What to know before renting a car in Yucatan

It is no secret to you that we are fans of road trips. Whenever possible, we highly recommend renting a car and exploring the travel destination by yourself, and this is also the case when going to Mexico! Before our trip, we read so many negative comments about driving in Mexico that I decided to write this post to show our personal experience, which was in fact really positive and pleasant. We drove our rental car for 10 days straight, from north to south of the Yucatan Peninsula. We highly recommend it so you can explore the best of Mexico and, in this post, we will tell you the best tips we have learned about renting a car and driving in Yucatan.

Renting a car in Cancun – Where to rent

If you will be arriving in Mexico through Cancun International Airport, the best option is to rent your car directly at the airport. This will give you much more convenience and all the main car rental companies are located within the vicinity. To find the best quote, we recommend using the Discover Cars website.

We decided to rent a car through a company called America Car. They are actually located a bit outside the airport, but they send a driver to pick you up at the arrival terminal and take you to their store. Overall, I would rate our experience as 9/10 and I would recommend them (no affiliates here, just sharing our personal experience).

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What type of car should you rent for driving in Yucatan?

It depends on what is your intended itinerary. If you want some inspiration, you can check our full itinerary here. We drove hundreds of kilometers between Bacalar and Holbox and had a positive experience all-in-all. Most roads had decent quality and good pavement and we didn’t require any special features such as 4×4. We rented a basic car (Nissan March) which served us well. Since it was small, it was quite easy to park anywhere, which came in handy, especially in Bacalar.

If you plan on exploring off-road locations, you might want to consider renting a 4×4 car just to be safe and certain that you will be covered in any situation. But this goes only for very specific situations, in most cases, a regular car should be fine.

Fueling up your car in Mexico

One of the main Mexican gas companies is called Pemex and you will see their gas stations everywhere. Main towns such as Cancun and Playa del Carmen have gas stations available on every corner, you won’t have much issue figuring out where to get fuel. However, whenever you plan to get on the road, make sure to fill up the tank beforehand. On the big highways, you can drive hundreds of kilometers without spotting a single gas station. On the way between Chichen Itza and Playa del Carmen, we literally drove more than 100km without any place to fuel up. So take our word for it and be prepared.

Putting gas in the car is a very standard procedure. Unlike most European countries, they usually have attendants who are responsible for filling up the tank for you. However, this, unfortunately, leads to one of the most popular scams they use in foreigners. To trick you into overpaying, they may not set the pump to zero before actually starting to fill up your tank. In the end, the attendant will demand an outrageous value but the machine states that it is true, so what can you do? Sometimes they will even come up with a random value and reset the machine, so it is basically your word against theirs.

This actually happened to us once, early in the morning when we were not careful. The attendant didn’t reset the pump and, in the end, it was literally twice the price as every other day. And the funny thing is, we were using the same gas station as the previous days.

The good news is that avoiding this scam is actually very simple. Whenever you stop at a gas station, we recommend stepping out of the car and personally checking that the pump is reset to zero. We usually stand close to it and take the time to make small talk to the attendant, sometimes they give really good tips about the traffic, etc. In the end, you leave no space for surprises.

Practical tip whenever driving in Mexico – Always have cash!

To our surprise, many gas stations in Yucatan did not accept cards as a payment method – neither debit nor credit. We strongly recommend having cash with you at all times while traveling to avoid any negative surprises on the way.

On the other hand, many gas stations allow you to pay in USD, but they have a set conversion rate which is usually not very favorable to the customer. However, if you are desperate, this is always an available alternative. Changes are usually given in Mexican Pesos (MXN).

PS: Can you spot the lifted passage made for monkeys? This way, they don’t need to cross on the road, avoiding possible accidents.

General impressions about driving in Yucatan

We drove more than 1.000km between Bacalar, Holbox, and some of the most amazing cenotes, crossing all different types of roads, from perfectly paved highways to tiny dirt roads. If you are looking for the best roads, our recommendation is to stick to the main ones whenever possible. Alternative routes tend to be less paved and rather old, with lots and lots of bumpers.

Driving in the city center of the main touristic cities may be chaos. If you decide to stay in Tulum, we really recommend having this in mind as sometimes the cars and taxis get stuck in traffic for hours because the roads are too narrow and busy. As an alternative, I recommend renting a bike or a scooter in Tulum – you will have much more freedom and will move much faster!

Road conditions and tolls when driving in Yucatan

Whenever driving across long distances, you will usually have two options, to take the highway or the alternative/local route. The first one is called “cuota”, which means you will have tolls for driving on this road but they usually have much better pavement and infrastructure. The local roads are signaled as “libre” meaning ‘free’. These are narrower roads, usually crossing small villages with quite some bumpers along the way. The speed limit on the local road is always lower, as expected, so you should count in some additional time for transit if you choose this option.

As for the price, we only drove on toll roads between Chichen Itza – Playa del Carmen, and towards Bacalar. The prices may vary enormously depending on the popularity of the highway and the conditions of the road. The most expensive toll we paid was the one between Chichen Itza and Playa del Carmen, which was around 200 MXN. The ones next to Bacalar were around 30 MXN.

Do you need an international driver’s permit to drive in Mexico?

In order to legally drive in Mexico, you need to have a valid driver’s license held for a minimum of two years. If your driver’s license is written in English, you will not need an international driver’s permit, which means that you can rent a car in Mexico using your US driver’s license without any issue. In fact, if you decide to rent your car in heavily tourist regions such as Cancun, the attendant will most likely be already used to dealing with US driver licenses so the process should be smooth.

Having an international driver’s permit (IDP) is obligatory if your document is not written using the Latin alphabet, which is the case for Chinese, Japanese, or Arabic languages, for example. However, having the IDP is still recommended if your driver’s license is issued in a foreign language other than Spanish or English. We traveled with our Brazilian driver’s license fully written in Portuguese and the attendant requested an IDP when renting the car.

Besides that, you will also need a credit card for the safe deposit and car insurance, when applicable. It is important to point out that Mexico does not recognize foreign insurance coverages, meaning that if you have insurance set up through your credit card, for instance, you should make sure you have a large credit limit beforehand. If anything happens, you will be required to pay the full amount by yourself and will later have to start the process for reimbursement with your credit card company, which has nothing to do with the rental company.

Pro tip: Make sure to check beforehand if your credit card provider insurance is valid in Mexico.

To avoid troubles and headaches, we usually recommend getting full insurance when renting a car, be it in Mexico, Iceland, Australia, or anywhere else. It is a small cost to pay for a long list of trouble saved, in case things go wrong.

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Is it safe to drive in Yucatan?

We have never felt unsafe when driving in Yucatan. The road conditions were quite good on the majority of places, we only had one incident of overpaying for gas (on the scam I described above), and had no encounters with the police nor trouble whatsoever. I can only vouch for what I have personally experienced and, with that in mind, I would say it is perfectly safe to drive in Yucatan.

However, before traveling to Mexico I did a lot of research on the topic and found reports of several people calling out for corrupt police practices or dangers of driving at night. To be on the safe side, I would recommend driving during the day as much as possible and respecting the local driving rules to blend in.

Frequently asked questions about driving in Mexico