By David Eidell (Revised 05/08)
Wow! Have things ever changed since this article was first written (Six Years ago)!
Trips That Involve A Lot Of Driving Cost A Lot More
The shortest way to Mexico will reduce your fuel (and campground cost) I live in California and I would head straight for Mexicali and then go east toward Mex 15, south of Nogales. Five-dollar diesel and four-dollar regular unleaded would encourage me to remove everything out of my rig except indispensable cookware and clothing.
South-Of-The-Border
Divide The Number Of Vacation Days Into Your Budget Total
Let's assume that you have a total (in Mexico) budget of two thousand dollars and you really would like to stay an entire thirty days. Divide thirty into two thousand dollars. This will yield sixty-six dollars and change per day. If an RV park is going to cost twenty dollars, you will have forty-six dollars left over for fuel and tolls. But if you really economize when you reach your final destination you can add that money to your daily traveling total.
Calculating Daily Travel Cost Or Cost Per Mile
Fuel costs in Mexico today range as follows:
Unleaded regular gasoline $2.47 per gallon (US Dollars)
Unleaded premium gasoline $2.95 per gallon (US Dollars)
Diesel fuel $2.12 per gallon (US Dollars)
Propane motor fuel $2.44 per gallon (US Dollars)
Satisfactory Road Maps Are Available At AAA Offices
The maps may not show every toll road but for mileage computation they work out very well. I always add ten percent onto basic "destination to destination" mileage to allow for deviation in plans. Sometimes a favored RV park will be closed, or you may overhear someone exuberantly describing a brand-new facility "down that highway a few miles".
Traveler's Guide To Mexican Camping
This is a comprehensive guide to Mexican RV campgrounds. You'll find it at your local bookstore or at Amazon dot com. Unless you have already established a route beforehand, this book cannot help but save you many times over in gasoline cost---just one fruitless search for an obscure campground can cost you more than the purchase price of the book. Consider it indispensable.
Toll Road Charges
The cost of driving an automobile to Mazatlan from Nogales using Mex 15-D is approximately seventy US Dollars. Some private toll road concessionaires classify Motorhomes as trucks so RVers should add forty dollars onto the one-way price. If towing a motor vehicle, you will pay full fare (automobile) for it as well. Rather than get into a long winded discussion about variable routes and vehicle combinations you might want to figure on paying (one way) a hundred eighty dollars from Texas to Acapulco, and perhaps seven hundred dollars (no toad) on an circumnavigation tour that starts in Texas, goes to Yucatan and then back up the West Coast.
Note: It is quite possible to lop off a hefty chunk of these figures by using some "free" roads. It is outside of the scope of this article to discuss specific routes and bypass shortcuts, but I have listed below the URL to a rather new Mexican government site that lists toll road costs over specific routes. The site is interactive so it would be best to use a roadmap to set starting and stop points.
http://aplicaciones4.sct.gob.mx/sibuac_internet/ControllerUI?action=cmdEscogeRuta
RV Park Charges
Parks in resort destinations tend to charge what the traffic will bear, but an all-around average figure will run in the neighborhood of seventeen dollars a night. This may not sound like much but I always like to remember that four month's worth of "average rv park rental" amounts to more than two thousand dollars.
Camping "For The Winter"
Many RVers dream of camping on a remote beach for an entire winter. I know of lots of beaches on Mexico's West Coast where one can camp for a daily fee of five dollars. You'll have to haul your own water and sewage but the savings over several months can be appreciable. A lot of primitive campers will periodically check into a nearby full service RV Park to hook up and do "spring cleaning" and reorganization, then return to the good life. Speaking of long-term rentals, most places will deduct a hefty chunk of money from the rent depending on the length of stay. For example rent fell from four dollars a day when I happened to be holding two one hundred dollar bills as I was discussing an (almost) three-month stay at one rural beach camp.
Self-Discipline Is The Key To Success
It's one thing to create and establish a budget and quite another to abide by it's limitations. I've seen many RV'ers who had to bail out of a planned long-stay because they splurged on evening cocktails every day at a bar that they had to drive ten miles to get to. One woman who bragged about her thriftiness threw caution to the wind one winter afternoon and purchased a small fortune's worth of ironwood carvings. The fact that she had a snoot full of gin and tonic probably affected her judgment. She was packed up and headed home barely two weeks into her "one month" vacation.
Another mistake many newcomers make (where have you read this before?) is to haul a bomb shelter's quantity of basic foodstuffs several thousand miles and then to top it off, most of it will follow them all the way back to their driveway.
Homesickness Can Be Expensive
Whenever I lust for something familiar, I'll make a special effort to prepare a favorite dish then budget a few dollars to visit the nearest internet cafe. I would have to say that the appearance of thousands of internet cafes in Mexico has done more to diminish the feeling of isolation than just about anything else I have ever dealt with. A few dollars connects me with friends -- I can send especially enticing JPEG images of me swinging in a hammock while they're shoveling snow. Hard-earned experience has taught me to bring lots of reading material to tide me over when I have to stay inside because of careless sunburn, or when periodic boredom (yes it can happen, especially when staying in one spot for several months) sets in. Boredom is another formidable foe to an otherwise well-planned budget. Rather than try to psycho-analyze why I get bored every once in a great while even when ensconced on a idyllic tropical beach, I'll drag out my mountain bike and go for a ride.
Lavish Meticulous Maintenance And Tune-Up On Your Rig
A less than perfect tune up and less than properly inflated tires can cost you a bundle on a long trip. I'm not talking about just one or two hundred dollars either. It would pay to search out and find a very meticulous tune-up artist in your area who has the knowledge and patience to check and test every single component in your engine to make sure it is at optimum tune. Not only will a perfect running engine offer optimum economy and power, but also it is much less likely to suffer a mechanical breakdown. If I ran into say even a slightly greedy carburetor I wouldn't hesitate to rebuild or even replace it. The cost of fuel these days is not worth being un-aggressive about maximum fuel economy. Another potential hidden area is within emissions control devices and the on board computer. It is one thing to "pass smog" and another thing to pass a smog test and optimize economy.
Eating Out
My age and physical condition fairly scream that I should stay home and eat healthy. My greatest ally in the constant temptation to "Try that new restaurant" is a bathroom scale. By eating healthy I can save anywhere from three to ten dollars per meal. On a long trip this can add up to a "make-or-break" chunk of dinero.
Cocktails
Three dollars per cocktail, times perhaps three or four, doubled (for a couple) soon adds up to be a real budget buster. Whenever I get into a "cocktail and socialize" mood I'll invite the neighbors over and pour a lavish quantity of membership warehouse spirits. If the mood strikes me to sit at some palm frond restaurant bar and watch the sunset, I'll first enjoy a couple of cocktails at camp then nurse the one purchased at the bar.
Consider XM Or Sirius Radio
This is a great way to eliminate boredom or homesickness. Whenever you wish to be reminded about exactly why you are in Mexico just tune into one of those political talk shows or a "Weather & Traffic Together" all news stations. I didn't purchase a satellite radio for the above reasons but rather for music. Whenever the howl and screech of ranchera music gets to me I'll switch on the satellite radio and tune in a soothing mariachi piece. Then too, Strauss, Beethoven and Mozart can turn even a simple evening meal into something like a banquet.