate it and I couldn't get it activated and so I found
out later on it was already activated.
Next, you can load it either by going online to the Telcel website or you can load it at
OXXO or the Telcel retail store.
I actually chose to go ahead and load it online just because I wanted to look at their various
plans.
The first time I was actually able to load it, without any problems, I actually got the
largest plane they had, which was at five gigs of data for right around $25.
But it was a little bit cumbersome on their website.
Everything is in Spanish, of course, because you're in Mexico.
So you do have to either know Spanish or you're going to have to do some Google translating
on there.
So have the Google translate up in your toolbar of your browser or you're going to have to
look it up on Google translate or an app on your phone.
It's just easier to have the extension in your chrome browser and let it translate for
you.
So I was actually able to load everything just fine the first time.
The second time that I went to go load it because I ran out of data, I was uploading
videos.
So the second time that I went to load it, I couldn't get it to load.
It wanted me to verify my credit card and it would send me a small dollar amount to
my credit card or my bank card.
It wanted me to confirm the amount that hit my bank card or my credit card and we're talking
five cents, seven cents here.
So I would try to go and confirm it, but mine was in dollars, theirs was in pesos.
I tried to do a conversion and it just wouldn't do it.
It kept saying that that was wrong and I just could not get it to work.
It was a really a royal pain.
So my advice is just go into the store and load it.
You can go in there and just tell them exactly what plan you want and pay for it in-store
and give them your phone number and they'll go ahead and load it for you there.
It's the easiest way to do it.
But let me tell you once it's all loaded, the plan was amazing.
It was really fast.
It was an amazing data connection.
We had no issues whatsoever while we were there.
So it's a pretty easy process once you know what to do.
My other tip for you before loading your SIM card is a go to an ATM and actually get pesos
with your check card.
It's so much simpler to just pay everybody in cash and you don't have to worry about
using your check card or your credit card anywhere or having to possibly pay any of
those foreign exchange fees.
Every bank is different.
Yours may not charge you the foreign exchange fee.
Mine actually does.
So I just went and got some pesos out of the ATM and then I used that to pay for everything
around there, including loading my SIM card.
So hope you have fun traveling to Mexico.
If you have any questions for me, go ahead and leave them in the comments below.
Make sure you subscribe.
And over here there're some more videos on traveling to Mexico.
So check out that playlist so you can see more tips and tricks to traveling in Mexico.
We'll see in the next video.