How cheap is Cancun?

The sky is currently falling. It’s raining so hard right now. The thunder is clapping like it’s going out of style tomorrow. The lightning shining through my window is making me feel like someone forgot to turn off a broken light.

Welcome to the jungle! Literally.

Anyway, I’m only staying here for the night. I find Cancun is all about the resort you stay in. Not my style of travel, although I’m not opposed if that’s your thing. But now that I’m here, I find that Cancun is very cheap.

Cafe Azul’s loft area. This place is so cute!

How Cheap is Cancun, really?

Today, I went to the cutest little cafe called Cafe Azul. It was a 5-minute walk from my hostel, and they had a great lunch special. Juice and a baguette for $75 Pesos. That’s about $3.75 for lunch! Can you believe it? I ordered a dessert after that for an extra $40 pesos or 2 USD. My total meal was $120 pesos. I included a tip. That’s a total of $6 USD.

I was pleasantly full, and it was very well air-conditioned. The place was so cute I took pictures and videos of EVERYTHING.

Cafe Azul. A Sandwich, hibiscus juice and veggie chips.

What About Dinner?

For dinner, I decided to walk to a taco place. I looked around and walked into what appeared to be a fancy taco restaurant. I thought, what the hell? It’s ok to treat yourself.

Fancy Tacos. This was the most expensive thing I ate in Cancun.

I ordered 4 flautas, 1 quesadilla, 2 tostadas for $220 pesos. That’s a lot, considering how much I paid for lunch. It was also a lot of food. I got a soda which was $40 pesos. More inflated pricing. $40 pesos is about $2 USD.

My total was 16 USD indulging tips. Not terrible, but I thought it was on the high end.

How do I know these prices are inflated?

I bought a soda and a liter of water at the local liquor store for under $20 pesos… That’s $ 1USD for one soda and one water.

Both, the water and the soda was about $1 USD total.

You can do things cheap here if you really want to…

Let me break it down for you:

Lunch at Cafe Azul: $6 USD

Dinner at Fancy Taco place: $16 USD

Water and soda at liquor store: $1 USD

Total for the day: $23 USD

It would have been cheaper if I used the hostel’s kitchen, though.

Let’s include my hostel price just to see: $10 USD

Total for the day: $33 USD.