A premium culture-and-beach journey for Arne & Esther — November 2027. This page is the single home for the trip: what's decided, what's still open, and the information we need to make the next decision well.
Last updated 23 May 2026 · supersedes the earlier planning notesA three-week trip to Mexico in November 2027, premium throughout, built on a deliberate rhythm: a culture-rich journey through Mexico's pre-Columbian heritage first, finishing with a relaxed stay on the Caribbean coast. A small number of bases, private transfers and guides, and long-haul flights in First Class. The flights arrive into and depart from Mexico City, so the trip opens and closes there.
How this document works: the sections below hold the settled decisions and the open ones. The big section — the route choice — is the decision in front of us right now, with everything needed to make it. As decisions are taken, they move up into “Decisions settled” and the next stage's material is built out here.
Agreed between Arne and Esther, and not in question unless something changes.
What still needs deciding — with the live one flagged.
Three options are on the table — a lean route, or one with Oaxaca added, or one with Chiapas added. The full picture for this decision is in The route choice below.
Where we are in the process.
Two regions are effectively fixed. Mexico City is the start — it's the gateway, and it holds the greatest concentration of pre-Columbian heritage in the country. The Yucatán is the back half, because it leads naturally into the Caribbean beach. The real choice is what, if anything, to add between them. Below: the three route shapes on maps, then every candidate site so you can see what each shape actually contains.
The most relaxed version. Two culture regions done unhurried, the alternating culture-then-beach rhythm intact, the fewest bases and flights.
You don't see the Zapotec world of Oaxaca, or Palenque — arguably the most beautiful Maya site of all.
A third, genuinely distinct ancient civilisation — the Zapotec and Mixtec world — plus Oaxaca itself, one of Mexico's great regions for food and craft.
One extra base and one extra internal flight. Still very manageable within three weeks.
Palenque — for many travellers the most beautiful Maya city there is — and a logical land route on through the Maya south toward the Yucatán.
The most demanding to travel. Chiapas is remote, and reaching it well takes real routing effort — it pushes against the “fewer bases” preference.
A vast ancient metropolis built by a civilisation whose name we still don't know — already a thousand years old and long abandoned when the Aztecs found it and called it “the place where the gods were created”. You walk the two-kilometre Avenue of the Dead between the Pyramid of the Sun, one of the largest structures of the ancient world, and the Pyramid of the Moon, with the carved Temple of the Feathered Serpent at the far end. The sheer scale is what photographs never quite carry.
Two halves of one experience. The Templo Mayor is the great temple of the Aztec capital, excavated out of the centre of the modern city — you look down into the layers of the pyramid and the offerings buried within it, with an excellent museum alongside. The Museo Nacional de Antropología is, quite simply, the finest museum of ancient American civilisation in the world: the Aztec Sun Stone, the great Maya halls, the colossal Olmec heads. Seeing it early reframes everything you visit afterwards.
Also within reach if you want more: the Great Pyramid of Cholula (the largest pyramid by volume in the world) near Puebla, the Toltec capital of Tula, and the hilltop site of Xochicalco. And early November here is Día de los Muertos — see the parking lot.
The most famous Maya city, and famous for good reason: the perfectly proportioned pyramid of El Castillo, the largest ball court in the ancient Americas, and the round Caracol observatory. It is also the most visited site in the Maya world, so it rewards an early start with a private guide, before the day-trip buses arrive.
To many eyes the most beautiful Maya site of all, and far quieter than Chichén Itzá. Uxmal is the masterpiece of the Puuc style — intricate stone latticework, the long low Nunnery Quadrangle, the unusual rounded Pyramid of the Magician — and nearby is a string of smaller Puuc sites you can almost have to yourselves.
For something extraordinary: a colossal Maya superpower city buried deep in the largest tropical forest reserve in Mexico, far from everything and almost empty of visitors. Howler monkeys, toucans, the occasional ocelot; temples rising straight out of the canopy. Reaching it is a commitment — but it is the closest thing there is to discovering a lost city.
Also in the region: Ek' Balam (a small site with a remarkable stucco frieze, and a climbable acropolis), the cliff-top ruins of Tulum above the Caribbean, the jungle site of Cobá, and Mérida itself — the cultural capital of the Yucatán and a natural base.
A whole Zapotec city levelled across a mountaintop, with one of the great views in Mexico from its main plaza. Carved “dancer” stone slabs, an arrowhead-shaped observatory, tombs cut into the rock — and a hilltop setting that makes the ambition of the place immediately legible.
The second great Zapotec centre, and unlike anything else in Mexico: its walls are covered in intricate geometric stone mosaic — tens of thousands of cut pieces fitted together without mortar into patterns of extraordinary precision. Where Monte Albán is about scale, Mitla is about the close-up.
Oaxaca City itself is colonial in architecture — outside the pre-Columbian focus — but it is the base for these sites and a wonderful place in its own right for cuisine, markets and craft villages.
Palenque is Maya architecture at its most refined, set against jungle-covered hills with waterfalls nearby and the sound of howler monkeys carrying across the ruins. The Temple of the Inscriptions holds the tomb of the great king Pakal; the Palace has a tower unlike anything else in the Maya world; the carving and stucco work is exquisite. Deeper in lie Bonampak, with the most vivid surviving ancient murals in the Americas, and Yaxchilán, reached by river boat.
Chiapas also holds the highland town of San Cristóbal de las Casas and a living indigenous Maya culture — rich, but colonial-era and highland in character, so a secondary draw against the pre-Columbian focus.
The honest read: the real choice is between Shape 1 and Shape 2. Oaxaca adds a whole distinct civilisation and one of Mexico's most rewarding regions for a manageable cost — one base, one flight. Shape 3 brings Palenque, which is genuinely sublime, but it pushes hardest against your preference for fewer bases and an unhurried pace. Palenque is the kind of place that earns a detour — so the question to put to yourselves is simply whether it calls to either of you strongly enough to accept the extra travel. Everything else — the order of stops, the internal flights, where exactly you stay — follows once the shape is chosen.
Ideas raised out of sequence, kept here and tagged with the stage where they belong — so nothing is lost, and each is picked up at the right moment.
Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), 1–2 November. Starting the trip in early November would let it open with Day of the Dead in Oaxaca or central Mexico — one of Mexico's most extraordinary cultural experiences — and still finish at the Caribbean in late November, clear of hurricane season. Worth building the travel dates and the opening leg of the route around.
Lufthansa Allegris First Class. When the November 2027 schedule and award window open (~November 2026), check which aircraft is assigned to the Frankfurt/Munich–Mexico City leg. The new Allegris First Class flies on the A350 (and, from 2027, the Boeing 777-9); routing via Munich — its First Class hub — improves the odds.
Check the Miles & More mileage balance — two First Class long-haul awards are needed, and award space is the scarcest part of the plan. And note any birthday or anniversary in the November 2027 window worth a special evening.