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"telcel"
The smart phone is part of our daily lives. Having one in Mexico makes things a lot easier. Even a simple trip to the grocery store goes more smoothly with a loaded phone in hand. Next to social media apps, these are the ones that we have found the most useful while living and traveling in Mexico.
XE Currency Converter
Cost: Free
With the constant change in the pesos to dollar exchange rate, it is nice to know what you are actually spending.
Spanish Dictionary and Translator
Cost: Fee
This app, by Curiosity Media, doesn’t have every word in it, and falls a bit short of a good old Webster, but it does the trick in a pinch. Not only does it show you the written word, it will conjugate the verb for you and play the translation so you can hear the pronunciation. The app has a few games on it to help you learn Spanish, plus a word of the day feature to remind you to keep working on your language skills.
Google Translate (World Lens)
Cost: Free
This app called “World Lens”(was owned by Quest Visual but has now been bought by Google) allows you to point the camera on your smart phone at any printed material and it will translate it for you into another language. It is best for signs or labels. It is not really meant for documents. I have the Spanish/English extension downloaded. It is not perfect, but this app has come along way. Now that Google owns them, they have been incorporated into their Google Translate app on iTunes, but it is still called “World Lens” on Google Play.
Units Plus
Cost: Free
“Units Plus Best Unit & Currency Converter” is a handy metric to imperial conversion to have. It converts meters to feet or temperatures from Celsius to Fahrenheit. This app converts length, area, volume, speed, weight, time, temperature and more. Handy for everything from cooking to renting a 200 square meter apartment. It does have a currency converter on it as well, but I personally prefer XE Currency Converter.
Skype
Cost: Free to Cheap
We no longer have a phone in our house. We rely on our cell phones for local calls, but for long distance to Canada or the USA we use Skype. Pronounced sky-pee in Spanish. Skype to Skype calls are free. Or you can use Skype to a land line or cell for only pennies a minute.
All of these apps are available for both Andriod and Apple products. What are you favourite apps? We would like to hear about them. Add them to the comments at the top of the post.
Communication and entertainment are essential when traveling through Mexico, especially in an RV. Here are a few hints and tips to know while on the go.
Entertainment: Unless you are carrying a satellite dish (which we do not) you can pretty much forget about TV in Mexico. Your over the air signal will only pick up a few poor Spanish language signals.
We do carry a portable Sirius/XM satellite radio with us. It has been invaluable in many cases. The year that Hurricane Wilma hit we would have driven right into the eye of the storm if we had not had our radio. We also have an iPod touch which we download pod casts to help entertain us on the long drive. Plus we carry a hard drive of movies to watch in the evenings on our computer or through our TV.
Communication: Mexican cell phones are cheap and easy to get. You can buy a basic Telcel phone with $100mxp credit on it at any OXXO convenience store for about $300-$400mxp, this will allow you to talk and text.
Or you can pick up a Telcel chip for about $150mxp and put it into your unlocked North American phone. A couple of things to keep in mind when buying a phone. Your area code will be wherever you buy the phone and you eventually will need to go into a Telcel office to registrar your phone/chip with your passport to get rid of that annoying recording that you get every time you make a call.
At Telcel offices in Mexico you can also buy a USB modem (Módems USB) that holds a chip and allows you to buy data packages so that you can surf on the 3G network via your laptop. This works great if you happen to be camping in an area where there is good cell service. We have found this extremely handy and have even watched football games over our stick. We carry a smart phone that takes the same chip, so we just switch the chip between our smartphone and the USB stick as needed.
Coming up next…
Crossing the Border
