Mexico

Mexico is one of the most underrated big-country trips in the world. Mexico City has become a top-five global food and design city. Add Oaxaca for crafts and mezcal, the Yucatan for ruins and cenotes, the Pacific coast for surf, and there is a year-long itinerary easily.

Give Mexico City a week minimum: tacos al pastor at street stands, slow mornings in Roma and Condesa, the anthropology museum, a day trip to Teotihuacan. Then fly or take an ADO bus to Oaxaca for mole and mezcal palenques, and finish on a coast — cenotes and ruins in the Yucatan, or surf at Puerto Escondido. Food and buses stay cheap; the money goes to domestic flights and the boutique hotels that have multiplied over the last decade.

The honest part: Tulum has priced itself into parody — beach-club minimums and taxi gouging without the charm it traded on — and Cancun's hotel zone could be anywhere. The country is enormous; cramming CDMX, Oaxaca, and the Yucatan into ten days means living in transit. Some Spanish is close to essential outside resort zones, and stomach trouble is common in week one. But the food culture and the prices forgive nearly everything.