Rental car in Cancun

[jubjang]

Hi;

We plan to travel around Cancun area e.g. Tulum, Chichen Itza, etc. with the rental car, but not sure if it's a good idea or not. Any comments/suggestions?? Also, which are the recommended car rental companies? Are those 'brand-name' car rental e.g. Hertz, National all equal? Your input is appreciated. Thank you.

 

[dlndavid]

I used a rental 1 day out of the 30 or so I have been in Cancun. The bus system "in" Cancun it great, no need for a car. Going to Chitzan Itza takes a long time on the free road, very expensive ($60 ish) on the toll road. Plenty of nice big, new air conditioned buses, that will pick you up at your hotel fo excursions to just about anywhere.

 

[kaz1960]

We go to ackumal 2x a year to go cave diving so a car is a necessity for us to lug all our gear around. I hear that if you just doing the tourist thing that dindavid's response above is correct...no need for a rental car. We rent from Thrifty, Hertz or Budget at the airport and find the service is ok. The prices are pretty expensive though and when you tack on insurance the price doubles. For instance, one trip we paid over 400 for the week which included full insurance coverage. We get either economy or midsized cars. Last year we didnt get insurance and the bill was around 250. Driving is different down there. If you decided to rent a car, get some pointers on traffice rules...making left hand turns are an issue on the highway and even though the highway is stripped as 2 lanes....it is frequently turned into 'four' lanes.
Be careful.

Have a good trip, we'll going mid October....again!
Kaz

 

[Captain CaveMan]

i would take a bus from the hotel. stay away from taxi's. latley some taxi's have been taking tourist to the jungle and robbing them or even raping the women. and leaving them there. thats why we take apple vacation buses to the hotels and the hotels have privet busses that go to tulum exe. and there cheeper than renting a car+ GAS.
do things in groups and try to no doing things by or selfs.
all the ruins are in the middle of the jungle and it would be esay to get lost out there and your in a diffrent country.

we did a Yucatan exploration were we did

-coba tulum chitz. or choice
-zip line in the jungle
-repel down in to a cenota
-eat with real mayan villagers
-kyac on a allagator infested river
-swim in the cenota

all of 60$ p/person cheeper than a car.
and had a great time doing it too.

 

[Captain CaveMan]

this is were we repeled down into the cenote. i got other pics if your interested

 

[geraldp]

i would take a bus from the hotel. stay away from taxi's. latley some taxi's have been taking tourist to the jungle and robbing them or even raping the women.

OK I have to call you on this one. Is this hearsay evidence or is this really happening in the Cancun/PDC area? I have heard that kidnappings, robberies, and other horrible things are quite common in some Mexcian border towns, but would like to know if this also is happening in the Cancun/PDC resort areas.

I personally haven't rented a car so far because of what people have posted here about dealing with car accidents and corrupt policemen. I also know that a lot of people rent cars all the time in the area and have no problems at all.

Jerry

 

[geraldp]

we did a Yucatan exploration were we did

-coba tulum chitz. or choice
-zip line in the jungle
-repel down in to a cenota
-eat with real mayan villagers
-kyac on a allagator infested river
-swim in the cenota

all of 60$ p/person cheeper than a car.
and had a great time doing it too.

One other point I wanted to make:
I think you're correct that a bus tour is a good way to go to for Chitzen Itza... you get a nice tourguide lecture all the way out there and back, a separate tour guide at the ruins, plus they throw in several other stops along the way to make it a nice informative & fun day.

One caveat... do a little research on the tour operator before you sign up. We were in PDC last year and bought a Chitzen Itza tour from a street vendor for about $40 per person. The tour was via "City Bus Tours", I think. They told us to be in front of our hotel at 7:15 AM, and we would be back by 6PM that night. In order to avoid the expensive toll road they drove us all the way down to Tulum (picking up passengers along the way), then took a back (very bumpy) road out to the ruins. We didn't get back until 11:00PM! So we maybe we got an OK price on our tour, but it made for a very long exausting day.

One other caution: Be careful about eating the salad at the authentic Mayan restaurant they take you to

Jerry

 

[jerryn]

We rented a car in Cancun this August. It is a lot more convenient than the bus. We went out to Chichin Itza and were not tied to the tour schedule...or routed through tourist traps. I drove on the non-toll road out...takes a little longer, but not bad. Then we went up to Rio Lagartos to see the Flamingo Reserve. That was one of the surface interval highlights of the trip.

I rented from Elite and found them to be good.

Jerry