These are 15 mistakes to avoid when coming to Mexico.
And be sure to stick around until the
end, because the last one on this list
could put you in a Mexican prison.
The first mistake is to bring damaged bills to Mexico.
So if you're paying for something in the US.
And you pay with a dollar bill that has a stamp or
writing or a rip or tape or whatever, it's no problem.
But if you try to pay with a dollar
bill that has one of those things here in
Mexico, it's not going to be accepted.
And if you go to a money exchange place and
you are bringing them damaged bills from the US.
That have any of those imperfections, well,
they're not going to be accepted at
the money exchange place either.
The next mistake you shouldn´t make is to trust a
Mexican when they tell you that something isn't spicy.
If they tell you a salsa is not spicy,
make sure you try a tiny amount of it
before you put it all over your food.
You have no idea how many times I
have almost died in Mexico because I trusted
someone when they said it wasn't spicy.
It's not that they're lying, it's just that their palate
is very different than mine, and their palate is much
more accustomed to spicy food than I am.
This tip will save your life when you're in Mexico.
In Mexico, there is so much amazing
street food, and you should definitely try
a whole bunch of the street food.
But the mistake here is to go to
the street food stands without any people.
You might think you're saving yourself time,
but you're also risking getting sick as
well as not finding the best options.
Because at the busy places, these are the ones
that are not only going to be the most
delicious, but they generally have better hygiene.
And also they'll be rotating through the meats and
the food a lot faster, so they're not sitting
out as long, which will help keep you from
getting sick when you're in Mexico.
When it comes to Mexico, one of the worst pieces
of advice I ever received was to negotiate for everything.
Someone told me this before coming here, and I
took that advice to heart, and I started negotiating
for everything in every situation, whether it was a
massage, like buying something from a street food vendor.
I remember I was in San Blas, Nayarit and there was
a vendor selling cups of fruit for 35 pesos, and I
was trying to get it for like 25 pesos because I
thought that's what you were supposed to do.
But that's something you never ever do in Mexico.
You never negotiate for street food or really
any kind of food for that matter.
These days, I find myself
hardly ever negotiating for anything.
And basically the closest I come to negotiating a price
in Mexico is when I'm like, at a store that's
an artisania shop or something like that, or there's a
vendor on the beach trying to sell me a blanket.
Well, they'll typically start off with the price higher,
and if you show interest in an object and
then you're like, "oh, I don't know," or you´re
like, "Let me think about it," and then walk
away, well, then the price will usually come down
if there's room for the price to come down.
For example, I was on the beach in Puerto Vallarta and
there was a guy trying to sell me a blanket.
The price started at 800 pesos, and I showed some interest, but
I was like, I don't know if I can pay 800.
And then the price went down to 600, then
400, and then finally down to 300 pesos.
So the price more than halved just by me saying,
I don't know, I wasn't even trying to negotiate.
I just honestly wasn't sure if I wanted the blanket or
could fit it on my suitcase or anything like that.
So that's one way that you can discover the
fair price of something without actually having to negotiate.
And as a general rule, in Mexico, if you're
in one of those most popular tourist destinations, so
I'm thinking like, Cabo, Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Tulum.
Generally, in these souvenir shops, in these artesania
shops, the prices are jacked way up.
For example, I was in a little town in Colima, and
I saw these little turtles made out of onyx or some
other kind of rock like that, and they were 100 pesos.
I went to Play del Carmen and I saw
the same turtle, and it was 1600 pesos.
So obviously, in some of these shops, in these
busy tourist places, the prices are jacked way up.
So in these places, there's a
lot of room for negotiation.
But if you're in some other city,
pick some random city, Mexico City, Guadalajara,
some other pueblito, there's probably not going
to be much room for negotiation there.
So let's say you have a phone plan in the US.
That gives you coverage in Mexico.
But then you fly to Mexico, your plane lands, and
you turn on your phone and your phone doesn't work.
You're like, "what the heck?
I thought I had coverage." Well, you do.
But you have to do one simple thing,
and that is to turn on data roaming.
So you go into your settings, you click data roaming
on and boom, your phone is going to work.
In Mexico, the next mistake is to drink the tap water.
But let's be honest, you've probably already heard
that tip don't drink the tap water. In Mexico.
However, what people have more
questions about is the ice.
Can you have a beverage with ice in it?
And the answer is absolutely yes.
Every restaurant, every place is going to
use ice that has been frozen using
filtered water, so ice is no problem.
So how about brushing your teeth with tap water?
Can you do that?
Well, it is making you susceptible to
a stomach bug of some kind.
So if you're coming here on vacation for like
a week or two, I would say no.
Brush your teeth with only
bottled water or filtered water.
But if you're coming here to Mexico to
live, well, then I would say, yeah, you
can brush your teeth with tap water.
It might get you a stomach bug.
But losing two days out of your life is not as
big of a deal as losing two days out of your
seven day vacation being in the bathroom the whole time.
And if you're coming to live in Mexico, you're eventually
going to get exposed to these bugs at some point.
So Montezuma's revenge is going to happen to you.
So if you just get it out of the way,
well, that will help you move on faster and be
able to adapt to life in Mexico more quickly.
The next mistake in Mexico is to double tip.
It is illegal in Mexico for a restaurant
to add a mandatory tip to your bill.
However, it does happen, especially in certain places.
Like, I remember going to Isla Holbox, and almost
every single restaurant was doing this practice there.
Now, typically, when they add a tip to the bill,
there will be an extra line that says propina or
servicio, or it'll be abbreviated to "prop" or "serv."
Well, in that case, they're adding a tip to
the bill, and that is absolutely not mandatory.
But a lot of people might not know what
these words mean if they're coming from the US.
Or Canada or some other place
where they don't speak Spanish.
So if you see that tip added
to the bill, just leave that.
You don't have to leave anything else, because generally
the hope is for you to double tip.
You don't know what that means.
And then you leave another tip on top of that.
And someone just messaged me, and she said, hey, I'm
in Tulum, and I was just at a restaurant, and
there was a line on my bill saying propina.
So I didn't leave an extra tip because I know
you've told me that in the past in another video.
And the waiter was like, hey, why aren't you tipping?
And then she said, well, there's a
line on here that's tips already included.
And the waiter said, no, that's for the
staff in the back of the restaurant.
That's for the cook staff.
And she was asking me, is this person lying to me?
And I was like, yes, yes,
he absolutely is lying to you.
That tip is going to him and not to the cook staff.
By the way, if you're finding this video helpful,
do me a favor and poke that like button.
When you're coming to Mexico, oftentimes it's very
tempting to fly into cancun, because it's usually
pretty easy to find affordable airfare there.
However, I hate flying into Cancun, and I
would consider that a mistake because when you
fly into Cancun, it's like the worst ever
First impression of Mexico, everybody's trying to
rip you off and scam you. It's horrible.
So I highly recommend you avoid that.
But what else can you do?
Well, generally, another cheap city to fly
into is Mexico City, so Cancun and
Mexico City usually offer the lowest airfare.
So what I would do if I were booking a
Mexico vacation would be to book round trip tickets to
Mexico City, maybe for a couple of weeks, and then
after I arrive in Mexico City, spend a few days
exploring the city, going to the museum, seeing the endless
attractions there are to see there.
And then I would take another flight to a
beach destination, one of the lesser known beach destinations.
For example, we recently went to
Mazatlan, which I would highly recommend.
So you go from Mexico City to Mazatlan and you
can book very affordable flights, and then you stay in
Mazatlan for a week, you come back to Mexico City,
you spend a couple more days in Mexico City before
you fly back to your home.
Now, I would consider this a much
better travel itinerary for coming to Mexico
than booking round trip to Cancun.
And that leads me to the
next mistake, which is visiting Cancun.
Instead of one of the many
other awesome destinations around Mexico, go
to any other smaller beach destination.
I think you're going to have a much better time
and a much more affordable trip than going to Cancun.
Or you can go visit one of the 132 Pueblos
Magicos, or what in English would be called Magic Towns.
You could literally put these on a map, throw a
dart, go to that particular Pueblos Mágico, and you're going
to have an awesome time because every single one of
them has something really cool to offer.
I've been to 20 or 30 of them by
now, and I've loved every one of them.
So go check out some of the Pueblos Magicos
around Mexico because there's tons of history and culture
and cool things to see and do in all
of these little pueblitos around Mexico.
The next mistake in Mexico is if you are booking
an airbnb to book anything but the highest rated places,
I recommend looking for places that are rated a 4.9
or higher, because in general, with airbnbs, people tend to
give better ratings than they deserve.
Like, they meet the host and the host is friendly,
so then they feel bad leaving a negative review, so
then they give them higher ratings than they deserve.
However, if you're booking the airbnbs that are ranked
4.9 or higher, well, then I can almost guarantee
that you'll have a great experience at that airbnb.
But if you're booking the airbnb that are rated
like a 4.0, 4.1, heck, even many that are 4.5.
A lot of times there are going to
be a lot of problems with your stay.
The next mistake is not learning some Spanish.
Before you come here.
I recommend learning some greetings
and learning some numbers.
Learning some numbers is going to help
you when you're making various purchases in
Mexico to understand how much things cost.
So two great free apps to start learning
some basic Spanish are Duolingo and Memrise.
But if you really want to learn
the language and learn how to speak
full sentences, I highly recommend Rocket Languages.
You can check it out at tangerinespanish.com.
That's my affiliate link and it
will take you right there. Awesome course.
Great value for your money. Go check it out.
The next mistake applies to those
who are driving to Mexico.
So in Mexico, there's something they
refer to as the "free zones."
And the free zones are within a few miles of
the border, part of the state of Sonora, the entire
Baja Peninsula, and the state of Quintana Roo.
So if you're driving your vehicle outside of those
free zones, you must get a temporary import permit
When coming into Mexico. It's not too hard to get it.
Just type in Google Temporary Import Permit
Mexico and you will come up with
some directions to help you get that.
But if you come to Mexico and you
drive outside of those free zones without the
permit, they can literally confiscate your car.
And oftentimes the cost to get your vehicle out of
impound are more than the entire value of your car.
So definitely get that permit if you're
driving outside of the free zones.
The next mistake is if you're paying cash in
Mexico, do not use too big of a bill.
For example, if you're buying something for less
than 100 pesos, don't pay with a 500
peso bill because it's considered rude here.
So what can you do if you go to an
ATM and an ATM gives you all 500 peso bills?
Well, you can go into any bank and ask for change
and they'll give you smaller bills in exchange for your 500.
The next mistake you need to
avoid is overstaying your visa.
So when you fly into Mexico, they're going to
give you a stamp in your passport, and next
to that stamp, they're going to write a number.
And that number is the number of days
you're allowed to stay in that country.
And if you go over that number and you get
stopped by immigration, you could end up in a detention
facility, which people describe as a jail or a prison,
depending on which detention facility they're in.
And some people have been reported to be
in there for as long as a year.
So this is something you absolutely do not want to do.
Don't overstay your visa and make sure you
leave the country before that number expires.
And for most people, the number of days they're
going to give you in the country is 180.
Now, some people get into trouble here, and
they see 180 days, and they automatically think
that they can stay for six months.
But they cannot stay for six months because
180 days is slightly less than six months.
So make sure you leave before
that number of days expires.
This next rule is super important.
I cannot stress this enough.
I've personally met someone here in Mexico who
is serving a five year term in a
Mexican federal penitentiary for breaking this law.
And she was in a car with somebody
who had a gun in her car.
Their car got stopped and searched.
They found the gun, and now
she's serving five years in prison.
And the gun wasn't even hers.
So this is do not bring guns or
ammunition into Mexico because you could end up
in a federal prison just like her. Next.
Watch this video.
It's the unwritten rules of Mexico.
It's going to give you tons of tips to help
keep you from being the ugly American traveling in Mexico.