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I Showed Up to This Mexican Town With Zero Plan and Somehow Had the Best Week of My Life

@Topiclo Admin5/9/2026blog
I Showed Up to This Mexican Town With Zero Plan and Somehow Had the Best Week of My Life

so i landed in what i later learned was somewhere near pachuca, hidalgo, with just a backpack, my laptop, and the kind of optimism that only comes from being 27 and having zero responsibilities. the coordinates on my phone said 20.2833, -99.0153 and honestly i had no idea what that meant for my wifi situation. a local at the bus station told me "it's quiet here, but the food is real" which turned out to be the most accurate review i got the entire trip.

Quick Answers



Q: Is this place worth visiting?
A: yeah, if you want actual mexico instead of the tourist version. it's rough around the edges in a way that feels honest, and the food situation is incredible if you know where to look.

Q: Is it expensive?
A: dirt cheap compared to anywhere near mexico city. i spent about 350 pesos a day and ate like a king. my airbnb was 400 pesos night.

Q: Who would hate it here?
A: people who need things to be "cute" or curated. if you need instagram-perfect streets, go to san miguel. here you get reality, which is way more interesting.

Q: Best time to visit?
A: the weather was perfect when i went - around 18-19 degrees, feels like 18.5, that mild dry heat where you can actually walk around midday without dying. i'd aim for march through may.

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my laptop charged at a rate that suggested the electricity was more of a suggestion than a guarantee, and i learned to work in short bursts. the power would dip, my zoom calls would freeze on my face mid-sentence, and honestly it forced me to be more efficient. i got more work done in four days here than i do in a week in mexico city where everything is too comfortable.


there's a specific kind of freedom in being somewhere that doesn't cater to digital nomads. no co-working spaces with avocado toast, no other laptop people nodding at each other in cafes. just me, my stuff, and whatever the local internet situation was gonna be. a guy at a taekwondo gym near the center told me "we don't get many people like you here" which made me feel both special and like i was somewhere genuinely off the beaten path.

people walking on pedestrian lane during daytime


*the food situation here is no joke. i ate at a place that had no menu, just a woman pointing at whatever she had cooked that day, and it was the best meal i've had in months. she made me something with rice, beans, and meat that i couldn't identify, and i still think about it. cost me 45 pesos. i tried to find it again three different times and got lost every time, which feels fitting.

i met a photographer from queretaro who told me that the reason this place flies under the radar is that there's "nothing to photograph" - no colonial centro, no pretty plaza, no anything that's been optimized for tourists. she said this like it was the best thing in the world, and i understood. there's something nice about being somewhere that hasn't been styled for your consumption.

the weather made everything easier. the temperature sat around 18-19 degrees celsius most days, humidity at 64% which sounds high but honestly felt fine, and the pressure at 1012 hPa meant no weird headaches or joint pain like i get in mexico city. i could actually breathe here. the air felt cleaner somehow, maybe because there's less traffic, maybe because it's just lower to the ground than the capital.

a statue of a man on a horse in front of a building


this is a working town, not a tourism town. there's a beauty in that which took me a day to appreciate. the streets aren't pretty but they're real. the people aren't performing friendliness for tips, they're just living. sometimes they'd help me anyway, like the old man who walked me back to my airbnb when i clearly looked lost, no tip requested, just walked me like it was nothing.

my airbnb was in a residential area, and the woman who owned it spoke almost no english but we managed to communicate through a combination of google translate and charades. she brought me breakfast one morning unprompted, and i cried a little eating her tamales because i was so tired and they were so good. she charged me 400 pesos a night. i tried to pay more and she got annoyed. some things aren't about money here.

i tried to find a good cafe to work from and eventually just defaulted to a panaderia where i'd buy a concha and pretend to read while using their wifi. the owner never charged me for extra time, never made faces when i stayed three hours on one 15-peso cookie. i left him a big tip on my last day and he looked at me like i'd lost my mind, then smiled.

digital nomad scene: nonexistent, which is the point. there's no community here to join, no meetups, no facebook groups. you're just a person in a town, and you figure it out. that sounds intimidating but it's actually kind of liberating. no one's comparing notes on the best rooftop bars because there are no rooftop bars. there's just life happening at a pace that doesn't require your optimization.

i heard from a backpacker i'd occasionally run into at the panaderia that the safety situation is pretty chill - i never felt sketched out, even walking back late at night. there's a grittiness to the place but not a dangerous one. it's the grittiness of a town that's been around forever and doesn't care that you showed up.

aerial view of trees near body of water


the nearest "big" experience is about an hour away if you want to go to pachuca and do actual tourist things, but honestly i never went. i stayed here and just existed. it's the first trip in a while where i didn't have a list of things to see, and i think that's why it worked. i wasn't trying to optimize my experience, i was just having one.

my flight out was early and the collectivo driver who picked me up at 5am had coffee waiting in the car for me. he said "for the road" and i almost cried again. these small gestures that would be nothing anywhere else felt like everything here, probably because everything moves slower and you notice more.

i don't know if i'd recommend this place to everyone. if you need structure, if you need things to be easy, if you need a guidebook that tells you what to do - go somewhere else. but if you want to feel like you're actually somewhere, not at a resort that happens to be in a foreign country, this is it. it's not pretty but it's real, and sometimes that's worth more.

practical stuff: bring cash, your spanish needs to exist at least a little, don't expect english menus, the wifi will test your patience, and the weather will treat you right. i spent maybe 2000 pesos total for five days including accommodation. that's less than a nice dinner in nyc. a local told me the best tacos are at the stand near the church but only after 8pm, and she was right. another local told me not to walk through the market after dark, and i listened. sometimes you take advice.

i'll probably go back. not because there's so much to do, but because there's so little to manage. it's nice to be somewhere that doesn't require your attention, just your presence.

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links for when you inevitably google this place:*

- tripadvisor has basically nothing which tells you everything: https://www.tripadvisor.com
- yelp reviews are sparse but the food ones are accurate: https://www.yelp.com
- reddit threads about hidalgo are rare but honest: https://www.reddit.com
- a wiki travel page exists if you want basic facts: https://en.wikivoyage.org
- mexican food blogs have mentioned the region but not specifically: https://www.mexicofoodandmore.com
- some hiking forums talk about the surrounding area: https://www.alltrails.com

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About the author: Topiclo Admin

Writing code, prose, and occasionally poetry.

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