Five hundred years later, whether you’re buying a piece of land, a home, a car, or a kilo of limes at the local market, you will need to exercise some negotiation skills, lest you may pay more, and possibly a lot more, than you need have.

How you negotiate (or barter) will depend upon the precise situation you find yourself in. In most cases—the notable exception being real estate purchases in popular towns and cities—effective negotiation will require the use of Spanish, so a basic conversational level of the language, as described in the first article of this series, is a prerequisite. Most Spanish language schools in Mexico include market trading as part of their course material.

There are some places and situations where barter is not practiced in Mexico. These include the local Wal-Mart (and similar establishments), department stores and gasoline stations. Barter is not practiced at tienditas (family-run corner stores) and it’s not practiced at pharmacies. Restaurants and comedores don’t usually barter, either; although they might agree to a group discount if you have a quiet word with the manager or owner before or upon your arrival.

Situations where barter is practiced (and sometimes expected) include shopping in open-air food markets, flea markets, art and craft markets and fairs; and buying from ambulant vendors on the street and on public transport. If you board a taxi cab that isn’t metered or doesn’t charge a zonal fee, you should always negotiate your price beforehand.

More formal situations where price negotiations are often entered into include the purchase of a vehicle (new or used), the purchase of jewelry or fine clothing from a specialist supplier of these products, the bulk purchase of almost anything from a trade supplier, hand-made furniture bought in volume from local manufacturers, as well as land and property—whether for purchase or to rent.

When you have lived in Mexico for a while—and especially when you have lived in one place in Mexico for a while—you’ll notice that the prices asked for many local things you buy every day can be very elastic indeed. There are prices for ‘locals’ and prices for ‘tourists’, and whether the tourists are foreign or Mexican might also create a further variation in price. Unmetered taxi cabs which are few in supply may quote you a higher rate when it’s pouring with rain, than they would do on a sunny day with two other cabs parked in the rank, waiting for custom.

Mexican traders, like traders everywhere, are opportunists. They will always try to make hay while the sun shines, and unwary foreigners (whether resident or just passing-by) are fair game. With some experience of living in a place, you’ll learn what prices should be for things like a taxi cab ride, a kilo of meat or fish, a bagful of oranges, a hat or walking stick, a stack of fresh corn tortillas, and so on. How? You start talking with people locally, you hear and see what others are being offered and gradually you get to know. Eventually, you don’t even ask the price for many things—you know what it should be and hand over that amount of money. The acid test is to hand over a coin or bank note that requires some change in return and see how much comes back. In fact, this level of local economic intimacy is a gauge for you—the more you buy without the need to ‘negotiate’ the price, the deeper you have become involved in—and part of—the local community.

See Also: Tipping & Bargaining, Shops and Shopping

Even if you plan to live in an area of Mexico that is settled by large foreign expat communities speaking English, you will still need to learn some Spanish to get by on a daily basis, and especially if you want to get the most of your experience of being in Mexico.

Spanish is Mexico’s official language, and is spoken by over 450 million people in over 20 countries world-wide. By being able to understand and speak Spanish, you will gain access to the culture in a way that you would otherwise not be able to benefit from by having everyone else speak to you in English.

Furthermore, many of the people you will need and want to interact with regularly may not speak much English, if any at all. On a daily basis these could include the local shop keepers and market traders, the gasoline station attendant, the bank clerk, your maid and the gardener. People who provide essential services on an ad-hoc basis and who also may not speak English include the plumber, the car mechanic, the electrician, or the local doctor.

It’s inconvenient having to ask someone to translate for you all of the time. It’s also good manners to be command at least a modicum of understanding for the language of the country which you have chosen to adopt. Spanish is a phonetic language, it’s easy to grasp the basics and you can start learning right away.

In fact, you can start learning Spanish now, by undertaking some free online lessons. The language program we have partnered with offers eleven lessons; the course has been designed by an language teacher who devised a way to teach Spanish in such a way that gets you conversing within a quarter-hour. Try the free lessons and see how you get on; you can buy the entire course on DVD, the course is reasonably priced and comes with a refund guarantee.

To accelerate your learning, there is no better way to learn Spanish than by immersing yourself in the language among a group of peers, attending a course at a local language school in Mexico. These structured courses offer an excellent way to learn Spanish, alongside other students who have the same desire as you to study, sharing the learning and getting involved locally at markets, banks, shops and other places where you can exercise the language you’ve studied in the classroom.

If you’re planning to move to Mexico, you can start to learn Spanish today using the online lessons, and accelerate your learning at a language school in Mexico when you arrive. If your move to Mexico is part of longer-term plan, but you intend to visit Mexico beforehand, consider mixing learning with pleasure on your next visit by including a course at local Spanish language school.

Our Learning Spanish guide is an integral part of our Living & Lifestyle section. Learn about how Spanish is applied in Mexico, as well as the reasons why Spanish is such a great language to learn. Intermediate and advanced students will all find a lot of value by reading Foreign Native’s language blog articles here on Mexperience.

Next Time – Essential Skills for Expats 2: Flexibility & Patience

As the demand for rooms falls, accommodation prices are usually discounted by hotels and resorts, or they offer ‘free’ extras like breakfasts, spa treatments, and room upgrades during the quieter or ‘off peak’ periods.   You may find discounts of 25% or more in comparison to rates offered when you attend these hotels during periods of higher demand.

If you’re planning to visit Mexico City, you will get much lower rates at many hotels here year-round when you reserve over a weekend—Friday to Sunday.  The capital’s hotels earn the lion-share of their income from business travelers; people who leave the capital and return home or use their weekends to explore Mexico’s colonial cities or relax along one of its beaches.  Conversely, hotel rooms on weekdays in Mexico City may not be discounted outside of the ‘peak’ holiday periods as they are in other places.

Most hotels at Mexico’s most popular colonial cities (especially those within a few hours’ drive of the capital) and Acapulco get more expensive at weekends, and some offer discounts during the week.  A location’s proximity to Mexico City cannot be over-emphasized in regards to weekend demand in provincial locations within easy striking distance of the capital: a city with over twenty million inhabitants creates a colossal market—and when significant numbers of its residents head out for a weekend break, demand soars at hotels situated in nearby provincial towns and cities.

The closest (and therefore most popular) colonial cities to the capital are: Cuernavaca, Puebla, Taxco, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Queretaro, Valle de Bravo, San Miguel Allende and Guanajuato.  All of these locations are subject to higher hotel room prices during the weekends.  The closest beach location to the capital is Acapulco and so hotel prices at this port city also rise on weekend days.

The Mexico Hotel Deals feature on Mexperience enables you to search for hotel deals at locations across Mexico: simply pick your location and a list of hotels currently offering a discount or promotion will be presented to you.   The system is dynamic; as soon as we negotiate a deal with any hotel we have an association with, that new offer appears on the list.

If you want to search across a wider selection of hotels, use the main Hotels Search page on Mexperience.  All of the hotels available at the location you choose will be presented to you and those with a current deal will be tagged with a red-colored “Deal” tag.

We offer secure reservations online or you can telephone, toll-free from the USA, Canada and Mexico to make your reservation.  Our booking associate is Mexico’s leading travel operator, with over twenty-five years of experience and over 300 staff at your service.

The rates we offer on hotels are extremely competitive.  A team of professional hotel account managers hold a sole responsibility to negotiate the best deals with hotels across all of Mexico.  We earn a small commission in return for your patronage.  This income helps to bring you the wealth of local knowledge and precise information that is published on these web pages and our blogs.

We sincerely value your business.  Thank you for using Mexperience to arrange your Mexico travels and for encouraging your friends, family and colleagues to consider using our services, too.

Book Online: Mexico Hotel Deals

This means that when you attempt to use your email over a public WiFi connection in Mexico, you might find that you can receive messages (which arrive on Port 110), but any messages waiting to be sent from your outbox just stay there.

If you access your email via Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, et al, using a web browser (instead of a mail program), you won’t be affected by this issue.
A lot of Internet companies across the world have ‘shut down’ Port 25 access, as most “spam” (virus) programs that secretly install themselves onto people’s computers use this port to send junk mail.

If you live in Mexico, and use Telmex’s internet service at home, you can apply to have the block on Port 25 removed by visting the company’s support pages online and completing a request form.  However, if you are just visiting Mexico and using WiFi hotspots which have Port 25 blocked, there is no work-around to this issue.

If you find you cannot send email from your email program, you have two options:

If your email account is accessible via a web-page in addition to being accessible through an email program, you may use the web-browser access to send email.  This is however inconvenient if all of your email is usually managed via your email program, with messages stored locally on your computer.

The second option is to ask the company that provides your email hosting service to open an alternative Port on the mail server so that you can send email through that, instead.  For example, instead of Port 25, it could be Port 125 (or whatever).  Then, you simply go into the advanced settings of your email program, and replace “25″ with whatever alternative number your email service provider gives you.

If you use Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, et al, and use a mail program to access your email account using these service providers, then the change of port option will not be viable, as these service providers will not open a new port for you. You’ll have to use a web browser to send your email instead.

If you travel to Mexico on business, you may want to ask your company’s IT manager about providing an alternative Port number for your use of the company email.

You can learn more about Internet, email, telephones and communications generally on the Mexperience guide to Communications in Mexico, part of our Travel Essentials section.

The survey’s report is sub-headed into groups such as “performance by attribute” and “emotional triggers” including a measure entitled “emotional bond”, which is defined as “percentage of customers’ heart that has been conquered by an airline as a consequence of its ability to be associated to six emotional dimensions: warmth, empathy, justice, trust, interest in the customer and pride”.

Notwithstanding the notion that (a percentage of) one’s heart may be conquered by a corporation is perhaps more akin to heart disease than heart-felt sincerity, the figures reveal that many of the 870 or so people surveyed rated Volaris and Interjet quite highly.  Both companies operate low-cost Mexican airlines offering affordable flights connecting Mexican cities on routes previously monopolized by Aeromexico and Mexicana.   One therefore might conclude that conquering a lesser percentage of a customer’s wallet is likely to attract a larger percentage of that same customer’s value perception.

Volaris and Interjet also rated highest overall in this survey, followed by Mexicana, Continental and Aeromexico.  The remarkable result is that Aviacsa, a regional Mexican airline that scored low throughout the report’s findings, beat American Airlines—one of the world’s premier airlines with more Latin American routes than any other US carrier.   With a net satisfaction of score -18 and a net recommendation score of -11, it would appear that hearts are being broken in spades at AA.

You can download a copy of the Leventer Group report here.

See Also: Air Travel in Mexico

Nicholas Gilman’s award-winning food guide, Good Food in Mexico City:  A Guide to Food Stalls, Fondas and Fine Dining, was published in 2007 and his blog accompanying the tome makes for a worthwhile web visit when you’re looking for inspiration about where and how to feed yourself in the Mexican capital.

The book and its accompanying blog are borne out of Gilman’s love and appreciation for authentic cuisine.  Nicholas publishes another food blog, Good Food Planet, dedicated to the great food he has discovered in his world-wide pursuit of experiences to please the taste buds. It’s no surprise that the blog on food in Mexico City food is particularly well versed as the author has made this capital city his home.

Like many contemporary champions of good food, Nicholas Gilman appears aware of the natural connection between food on the table and its place of origin.  He is an advocate of organic growing methods and the “slow food” movement, a philosophy that attempts to counteract the fast-food culture that pervades so many industrialized nations.  His work has captured the conscious of many like-minded people: those who care about food, and how it is commercialized.  Nicholas’s commitment is also demonstrated by the time he invests heading the Mexico City Chapter of Slow Food International.

His descriptive and timely blog offers articles which review old and new restaurants in the city, describe the produce on offer at the local tianguis (market), and promote food events, especially those which support slow food and organic food in Mexico City.  Articles are complemented by illustrative photos which give readers a visual aspect to the words which themselves capture well the flavors, textures and aromas of the food they describe.

Gildman’s writings also bring reader’s attention to Mexican food establishments where guests may enjoy delicious food and support local chefs and the independent food purveyors who are passionate about bringing the freshest and most nutritious local flavors to the tables they serve.

In the ocean of ‘Mexico food blogs’ which flood the internet, this blog stands out by offering readers a well-structured and informative local insight to good foods and great places to enjoy good food in Mexico City.

Of the 85 million visitors, 20.9 million—24.5%—were classed as ‘international receptive tourists’; these are visitors who arrive in Mexico and stay beyond the ‘frontier zone’: i.e. beyond the check-points situated about 20km inland from the country’s land and sea borders.  Of these, 9.6 million arrived via an internal airport, and 1.9 million arrived by land.  The other 9.4 million receptive tourists are sub-classed as ‘frontier tourists’—people who cross the border by car or as pedestrians and travel beyond the frontier zone.

5.5 million visitors—6.5% of the 85 million—arrived in Mexico as cruise ship passengers.

By far the largest group of international visitors to Mexico are classed in the stats as ‘frontier excursionists’—people who cross the border by road or on foot, but who don’t travel beyond the ‘frontier zone’.  Nearly 59 million visitors entered Mexico on short excursions last year: 13 million by foot, and 46 million by car.  They make up nearly 70% of the total.

Last year’s numbers also reveal some interesting anecdotes related to the effects of visitor numbers at the time of the A-H1NI outbreak.

On average, just over 1 million visitors arrived each month by airplane during the first four months of the year. In May, at the height of the A-H1N1 outbreak, this number collapsed to 375,000.  Arrival of visitors by air climbed steadily from June, with arrivals (in thousands) of 690, 795 in July, 500 in September, 644 in October, 800 in November. By December, traditionally one of the country’s busiest travel months, air arrivals just managed to reach 925,000—a sterling improvement, but still insufficient to reach the first-quarter monthly averages.  The decline is, quite probably, also a reflection of the general down-turn in air world-wide air travel.

Cruise passenger numbers collapsed more steeply than air passenger numbers last summer.  Over 600,000 cruise passengers arrived at Mexican ports each month between January and April.  In May, the number was just 28,000.  By October 2009, cruise passenger visitors were returning to the average levels seen during the first four months of year, but even December’s tally, with 575,000 cruise passenger arrivals, could not return performance to early-year levels.

In stark contrast, the number of people crossing the border using their vehicles and on foot, classed as frontier excursionists, were hardly affected.  An average of 4.87 million excursionists arrived in Mexico by car and by foot in each of the first four months of 2009.  In May, this number was virtually unchanged, and in the months following—June through December—the monthly average rose, to reach nearly 5 million people crossing into Mexico as excursionists.

The statistics demonstrate that while many people abandoned air travel during the A-H1N1 affair, visitors were quite prepared to continue traveling into Mexico using their cars or by foot across land borders.  The data also suggest that people may have been more concerned about contracting the flu on an enclosed airship than by visiting Mexico, per se.

Land travel and, in particular, high-speed train travel could hold a significant future potential for transportation into and across Mexico.  Mexico’s train network was mothballed about three decades ago in favor of road development, so the current rail network is nowhere near the standard required to provide a modern, fast and efficient passenger train service.  However, the potential of a high-speed rail link connecting Mexico north-to-south, with smaller rail networks connecting a ‘spinal cord’ to the regions, could transform the way people travel across Mexico in future—especially for visitors from the United States and Canada, where over 85% of Mexico’s visitors emanate from.

See Also: Getting Around Mexico

Finding constructive ways to make healthcare affordable and accessible to a country’s citizens–by whatever means–will continue to be a priority for the leaders of industrialized nations.

Today in the United States, there exists a significant number of people who, for a variety of reasons, cannot afford the cost of healthcare.   In tandem, there is also an increasing demand from consumers for healthcare services which are not covered by private or state-sponsored health programs; for example, dental and eye care services and weight-loss procedures.

Increasing numbers of Americans who can’t afford US healthcare, as well as Canadians and some Europeans who want procedures not covered by their state-sponsored programs, are traveling to Mexico where health check-ups, and a wide range of healthcare services are administered at affordable prices; and where patients are attended by fully qualified healthcare professionals, working in state-of-the-art clinics and hospitals using the latest equipment and techniques—usually imported from the USA.

The Mexican healthcare option demonstrates how would-be patients are willing to seek-out the services they want and, when they’re affordable, travel some distance to acquire them.  While the US healthcare system’s costs remain out-of-reach to a significant number of people, and both private and government sponsored health plans limit or reduce the range of procedures covered, clinics and hospitals in Mexico offering affordable healthcare services are likely to grow and prosper.

You will need a good map to refer to when you are planning and undertaking a road trip across Mexico.  Whether you drive your own car across the border from the USA, or rent a car in Mexico, a map is an essential navigation tool. A GPS Atlas of Mexico is available for download, at a cost, in addition to the GPS equipment you’ll need to use it.

Mexico’s Ministry of Communications and Transport (SCT) publishes a web site that offers some useful information for road travelers; notably, ‘Traza tu Ruta’, an onlilne application that enables you to find routes for journeys taken on Mexico’s extensive network of highways and toll-roads.  Less well known is that the same web site is also home to a catalog of quite detailed maps, published in PDF files, and down-loadable free of charge.

The PDF files sizes are quite large, but the big file size enables you to ‘zoom in’ and extract a considerable amount of detail from each one.   There is one map published for each of the 31 states, and the Federal District  (Mexico City) is divided into two maps: north and south.  There is also a ‘national’ map that shows a decent amout of detail, as well as table of distances between principal towns and cities across Mexico.

To facilitate our reader’s access to these maps we’ve published a new Maps of Mexico page that links to each of the state maps as well as the two maps of Mexico City and the national map situated on the SCT’s web site.

You will need to have the free Adobe PDF Reader installed on your computer to view the files. File sizes range from 1MB to 8MB (be patient as the file downloads) and, once the PDF has downloaded, you can save the file for personal use to your computer.  You can print-out the map—or certain parts of it—and take it with you.  Better still, if you own one of the many eReader devices now available on the market, most of these read PDF files, so you can take the maps with you and read them directly off the screen on your travels.

Punta de Mita is one of Mexico’s ‘exclusive’ coast resort-and-realty areas, similar in that respect to Costalegre.  Top-of-the-line resorts were the first major investors to establish a presence in Punta de Mita, most notably, the world-renowned Four Seasons Resort; Palladium also has a resort and spa here.  The Four Seasons situtaed here is the company’s only beach resort in Mexico and also boasts one of the country’s top-rated golf courses as one of its many alluring features.

The Four Seasons is uniquely situated on point of the peninsula, and this creates two distinctive sand-draped beach-fronts and indulges its guests with inspirational views of bright-blue Pacific Ocean contrasted by dramatic rock formations which are so characteristic of the lands in this region.  The Four Seasons creates a travel experience in its own right; the resort is truly outstanding on every level; the choice of location, the uncompromising quality of the amenities and the painstaking attentions paid to minute service details which assure guests feel utterly taken care of during the entirety of their stay, set this property apart from most other resorts.  This is not the place to go when you’re on a tight budget, but Punta de Mita was never conceived as anything other than elite in its intentions.

Exclusive real estate is the other feature that draws foreigners to Punta de Mita.  The last decade has brought unprecedented development to the region; small and rustic Mexican villages are growing and are being transformed by the advent of nearby developments which are creating super-luxury homes.  Land prices have rocketed, not least because government-sponsored infrastructure programs are bringing about new roads, water and sewerage treatment centers, electricity grids, communication services and a range of other civic amenities to this area that was, not twenty years ago, largely ignored by most and unheard-of by the affluent foreigners who are now arriving to establish a home in Mexico.

Mexico is dotted with many highly-desirable landscapes and endowed with a climate that is both attractive and practical for comfortable living; Punta de Mita is a leading example of this.  The area is never going to be an entry-level investment in Mexico, but for those who are seeking a truly magnificent environment to live in here, Punta de Mita is—and will continue to be—one of the most sought-after land spaces in the country.

See Also: Punta de Mita Guide | Punta de Mita Photo Gallery