Check with your wireless carrier to see if calls while in Mexico are included with your plan (or see if you can add a Mexico option).

If you have a nationwide plan with Verizon, you’re in luck — give Verizon a call and they’ll change your plan to “plus Mexico” for $10 per month. Just call them when you return and have that option removed, with the result that you’ve just added Mexico for only 34 cents per day of your trip.

Data Roaming:  If you have a cell phone, especially a smart phone (iPhone/Android/Blackberry), note that data roaming charges can be EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE (see the image below). If you don’t know if you have data roaming on your plan, you should assume that YOU DO NOT and turn data roaming OFF.

Turning your phone off may not be enough; REMOVE THE BATTERY or place the phone in AIRPLANE MODE. Seriously — friends of ours spent five days in Cancun and were presented the following month with a $3700 data roaming bill!!!

Bottom line: KNOW WHAT YOUR PLAN COVERS BEFORE YOU USE YOUR PHONE ANYWHERE INTERNATIONAL or you could come home to this (from an actual user, checking his Facebook account “just a few times…”):