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I'm a tree hugger who prefers to travel by train and bus to flying or driving. I'm planning a trip from eastern Texas to Belize, which means crossing the entire eastern side of Mexico from north to south. What is the best way to do that by train or bus?

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Here are the results of my research on this. I won't accept my own answer, but will wait to see if anyone else has better information to offer.

Starting and end points of itinerary

For a starting point, The Amtrak route map does not have anything on the eastern part of the border. The Greyhound route map includes several cities on the Mexican side of the eastern border, including Matamoros, Raynosa, and Nuevo Laredo, and even some major cites inside Mexico, such as Monterrey and Mexico City. For an example start, a ticket Houston to Matamoros has a price range of US$63 to US$129.

For an end point, I'm visiting a friend in Belize close to the Mexican border, so if I get myself to the border city of Chetumal, Mexico, he could come and pick me up there.

Options for travel by train (none) and by bus (several)

It appears that there is almost no long-distance passenger train service in Mexico. Mexperience reports that bus travel is mostly safe, but is safest for both the passenger and his luggage on "executive class" busses. I don't care about luxury, but I do care about safety. It says the bus lines in that class are ETN, Estrella de Oro’s Diamante Service, Costaline, ADO’s Platino and UNO brands, and Futura.

I Googled those names and found the following. "(E)" indicates the website has an English version.

  • ETN (E): No route map. The route search tool offers service from the eastern border cities: Matamoros, Reynosa, and Nuevo Laredo. But it does not appear to offer any service to the southeast. So it could be an option for the northern leg of a trip between the US border and Mexico City. An example fare is Matamoros to Mexico City for 1,908 pesos (US$92).
  • Estrella de Oro’s Diamante Service: Diamante website not found. I read somewhere that Estrella de Oro itself provides a high class of service, so I checked it out. It's route map only covers a small region in central Mexico.
  • Costaline (E): No route map. The list of ticket offices does not appear to include any locations useful to my route.
  • ADO's Platino: See expanded comments below.
  • ADO's UNO: No website found
  • Futura (E): No route map. The route search tool does not appear to work. It allows me to specify a point of origin, but does not allow me to enter a destination. The list of available points of origin is interesting because it includes cities in the US, although they appear to all be in California and Arizona, none in Texas.

Platino and the rest of ADO

The link above for Platino is not its own website, but just a single page on the ADO website about their Platino busses. There does not appear to be a way to search just for Platino busses, but they are listed alongside other classes of service available on any particular route. For example, here is part of the listing of fares for Mexico City to Veracruz:

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This is interesting because Platino is supposed to be ADO's premier service, yet it offers both the most expensive and the second-least expensive fare in this example. In all, the example shows ADO's four main classes of service, which rank, according to what I've read, in the following order of quality:

  • AU ("Autobuses Unidos"): Second class service
  • ADO: Basic, first class service.
  • ADO GL ("Great Luxury").
  • Platino ("Platinum").

It's also interesting that I've seen ADO described as the best way to get around Mexico by bus, but it serves less than half the country. It's map of terminals is limited to the eastern Gulf coast and the southeastern states:

Map of ADO bus terminals

This is great for me because it covers exactly the span that I need from eastern Texas, including the border cities of Matamoros and Reynosa, all the way to Chetumal in the south, and even going to Belize City (which is further into Belize than I need to go). The route search tool does not seem to provide a single route from Matamoros or Reynosa to Chetumal, but it does offer routes from those northern border cities to Mexico City, and separately from Mexico City to Chetumal. However, the northern leg is only available with the basic ADO service, with a far of 1,355 pesos (US$65) for Matamoros or 1,374 (US$66) for Reynosa. On the other hand, the southern leg has both basic ADO service at 1,772 (US$86) and GL service at 2,262 pesos (US$109).

I found helpful information about ADO in three online articles:

Conclusion

In order to enhance safety by traveling as much as possible in the higher classes of service, I could take ETN from Matamoros to Mexico City and then ADO GL from Mexico City to Chetumal. This would make a complete itinerary look like:

Some of the articles cited above say that the busses are seldom full, so it usually works to buy tickets on the day of travel. That suits me because I like the flexibility of not buying tickets in advance. Also, it appears that there is no advance purchase discount available to nonresidents.

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