Mail - Playa Del Carmen

Mexican postal services ( correos ) are reasonably efficient. Airmail to the capital should arrive within a few days, but it may take a couple of weeks to get anywhere at all remote. Post offices (generally Mon-Fri 9am-6pm, Sat 9am-noon) usually offer a poste restante/general delivery service: letters should be addressed to Lista de Correos at the Correo Central (main post office) of any town; all mail that arrives for the Lista is put on a list updated daily and displayed in the post office, but held for two weeks only. You may get around that by sending it to "Poste Restante" instead of "Lista de Correos" and having letter-writers put "Favor de retener hasta la llegada" (please hold until arrival) on the envelope; letters addressed thus will not appear on the Lista. Letters are often filed incorrectly, so you should have staff check under all your initials, preferably use only two names on the envelope (in Hispanic countries, the second of people's three names, or the third if they've four names, is the paternal surname and the most important, so if three names are used, your mail will probably be filed under the middle one) and capitalize and underline your surname. To collect, you need your passport or some other official ID with a photograph. There is no fee.

American Express also operates an efficient mail collection service, and has a number of offices all over Mexico - most useful in Mexico City, where the address for the most central branch is: c/o American Express, Reforma 234, Col. Juarez, México D.F. They keep letters for a month and also hold faxes. If you don't carry their card or cheques, you have to pay a fee to collect your mail, although they don't always ask.

Sending letters and cards is also easy enough, if slow. Anything sent abroad by air should have an airmail (por avión) stamp on it or it is liable to go surface. Letters should take around a week to North America, two to Europe or Australasia, but can take much longer (postcards in particular are likely to be slow). Anything at all important should be taken to the post office and preferably registered rather than dropped in a mail box, although the new special airmail boxes in resorts and big cities are supposed to be more reliable than ordinary ones.

Sending packages out of the country is drowned in bureaucracy. Regulations about the thickness of brown paper wrapping and the amount of string used vary from state to state, but most importantly, any package must be checked by customs and have its paperwork stamped by at least three other departments, which may take a while. Take your package (unsealed) to any post office and they'll set you on your way. Many stores will send your purchases home for you, which is a great deal easier. Within the country, you can send a package by bus if there is someone to collect it at the other end.

Telegram offices (Telegrafos) are frequently in the same building as the post office. The service is super-efficient, but international ones are very expensive, even if you use the cheaper overnight service. In most cases, you can get across a short message for less by phone or fax.