Two Nights in Mexico. Was it Worth It?
May. 17th, 2026 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerOur recently completed vacation in Mexico was a short one. We were there just two nights, arriving on Tuesday early afternoon and leaving the hotel just before noon on Thursday. Was it worth it to take such a short trip? That's a question I pondered multiple times before, during, and after the trip.
The biggest expense this trip would've been the swank resort hotel we stayed at. I say would've been because we didn't pay the cash rate—which was over $1,200/night. 😦 Instead we got our two nights free with free-night certificates I've earned from owning the American Express Hilton Aspire card. This was far and away the best value for those vouchers I could imagine. I always looked at this trip from the standpoint of, "We want to redeem these certs for stellar value, how much will it cost us in other expenses to do that?" Those other things add up.
Overall we spent $1,100 on airfare. $650 of that was vouchers, so only $450 or so was "hard" cash. But if we didn't use the vouchers on this trip we could've used them somewhere else. We've got enough travel planned over the next few months that our vouchers wouldn't have expired unused.
One thing we didn't do on this trip was run up a big food bill. We're somewhat thrifty eaters anyway. I mean, we're not subsisting on bags of sunflower seats packed from home; we enjoy eating out in regular restaurants. But we're careful to pick economical restaurants rather than super-spendy ones. And we didn't spend any afternoons down by the beach ordering chair-service drinks at $20-25 apiece.
The expense category that snuck up on me was ground transportation. Adding up Ubers to/from the airport on this end, plus the car service we used in Cabo (for reasons) it was $270. Relative to the price each way for flights we sure paid way more per mile for car rides. But at least we got first class seats both ways in Cabo. 😅
Well, that's the cost side of it... what's the value side? While it's always difficult to put a dollar value on such things, I know I didn't get as much value out of the trip, personally, as I hoped to. I just wasn't feeling it for soaking in our private plunge pool on the balcony morning, noon, and night— though Hawk did. I'm glad she got such enjoyment out of it. And Cabo is absolutely not worth going to for anything outside of the hotel. Even on our first trip there years ago we saw that it was full of tourist traps. The thing was, back then we could avoid them. This trip it felt like everything is turning into a ridiculously overpriced tourist trap and there's barely anything legit left.
Would we do this again? Probably not... though we did say the same thing after visiting Cabo two years ago. It's just that hotel is so nice, especially when we can get a few nights for free, that it makes putting up with other stuff worth it.
The biggest expense this trip would've been the swank resort hotel we stayed at. I say would've been because we didn't pay the cash rate—which was over $1,200/night. 😦 Instead we got our two nights free with free-night certificates I've earned from owning the American Express Hilton Aspire card. This was far and away the best value for those vouchers I could imagine. I always looked at this trip from the standpoint of, "We want to redeem these certs for stellar value, how much will it cost us in other expenses to do that?" Those other things add up.
Overall we spent $1,100 on airfare. $650 of that was vouchers, so only $450 or so was "hard" cash. But if we didn't use the vouchers on this trip we could've used them somewhere else. We've got enough travel planned over the next few months that our vouchers wouldn't have expired unused.
One thing we didn't do on this trip was run up a big food bill. We're somewhat thrifty eaters anyway. I mean, we're not subsisting on bags of sunflower seats packed from home; we enjoy eating out in regular restaurants. But we're careful to pick economical restaurants rather than super-spendy ones. And we didn't spend any afternoons down by the beach ordering chair-service drinks at $20-25 apiece.
The expense category that snuck up on me was ground transportation. Adding up Ubers to/from the airport on this end, plus the car service we used in Cabo (for reasons) it was $270. Relative to the price each way for flights we sure paid way more per mile for car rides. But at least we got first class seats both ways in Cabo. 😅
Well, that's the cost side of it... what's the value side? While it's always difficult to put a dollar value on such things, I know I didn't get as much value out of the trip, personally, as I hoped to. I just wasn't feeling it for soaking in our private plunge pool on the balcony morning, noon, and night— though Hawk did. I'm glad she got such enjoyment out of it. And Cabo is absolutely not worth going to for anything outside of the hotel. Even on our first trip there years ago we saw that it was full of tourist traps. The thing was, back then we could avoid them. This trip it felt like everything is turning into a ridiculously overpriced tourist trap and there's barely anything legit left.
Would we do this again? Probably not... though we did say the same thing after visiting Cabo two years ago. It's just that hotel is so nice, especially when we can get a few nights for free, that it makes putting up with other stuff worth it.
