Phoning Home

You will find that it is very expensive to call back home to Canada. We were there in Jan 2003 and I believe that it was about $5 US for only a few minutes. Your hotel travel rep will be able to give you more advice about this. I would recommend that you email home, this is very inexpensive and convenient as there are many places to do this from. You can email for approx 10 pesos for a half hour on high speed. You may have to check around for the best prices, although most are in that range. Hope this helps.

Gary

Whatever you do, do not use a credit card from the hotel. 2 calls from villa del palmar to my attorney to take care of some unfinished business at home cost me $120.00 US. An absolute scam. This was for a total of approx 15 minutes talk time.

Buy a Ladatel calling card like mrmike9 suggests. You can find them at many stores around PV and they come in 30, 50 and 100 peso denominations. There are Ladatel payphones in many locations along the streets: dial \"001\", followed by your area code and phone number for phones in the US and Canada. The telephones have a digital display to show you the number of minutes left on your card. The price for the call will be about 5 pesos per minute, so the 30 peso phone card will get you 6 minutes of phone time to the US/Canada.

Do not under any circumstances use those colorful \"Call anywhere in the US or Canada collect or using your credit card\" payphones. They are very colorful, and like a poisionous animal with bright color markings, they should be avoided. You will recognize them immediately the first time you see one. These phones are all over the high-traffic tourist spots in Mexico and are run by modern day pirates. I once unknowingly accepted a collect call from one of these phones, in my US home, from an acquaintance in Mexico. The result was a $65 dollar phone bill for less than three minutes of conversation. The Ladatel payphones, in contrast are more subdued in appearance and clearly marked: they only accept Ladatel calling cards.

Go to any store & buy a $100 peso phone card. Works on any phone booth It should give you 20 minutes air time or so

Just came back last night and made many calls while in PV. I use my AT&T cell phone. I call AT&T before I go and for a $5.00 monthly charge, I have international calling included in my plan. Be sure to tell them which country you are going to. It takes less than 5 minutes for the activation and its only 9 cents a minute!! Be sure to write down the dialing sequences ...because after several margaritas, it can be hard to remember :)

Mexico to US (even on cell)
001-area code-phone number
Mexico to Mexico
01-area code -phone number
US to Mexico
011-area code-phone number

Svedish, I believe that to call \"US to Mexico\", you need to dial: 011-52-area code-phone number???? Where \"52\" is the country code for Mexico.

Thank you Matt, you are correct. I am never sure of what the numbers mean for Mexico, but I do remember dialing 52 in the number. Just not sure if it was an area code or not. I would dial 011 and any number that was listed on the internet to get thru.
Thanks for the correction.
Margie (svedish)
PS Just downloaded over 350 photos of my trip from the camera. It will be a busy weekend getting all on the internet. Check back later today and tomorrow. Will probably post on my website www.svedish.com (photos tab)