Want to know how to plan your Yucatán road trip with just 1 week in Mexico?? Here’s my exact Yucatan Peninsula itinerary where I visited 6 places in the Yucatán Peninsula, plus lots of Cenotes and yes, it did still feel like a holiday in Mexico!
Ideally, you would spend 2 weeks in Mexico on holiday, or even longer if you can, however sometimes, you can only get away for 1 week which is what happened to us and after seeing great flights to Cancun on Skyscanner we decided on Mexico which would be our first time in Mexico!
My husband loves hiring a car in new countries and I’d seen many of my blogger friends do a Yucatan road trip so I knew that it must be ok to drive in Mexico and it really was! The roads, at least in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, were generally really great and I’ll give more tips for driving in Mexico below!
We managed to visit Cancun, Playa del Carmen, Tulum, Valladolid, Chichen Itza, Isla Holbox and 4 different Cenotes on our 1 week Yucatan itinerary.
Yes, we did feel a bit tired and it was rushed, but that’s kind of the point of a road trip… to see a lot! And we wanted to see as much as we could on our Yucatán peninsula itinerary. We ended it perfectly by having a few relaxed island days in Isla Holbox which made us feel like we had a real holiday in Mexico!
Yucatán Road Trip
Why do a Yucatán road trip?
First, let’s touch on WHY you should do a Yucatán road trip and why choose the Yucatán out of everywhere in Mexico to visit.
For us, and probably for you, the draw to travelling to the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico is Cancun Airport. Flights are often direct here from European Cities and because it’s on the most Eastern side of the country it’s the quickest place to get to from Europe, and North America!
Ready to look for flights?? I always use Skyscanner to search for my flights to find the cheapest & best dates and routes!
Another plus to visiting the Yucatán Peninsular is that the area is set up for tourism and that was a draw to us, especially with just one week in Mexico! We wanted to go somewhere we could visit many places in a short time without too much hassle and because tourism is so popular, this was definitely the case and our trip was full of ease.
The Yucatán Peninsular also offers so much. Many people may only know this area for the famous resort area of Cancun but there are so many incredible Beaches, Cenotes, Islands, Historic Sites and a range of accommodations. Plus, many of the hidden places in Mexico are here!
Finally, why a road trip around Yucatán? If you are reading this post just to get a Mexico itinerary for 1 week but you’ll be using public transport, you can still follow this itinerary but relying on buses and tours does mean you might not be able to fit as much in and you will need to be more flexible with your time.
We decided to do a Yucatán Peninsular road trip because we’d seen that the roads are good for foreigners to drive on and navigate and it meant we could be flexible with where we visited, especially the Cenotes that are in what seems like the middle of no-where and we didn’t have to rely on tours.
Still need to book a flight??
I use Skyscanner to book all of my flights! I’m a huge fan of Skyscanner because I love how easy it is to compare different destinations and different dates for the best price and route!
For example, I type in ‘everywhere’ in the destination if I have fixed dates and want to find the best flights on those dates on Skyscanner.
And if I have a set destination I’ll look at the ‘month view’ to check the cheapest days to fly in that month!
Open Skyscanner by clicking here and search for the best flights as you read this post!
Driving in the Yucatán
Is it safe to drive in Mexico?
We got on really well with driving in the Yucatán Peninsular!
I thought the driving in Mexico might be a bit crazy with limited signals and no attention to road markings like in many Asian and Arab countries, but at least in the Yucatan, locals drove well, there were so many signs and markings that everyone paid attention to.
We used Google Maps the whole time on our phone and literally every journey time was exactly as predicated on Google Maps which was pleasantly surprising and made planning our Yucatan road trip easier!
We used Rental Cars to make our booking which searches all the top car hire companies.
Search for car hire in Cancun from various pickup points here!
Roads in Yucatan Peninsular
All of the main roads, especially the road down the East Coast connecting Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Tulum, were straight, well-paved and easy to navigate.
We also found driving from Tulum to Valladolid a total breeze, again, it was a fairly straight main road.
We did take a detour when travelling from Chichen Itza to Chiquila which is the boat port to Isla Holbox so we could go to a Cenote. We ended up driving country roads but they were still well-paved with a lot of space.
In fact, there are a few funny things about driving in Mexico, locals use their hazard lights as a warning that the traffic was slowing down in front which sometimes was handy, and sometimes was totally unnecessary but we thought it was funny, and we saw lots of people driving with balloons and statues on their cars for a local holiday which was interesting to see!
Hiring a Car from Cancun Airport
After we had booked our hire car from Cancun Airport, I read on a few Yucatan travel blogs to be wary of the car hire places in Cancun Airport and to instead rent a car from a car hire place in the city, for us, it was too late to change but we did get in a bit of an annoying situation so now I understand what they mean!
We hired a car from MEX Rent a Car which I would avoid if I was you and instead I would stick to the main, well-known international companies like Hertz, Europcar, and Sixt.
We used Rental Cars to make our booking which searches all the top car hire companies.
Search for car hire in Cancun from various pickup points here!
Scams when hiring a car from Cancun Airport
In a nutshell, when we went to pick up the car, the lady was saying we need to purchase more insurance and that the insurance we had already purchased wasn’t enough. This did seem strange to us, especially as we have hired cars in many countries around the world and had never had this issue.
It also didn’t help that we didn’t have a local sim card and their office wifi wasn’t working so we couldn’t double check the booking. And, as my husband was trying to get internet from the airport terminal nearby the lady was telling me a story of a French tourist who knocked into someone and was now in prison because the insurance they had didn’t cover them…
Thankfully, just as we were about to hand over an extra $120 because we thought ‘ok it’s weird but better safe than sorry’, plus, the lady at this point literally wouldn’t let us take the keys without paying the extra, a Polish couple came into the office shouting saying they had been ripped off 2 weeks ago by being told they had to buy extra insurance which wasn’t the case and telling us to be careful!
So we said, ‘yeah we were thinking this is strange’ and they filled us in on what happened to them which was the same as what was happening to us.
Because they caused such a scene by saying we didn’t need the extra insurance, the lady went quiet and gave us the keys.. which proved she had been lying by saying the extra insurance was mandatory!
Thankfully, this was the only scam situation we had in Mexico, I know other scams in Mexico happen and we found the rest of the Yucatan Peninsular to be very safe and honest, but it was a shame it happened within our first few hours there!
So, I would recommend hiring a car from Europcar or Hertz or another company you are familiar with as we think these international companies will be less likely to do this scam than MEX.
Also, look at hiring a car from Cancun City (check our Rental Cars from Cancun City here!) if you can instead of Cancun Airport which may reduce the scams too!
We used Rental Cars to make our booking which searches all the top car hire companies.
Search for car hire in Cancun from various pickup points here!
Yucatán Itinerary
Ok, let’s get into our Yucatán road trip itinerary. Here is a quick overview of how to spend 1 week in Mexico based on our itinerary:
- Day 0 – Fly into Cancun Airport, landing in the evening
- Day 1 – Cancun to Tulum drive visiting Playa del Carman on the way & activities
- Day 2 – Full Day in Tulum
- Day 3 – Tulum to Valladolid drive & cenotes on way
- Day 4 – Chichen Itza in the morning, visit Cenotes & drive to Chiquila to get boat to Isla Holbox
- Day 5 – Full Day in Isla Holbox Full Day
- Day 6 – Full Day in Isla Holbox Full Day
- Day 7 – Boat back to Chiquila, drive back to Cancun Airport
1 Week Mexico itinerary
With 1 week in Mexico and 1 week in the Yucatan, you have to accept you can’t go everywhere!
We decided to do a bit of a circle to and from Cancun Airport. The furthest West we went was Chichen Itza… because we couldn’t visit the Yucatan and not visit this new Wonder of the World (and it was my final new wonder to visit actually!) and the furthest South was Tulum.
Although I would have loved to have visited Merida further West and Bacalar further South we just didn’t have time.
So I hope you find this a realistic one-week itinerary for Mexico because this is literally what we did and we loved it!
Day 0 – Fly into Cancun Airport, landing in the evening
We landed early evening at Cancun Airport after leaving Manchester, UK in the morning. Be sure to check the best time to visit Cancun before planning this trip!
We didn’t hire the car when we landed because we thought it would be a waste of money paying for this day so instead, we got a taxi to our hotel The Westin Resort & Spa which wasn’t far away,
(However, we did get ripped off with the taxi price so in hindsight, it probably would have been worth paying an extra day for the car hire instead of taking 2 taxis to and from the airport!)
Because of the time difference, we were in bed by 9:00 pm which meant we were up with the sunrise the next day… which we actually loved!
If you want a budget place to stay really close to Cancun Airport, I found Villa Palmeras online which I nearly booked to end our trip.
Day 1 – Cancun to Tulum drive visiting Playa del Carman on the way & activities
We really liked staying at The Westin Cancun! It’s right on the beach and it was a great place to wake up with the sunrise on our first day in Mexico! We got a room for a great price too, so I recommend checking out rooms at The Westin Cancun here for your trip!
We took a taxi back to the airport, picked up the car for 9:00 am and started our drive out of Cancun to Playa del Carmen. Read above if you missed the part about Cancun Airport car hire scams!
There are so many places to visit in the Yucatan Peninsular and Playa del Carmen is one of the busier tourist coastal cities.
I don’t think Playa del Carmen is to everyone’s taste and from what we saw, it was too busy for us, but there are plenty of things to do in Playa Del Carmen!
One of the things we found is a skydive! When searching for skydives in Cancun, all we could see were skydives in Playa del Carmen so we booked this in for 12:00 with Skydrive Playa and got a great look of Playa del Carmen from the sky!
We had lunch in the city of Playa del Carmen although we weren’t really a fan of the city, and started the drive to Tulum which wasn’t too far away.
When driving from Cancun to Tulum, there are many small beautiful beaches and cenotes you can stop at, and that’s the plus of having a car and doing a Mexico road trip after all, so I do recommend looking into beaches near Playa del Carmen and beaches near Tulum!
Accommodation in Tulum
There are many accommodation options in Tulum and many areas to stay in. I would recommend looking into where to stay in Tulum to see if the town or beach works best for you because Tulum is pretty big and places are not that close together.
We stayed in a newly built and up-and-coming area called Aldea Zama which is in-between the town and the beach area and we really liked it. We stayed at Suites at TreeTops Tulum. It wasn’t the best accommodation I’ve stayed in but it was nice and it was nice having our own little pool and lots of space. It was kind of like a villa.
Day 2 – Full Day in Tulum
There are many things to do in Tulum! We started our day by having breakfast at Botanica Garden Cafe (google maps link here) which had been recommended to me by a friend who had lived in Tulum and we really enjoyed it. I 100% recommend it to you too!
This is when we also realised just how far places are from each other in Tulum because this cool and hipster cafe is just in the middle of a residential street in the town!
Tulum reminded me of Canggu in Bali where things are quite far apart from each other, this was a real plus to having a car and not having to rely on taxis or bikes.
We then headed to one of the public beaches and chilled in a beach bar for a few hours.
Tulum has a section of beach with public beaches and another section with beach bars and you can only access the beach through the beach bar and being a paying customer.
For more cool places to eat in Tulum, check out Eat at Liefs, Tulum’s Vegan Van.
In the afternoon, we headed to Cenote Casa in Tulum.
In hindsight, we could have gone to a better Cenote as this one was on the same level as the ground and wasn’t a great introduction to Cenotes in the Yucatan, so I recommend looking at other Cenotes near Tulum here!
We missed the Tulum Ruins in the end but they do look really good so if you are wondering what to do in Tulum, you can visit the ruins from the cliff edge and you can take a boat trip from one of the men on the public beaches where you can see the ruins from the water and go snorkelling!
Day 3 – Tulum to Valladolid drive & cenotes on way
This was a great day on our Yucatan Road Trip!
We had breakfast at a cafe in Aldea Zama which is the area we stayed for 2 nights in and it’s a cool part of Tulum with lots of places to eat! Matcha Mama in Tulum was on my Tulum bucket list so we stopped there before we left!
Then we set off to our first Cenote stop – Cenote Suytun!
One REALLY IMPORTANT THING TO NOTE here is that there is a time difference when travelling from Tulum to Valladolid because you are changing states from Quintana Roo to Yucatán. You GAIN AN HOUR which was actually really good for us because it gave us more time this day, but we did lose an hour the next day when driving to Isla Holbox which meant we were more rushed!
Cenote Suytun is very ‘instagrammable’ and is where people get the photo standing on a platform as you can see below.
There are 2 Cenotes within the Cenote Suytun complex, you can swim in them both but we didn’t swim, we just walked in and got some photos as the water didn’t look great and wasn’t the ‘typical cenote’ I felt I had seen online and wanted to swim in.
Here’s more information on visiting Cenote Suytun, if you are doing this Mexico road trip with kids, I’d recommend coming here with them to swim!
Our next stop was Cenote Oxman which we really enjoyed and I really recommend when looking for Cenotes near Valladolid on your Yucatan Itinerary.
One of the things I loved about the Cenotes in Yucatan is that they have lots of facilities which makes getting changed into swimwear and out of wet swimwear before you start back on your road trip journey easy, but the ones we saw were not too commercialised either.
Cenote Oxman feels like one of the ‘classic Cenotes’ you want to see when in Mexico, especially on a first-time visit. It’s pretty deep and you enter via lots of steps in the ground.
It was a rope swing which is really fun and plenty of space to swim.
Many day tours go to Cenote Oxman, so I believe it can get busy, we were lucky and happened to go between a tour ending and another one arriving. We got there at about 3:00 pm.
Here’s a full guide for visiting Cenote Oxman.
We then drove the short 15 minutes to our hotel in Valladolid, relaxed and then headed out to see the city.
I booked for us to stay the night in Valladolid because it’s the closest city to Chichen Itza.
The centre is only small but it’s so worth a visit and was a highlight to our 1 week in Mexico actually because it was the only time we saw what felt like a ‘real’ Mexican city with a plaza, church, lots of colourful buildings and lots of shops for locals.
Accommodation in Valladolid
Valladolid is only small and if you are just having a quick evening stop as we did, I think it’s nice to stay central so you don’t need to get back in the car to see the city.
We stayed at Hotel Colonial Zaci which was very central. It wasn’t the most impressive accommodation but it was comfortable, a great price, in a great location and it was nice to see inside a traditional building.
Search for more accommodation in Valladolid on booking.com here!
Day 4 – Chichen Itza in the morning, visit Cenotes & drive to Chiquila to get boat to Isla Holbox
Chichen Itza opens at 8:00 am and all the advice I had read about visiting Chichen Itza was to get there early!
Again, doing a road trip around Mexico and having your own car is a huge benefit to ensuring you can miss day tour coach crowds which is why you should get to Chichen Itza early to get the least crowds!
We got there at 8:30 am and although it wasn’t too busy yet, it was pretty busy! We didn’t buy tickets in advance and the queue wasn’t too long.
Chichen Itza is one of the new wonders of the world and,it was my last wonder to complete and we had a great time!
This was a busy day for us on our Yucatan Peninsular itinerary because we knew we would lose an hour from the time difference crossing back into Quintana Roo and we needed to drive to the port for Isla Holbox and get the boat over so although we could have spent longer at Chichen Itza.
We only stayed about 2 hours and if you are following this exact 1 week in Mexico itinerary, I recommend the same!
Day Tours to Chichen Itza
If you are following this Mexico itinerary but you are relying on taking tours and public transport, here are some tours to Chichen Itza!
Chiquila is the port to get the boat to Isla Holbox, the drive from Chichen Itza to Chiquila is 3 hours although again, we lost an hour crossing the border into Quintana Roo so we decided to go to a Cenote on the way.
There are so many Cenotes near Chichen Itza and Cenotes near Valladolid it was hard to pick which one to go to on Google Maps but I finally decided on Cenote Xcanche and it was an amazing choice!
Visiting Cenote Xcanche from Chichen Itza did add a detour on our trip to Isla Holbox but we had time and it was well worth it!
Cenote Xcanche was really quiet and I can’t imagine many tour groups going. Although it felt like it was in the middle of nowhere, there were quite a few facilities. The complex also contains the Ek Balam Mayan ruins so if you have time, you can visit these too.
We really enjoyed swimming in this open-top cenote, it had a rope swing and a zip line for an extra cost over the top too! It’s another Cenote that’s great for kids! It was easily a highlight of our Yucatan road trip!
Afterwards, we still had a chunky 2.5-hour drive from Cenote Xcanche to Chiquila, but again, the roads in this part of Mexico are so good we found that the drive wasn’t too bad.
We parked up in Chiquila, handed over our keys to the parking company (more on this below), jumped on a ferry and we managed to just catch the end of the sunset when we arrived on Isla Holbox! Another huge highlight of my 1 week in Mexico!
We used Rental Cars to make our booking which searches all the top car hire companies.
Search for car hire in Cancun from various pickup points here!
Where to park for Isla Holbox?
As we arrived in Chiquila, we saw lots of guys promoting their car parks. We decided to keep driving straight, right to the port and ticket offices and we found a car park called ‘Orange’ here. So many people drive to Chiquila and then get the boat to Isla Holbox so don’t worry about parking.
We then bought our ferry tickets. There are 2 companies with boats to Isla Holbox – Holbox Express and 9 Hermanos.
9 Hermanos runs on the hour and Holbox Express runs every half an hour.
When parking at Chiquila for Isla Holbox, you get charged per night. On our last day, we got the 6:00 am boat back to Chiquila and there was no one around to get our car until 7:00 am so if you plan to arrive back early or late, be sure to get timings or a contact number for someone so you can pick your car up.
The boat over to Isla Holbox is 30 minutes and we were greeted to island life by getting a golf cart taxi to our hotel… the only transport available on Isla Holbox.
Accommodation in Isla Holbox
We stayed at Villas Margaritas Holbox which was a great price and location.
The great thing about Isla Holbox is the range of accommodation at different prices. For example, you can stay in a cool hostel like Tribu Hostel or a 5* hotel like Aldea Kuká, a Luxury Eco Boutique Hotel for adults only.
Search for all accommodation options in Isla Holbox on Booking.com here! Remember, this is the holiday part of this intense 1 week Mexico itinerary!
If I was to visit again, I would opt for a beachside hotel because I found that along the main beach in Isla Holbox to get a sunbed you need to rent one for the day which is quite expensive, you can’t just buy a drink for example.
Plus, the sea and the beach are just so incredibly beautiful, it would be amazing to wake up and walk a few meters to see it!
- Highly Rated Beachside Hotels in Isla Holbox are:
- MADRE Holbox Apartments & Suites
- Amaite Beach Hotel
- Beach Guesthouse Holbox Apartments & Suites
- Blue Holbox
- Holbox Dream Beachfront Hotel
- Casa Iguana Holbox – Beachfront Hotel
Day 5 & 6 – Full Day in Isla Holbox Full Day
There are many things to do in Isla Holbox. One of the most popular is swimming with Whale Sharks which is possible between late May and mid-September.
You can spend your days relaxing on the beach and partying at night, or you can fill your days with going out on boat day trips like this…
Day 7 – Boat back to Chiquila, drive back to Cancun Airport
Initially, we planned to leave Isla Holbx on night 6 to get back to Cancun Airport for a midday flight at 12:00 on day 7 (which was annoying brought forward from 17:00),
However, after driving around Mexico for 1 week and realising that the journey timings of Google Maps were always right and the roads were so good, we decided to stay an extra night in Isla Holbox which I’m so glad we did!
We got the 6:00 am ferry back to the mainland. Did the 2-hour drive from Chiquila to Cancun Airport from 7:00-9:00 am which gave us a good 3 hours before we flew at 12:00 and everything did go to plan!
I hope my 1 week Mexico itinerary has helped you plan your own Yucatan road trip!
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