How to Have a Frugal Cancun Vacation

Frugal Traveler, there is still hope for you. Inflation is not even a factor when those dollars are exchanged for pesos, and English for Spanish. In Cancun, you can keep a watchful eye and tight, roping shackles around your billfold, and still stuff your maw and water your liver. You won’t have to opt for a cot fashioned from palm thatch over a traditional bed and air-conditioned room; no, Frugal Traveler, there are still places in this world that will accept you, and Cancun, Mexico is just the one to do it.

In a recent New York Times travel log, Matt Gross describes how he comfortably survives his Cancun-weekend in 210 dollars and 37 cents. Comfortable was three meals a day, a hotel room, and seeing the sites. Comfortable was not, however, extravagant Cancun resorts in the Hotel zone, 4am tequila-benders, or throbbing parties that consumed whole days; that is exactly what Gross had set out to avoid.

The initial step to a frugal existence in Cancun is not to stay in Cancun. Cancun is the product of sprawling luxury hotels littered with restaurants and spas and pool and even more restaurants; they tend to carry a sizable price-tag. Instead, Gross stayed at a quaint 45 dollar-a-night affair in Puerto Juarez, a swath of a town 5 minutes north of Cancun.

For lunch, Gross dined at Pozoleria Castillo where $6.50 provided him a large bowl of pozole (pork-and-homony soup layered with chilies and oregano), and a glass of lemonade. Dinner found him sharing a large feast with a community of Hasidic Jews, and the next morning’s breakfast, as with every breakfast he ate in Cancun, was a medley of coffee, orange juice, toast, fruit, and yogurt, served to him in bed.

By taking a 35-peso ferry to cross-water Isla Mujeres, a 5 mile long island, he was able to escape the bustling herds of Hotel zone beach-dwellers, and ease into an oceanfront lounge chair, some fish tacos, and a Dos Equis—totaling 75 pesos.

Upon Gross’ return to Puerto Juarez, he drove to Xbalameque hotel where he traded out 120 pesos for a 30 minute Nahuatl steam bath; “essentially a sauna, the temazcal was a small, brick-lined room illuminated by a single yellow filament bulb, the steam perfumed with mint that tingled my lips as I lay on a bench. When I emerged, every toxin had drained away, and my skin glowed.”

That evening, as he and a friend finished their travesty of a dinner at Labna—430 pesos—he was summoned by a force he had managed to avoid that entire weekend. Cancun, Coco Bongo specifically, had VIP cards for line-less entry, beckoning his retrieval. Although they would not save him from a 45 dollar entrance fee, once inside, however, he indulged in a cost-free evening of bottomless snifters and “various sweet drinks of unnatural colors.”

The link separating the reasonable from savings-squeezer, making an enjoyable trip out of a starving wallet, is by planning to overshoot the cost of Gross’ steal of a vacation. He arrived with a budget of 500 dollars; some insurance that would steer him clear of panhandling the streets for spare change. Planning a tight budget but arriving with some extra padding is going to award you that frugal Cancun vacation.