How to…get from Belize to Mexico

Belize is a perfect holiday destination; sunny, exotic and friendly. Although there are only two main roads across Belize, we found it easy enough to travel around, well set up for tourists. However, when leaving Belize to go to Mexico we fell for a bus scam. So as a tip - don’t buy your bus tickets to Mexico from the Belize City Marine Terminal.

Two daily buses leave the Belize City Marine Terminal for Mexico - the San Juan travel agency minibus at 10:30am and a large ADO bus at 12:00pm. We bought a bus ticket from Belize City to Tulum, Mexico, for $30 USD from one of the many agents in/around the Marine Terminal offering tickets for the same price on the same bus.

We opted for the early bus. The ride was smooth, passing through tempting jungle and rivers and signs to quaint sounding places like ’Orange Creek’. We would have loved to stop but time and money didn’t allow. Instead we arrived in Mexico at Chetumal bus station, late, but expecting to carry straight on to Tulum.

At this point the San Juan bus driver disappeared, and when we went to the ADO ticket office we were told our bus ticket was not a ticket, just a voucher. We swapped it for a bus ticket that cost $10 less than the price we’d paid for it. We were then told that the next bus to Tulum was sold out and that we’d have to wait for two and a half hours for the next one. Humph!

So there was no direct connection in Chetumal to Tulum and we were sold a ticket at a highly inflated price. Don’t buy your tickets in the Marine Terminal! Just buy a ticket to Chetumal, Mexico, and make your own way from there - it‘ll take the same amount of time and cost you less.

You have to pay to leave Belize - $30 Bz (or $15 USD) for the “visa processing” fee and a $7.50 Bz Protected Areas Conservation Trust (PACT) fee. Everyone pays the visa processing fee, but you only pay the PACT if you’ve been in the country more than forty eight hours. The exit procedure was quick and easy - as you’d expect for that price!

Entering Mexico was also easy. If it’s your first entry you need to fill in a tourist card, but if you already have one (as we did) you can just stroll right in, through customs with all your bags.
We left Belize with a longing to return. It is a great place to go and is easy to travel onwards to Guatemala or Mexico overland. Just make sure you don’t fall into the same bus ticket trap as we did.