3 Weeks Mexico, Belize & Guatemala

Here is my travel report on a nearly 3-week round trip to Mexico. From Cancun, we travel through Yucatan, Belize (Caye Caulker), Guatemala (Tikal, Flores), and back to Cancun through Chiapas (Mexico). This trip was a fantastic experience. Even though I was bombarded with questions like this before the trip:

"Backpacking on an individual tour through Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala? Isn't that super dangerous and unsafe?"

All three countries are very diverse: There are Caribbean dream beaches on the Gulf of Mexico at Tulum with the finest sand. You can swim and dive in cenotes and underground caves. There are numerous Maya ruins to explore and discover in the jungle. Everywhere you will be served the best food. Additionally, you can marvel at traditional and sometimes curious Mayan rituals.

I will share my travel tips and experiences here to help you plan your trip to this exciting country. Use the navigation to jump directly to the section that interests you.

Overall, we spent 19 days on our round trip through Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala with our backpacks. I have created an overview of our travel route. Of course, we completely abandoned the planned route for our Mexico trip right after departure. https://mapsengine.google.com/map/u/0/embed?mid=zJ9FDCzlTRl0.k8A3ZQLYtSWo

We visited Chichen Itza early in the morning, climbed the Maya ruins in Palenque, Tulum, and Tikal (Guatemala). There, starting at 6 AM, we experienced the sunrise and the awakening of the rainforest on Temple IV.

We got up close with turtles, manta rays, a devil ray, and sharks at the second largest barrier reef in the world off Caye Caulker (Belize) (diving was not an option since I started my vacation with blocked sinuses...).

More impressions and reports: Caye Caulker: Snorkeling at the Belize Barrier Reef

We saw dolphins and manatees in Puerto Aventuras near Tulum, monkeys, toucans, tarantulas, and many other animals in Tikal. To wrap things up, I got to snorkel a second time with turtles and rays in Akumal.

We witnessed illegal immigrants being smuggled across the border from Guatemala to Mexico (mainly men and children from Honduras and Guatemala), observed curious Mayan rituals at the San Jose Chamula Church in San Cristobal de las Casas, and much more.

Regarding accommodations, we only booked the first one in Tulum in advance, which turned out to be a good decision. Because we arrived late at night around 10:30 PM due to the 11.5-hour flight delay and jetlag. Totally exhausted and dead tired (Germany is 7 hours ahead).

Fortunately, we had booked the pickup at Cancun airport and the airport transfer to Tulum in advance in Germany.

All subsequent accommodations were searched for and booked 2 days in advance via booking.com. If you, like us, book at short notice, you can find great hotels at a hot deal and often save a lot of your budget.

Mexico is beautiful, and there is still so much to discover and see, which due to great distances and lack of time remained outside this trip. I will definitely return to spend more time in this country with its extremely warm and helpful people. There are still so many regions and cities that I unfortunately couldn't visit.

Traveling independently in Mexico is very easy: While sometimes there is little information in travel guides and online about getting to the next place, backpacking in Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala is, at the end of the day, truly simple and straightforward.

To put it in the words of a woman I met on the road:

Mexicans speak incredibly clear and great Spanish, which I mostly understood, despite my limited knowledge. As for the food, I can only say: "muy rico" and for goodbye I don't say "Adios" but "Hasta luego"!

When you start looking for information about Mexico, you quickly find reports about gang wars, especially regarding the battles for power between drug cartels.

But how dangerous is it really to travel to Mexico as a tourist?

Even though the media reports on drug wars, kidnappings, corrupt police, and shootings where many people lose their lives - I haven't experienced any of that. Even though travel guides warn about crossing certain borders (Mexico - Guatemala) at certain times of the day. Okay, we didn't anticipate the illegal migrants either (here for the article from Flores to Palenque), but everything went just fine.

When entering from Belize to Guatemala, we had to pay a bribe. I hate it when someone directly says to my face, "I know it is illegal to demand a bribe. But for your safety, do it. Otherwise, we cannot guarantee anything." In the end, it was less than 5 euros, and of course, we paid.

Despite that, I never felt unsafe during the three weeks. I enjoyed it so much that I definitely want to travel again to Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. Central America is simply wonderful! Costa Rica, Panama, and Honduras are great too. I've just not seen much in Nicaragua and El Salvador except for airports.

I bet Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala will also make your heart race!

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