Sayulita to Mexico City

Leaving Sayulita was always going to suck. But unfortunately, it was too expensive for us to stay long term. We were surprised at how expensive everything was and both Puerto Vallarta and Sayulita had been more touristy than we expected. Our goal was to follow the Pacific Coast south however we couldn’t find any feasible bus routes from where we were. It became apparent that we would need to head inland to the next city Guadalajara, or even the whole way to Mexico City. It didn’t matter what we tried but we just couldn’t seem to find a reasonably priced option. Flights with luggage were at least $500 each and buses were ridiculously expensive as well. On top of that, we couldn’t get any website to take payment and confirm tickets.

Eventually, we decided to just make our way to the Bus terminal in Puerto Vallarta and see what we could get. It turned out that would be a 14-hour overnight bus to Mexico City. And it would cost $150 each 🤢. The only consolation to the cost, and the 5-hour wait we had at the terminal, was that it was a super deluxe coach.

Something I was completely oblivious to before this bus trip is that Mexico is mostly 1000m above sea level! Basically, it’s a beautiful tropical coastline surrounding a massive plateau that fills the interior. The bus departed at 6:30 pm and by midnight we had slowly wound our way barely a 10th of the way to Mexico City. Along with the windy roads, there was a ridiculous intermittent alarm that went off almost every 20 minutes that the driver seemingly ignored for the next couple of minutes before it turned itself off. So any chance of sleep was pretty much dead.

We eventually arrived at about 8 am and immediately realised the difference between sea level and 2000m elevation. It was cold! We raided our bags for the jumpers we’d thought we had packed deep at the bottom and set off for our hotel. With only 2 nights here we booked a room in a hotel close to the bus terminal and also easy for us to head to the airport from there. Fortunately, when we arrived, the receptionist allowed us an extremely early check-in and we crashed out for a well-overdue nap.Read more