Mexico travel guide: when to go, budget and itineraries

This is the busiest gateway, served by Cancún airport. The Caribbean coast strings together Playa del Carmen, Tulum with its cliff-top ruins, and then the Bacalar lagoon. Inland, Mérida and Valladolid work as bases for Chichén Itzá, Uxmal and hundreds of cenotes, the freshwater sinkholes you can swim in. Allow seven to ten days for the peninsula without rushing. The sargassum season, May to August, can hit exposed beaches; the hurricane season runs from June to November.

The capital, at 2,240 m, deserves three full days: the historic centre and its Zócalo, the National Museum of Anthropology, the Coyoacán district and Frida Kahlo's house, which must be booked online. An hour north, Teotihuacán lines up its Pyramids of the Sun and Moon along the Avenue of the Dead. Puebla and Cholula, two hours away, add colonial baroque and the largest pyramid in the world by volume. The altitude needs a day or two of adjustment.

Oaxaca de Juárez is the country's culinary capital: seven moles, covered markets, mezcal workshops in Santiago Matatlán. Around it, the Zapotec site of Monte Albán overlooks the valley, the Tule tree has the widest trunk in the world, and the petrified pools of Hierve el Agua sit above the countryside. The Day of the Dead, around 1 and 2 November, is especially alive here. Plan four nights, more during the festivities when everything books months ahead.

The southernmost state combines the Maya city of Palenque, buried in rainforest, the Agua Azul falls and the Sumidero canyon, run by boat below 1,000 m walls. San Cristóbal de las Casas, at 2,200 m, is the base for the Tzotzil villages of San Juan Chamula and Zinacantán. Mountain roads are slow: allow five hours by bus between Palenque and San Cristóbal. Evenings are cool all year round.

In the centre of the country, silver-mine wealth built Guanajuato, Zacatecas, San Miguel de Allende and Querétaro, all UNESCO-listed. Guanajuato stacks its coloured houses in a maze of alleys and tunnels; San Miguel draws a large community of North American artists and retirees. The climate is temperate and dry most of the year. Three to four days are enough to string together two or three of these towns by bus, one to two hours apart.

The long Baja California peninsula, bordering the United States, lives by the Sea of Cortez: grey-whale watching at Guerrero Negro and San Ignacio from January to March, diving at Cabo Pulmo, the beaches of La Paz. On the mainland, Puerto Vallarta and Sayulita open onto the Pacific and its surf. Distances are long, often 300 km between stops, and this region combines badly with the south on one trip.