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@xsobe If you have any specific questions about the buses, I'll try to answer, but I really don't know that much about the buses.
@gomexico - Funny you're in Chicago. I grew up in Chicago, spent the two years in Mexico City, and am back living in Chicago now (and quite jealous of Mexico City's 80-degree weather this week!!!).
Considering he said great vacation spots are an hour or two flight away it seems likely he didnt use the intercity buses too often. Plus he said Acapulco is 3 hours away which is only true if you are driving like most chilangos do :-)
Unless you find no good options dont take a bus from MTY. Fly on a cheap airline to DF or whatever airport (Toluca/Puebla) nearest to DF you can afford. There is nothing too scenic on the route and the time saved is well worth it.
Thanks, Ping322, for sharing your experiences in Mexico City, and Mexico. It's good to have another person here with 'feet on the ground' type of experience to help answer questions. I lived in the D.F. for six years. I recognize that few of us live the same lifestyle or share the same preferences for things, so opinions about some things are naturally going to vary. Welcome!
So how terrible was your experience to give you such a negative opinion of the country?
Trying to plan a visit. Thinking Vivaaerobus to Monterrey then bus to DF. Advice on buses and bus stations in DF?
It's been a long time since I took a bus outside of DF (8 years ago), but there are large bus depots on each side of the city. The last time I took one, I went to Cuernavaca with some friends and paid about $10 for a private space with comfortable seats, a table and had snacks served. It was actually a very nice experience. You might just try looking up where the bus stations are and fidning out which ones have which routes to where. Either way, it should be relatively inexpensive.
My experience wasn't terrible. It wasn't as good as I (possibly naively) hoped that it would be. Certainly a lot of my "happiness" was tempered by going there on my own and having to make entirely new friendships, and the fact that that didn't happen as easily as it happened in America. Additionally, I was hoping to achieve some things with my career, and I did not achieve many of those while I was there, so that definitely made me look back on the experience as a less than fantastic experience.
I was there for 18 months and there are definitely a lot of memories that I look back on fondly. I've been home in Chicago for 14 months since returning from Mexico City, and I definitely don't have as many memorable stories from the past 14 months of my life as I did from my first 14 months on Mexico City. But, I've definitely proud of my professional accomplishments since returning, and definitely have stronger friendships here (and not just with people that I've known my whole life). On a day to day basis, I'm definitely happier back here in my native Chicago.
Trying to plan a visit. Thinking Vivaaerobus to Monterrey then bus to DF. Advice on buses and bus stations in DF?
If this were my trip - the one you describe - I'd probably look for the lowest fare to Mexico City instead of flying to Monterrey and bussing to the D.F. Unless, of course, you plan to stop at intermediate destinations before getting to the D.F. It's a long bus ride. And, when you add the fares and the miscellaneous expenses, the total cost may be about the same as if you'd flown directly to the D.F.
There are less than a handful of owners of the major bus companies in the country. They operate under various names and those brands/names operate in the different regions, but not often nationwide. But they're affiliated with one another. Viva Aerobus is owned by one of the bus companies, if I'm recalling correctly Omnibus de Mexico is one company I've used to travel to/from Monterrrey.
My experience wasn't terrible. It wasn't as good as I (possibly naively) hoped that it would be. Certainly a lot of my "happiness" was tempered by going there on my own and having to make entirely new friendships, and the fact that that didn't happen as easily as it happened in America. Additionally, I was hoping to achieve some things with my career, and I did not achieve many of those while I was there, so that definitely made me look back on the experience as a less than fantastic experience.
Sorry, that post wasn't directed towards you.
I was there for 18 months and there are definitely a lot of memories that I look back on fondly. I've been home in Chicago for 14 months since returning from Mexico City, and I definitely don't have as many memorable stories from the past 14 months of my life as I did from my first 14 months on Mexico City. But, I've definitely proud of my professional accomplishments since returning, and definitely have stronger friendships here (and not just with people that I've known my whole life). On a day to day basis, I'm definitely happier back here in my native Chicago.
Well, I think it's not really the place that makes someone happy, but the social life. If you have good friends, you can be happy just about anywhere. From what you've said, the circumstances in DF you dealt with didn't seem to allow that to happen.
For what it's worth, a child/teenager perspective.
I used to go to DF almost every year during the summer to stay and visit with family, and back then I did not really like it, especially when I was a young teenager. However, not until three decades later did I appreciate the experience.
The city life, family and new friends, the lights, the Metro, the trips to the country, vacation homes in Cuernavaca and Ixtapa and many days and weeks in Acapulco are now some of the most remarkable memories and experiences I have ever had in my life and I thank my parents for "forcing" us kids to spend our summers there. It never occurred to me until I had my kids that my parents were also immersing us in the culture and language, no English help, we had to master both languages.
Of course, it was a different world back inthe 70s from today, but all of what you see and hear on the TV does not reflect what life is really like. Yes, the border towns and drug cartels are horrific, but the cities and people in the interior are not like that. It is no different of hearing of German tourists being shot and killed just for visiting Disney World in Florida. Mexico has it's own scum, the drug cartels, just as the US has it's own.
Anyway, living in Mexico can also be a great experience for children, bar the violence.
I grew up in an idyllic Midwestern American suburb, and rode my bike everywhere: to school, to the pool in the summer, to baseball practice, to my friends' houses.
Raising upper-middle-class or upper-class children in Mexico City can be a very stressful experience. I was friends with a couple in their 40s that had three boys from the ages of 8 to 14. None of them had ever rode bikes anywhere. Their entire life had to be their parents driving them from one place to the next. There wasn't really a safe public park for them to play in, they really had to do all their activities within the confinements of their school.
I definitely think that Denzel's "Man on Fire" does a good job of describing the security necessary for the well-off in Mexico City. .... There's a really good novel recently written by an American that lived in DF called "Mexico City High". I recommend that too for a look at what life is like for wealthy teenagers in DF.
I grew up in an idyllic Midwestern American suburb, and rode my bike everywhere: to school, to the pool in the summer, to baseball practice, to my friends' houses.
Raising upper-middle-class or upper-class children in Mexico City can be a very stressful experience. I was friends with a couple in their 40s that had three boys from the ages of 8 to 14. None of them had ever rode bikes anywhere. Their entire life had to be their parents driving them from one place to the next. There wasn't really a safe public park for them to play in, they really had to do all their activities within the confinements of their school.
I definitely think that Denzel's "Man on Fire" does a good job of describing the security necessary for the well-off in Mexico City. .... There's a really good novel recently written by an American that lived in DF called "Mexico City High". I recommend that too for a look at what life is like for wealthy teenagers in DF.
I know several well-off families here, both with and without children, and they don't take any special precautions at all. I saw the movie (and ironically, I was just down by the park and house in the movie), and it's just a movie for the most part. I would agree that the stratified class system can make certain people very isolated and ignorant of how other people live. I've encountered people like that, but again, these people represent a very small minority of the overall population, as the the majority are middle-class or live in some form of poverty. My experiences with them are very different and have been almost always positive.
It is definitely interesting how different one's experience can be just by spending time with a little different crowd, though.
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For what it's worth, a child/teenager perspective.
