We tell you what a trajinera ride through Xochimilco is like. We also tell you how to negotiate the right price.
Xochimilco, which in Nahuatl means “Field of Flowers” is a place where music, colors and flavors mix to result in what is part of our heritage as Mexicans and that since 1987 has also been part of the UNESCO heritage. In this article, we are going to tell you how our visit was, we are also going to show you how to get the right prices to ride the boats of Xochimilco, so you are not a victim of scam.
I had been dreaming of going there for a long time and, like many other places, I saw it as something very far away (you have to remember that between Mexicali and Mexico City there are little more than 2500 KM away) but I fulfilled my dream in our last trip to the capital.
How to get to Xochimilco by subway?
To get to Xochimilco, you have to take the light rail at the Tasqueña Metro station. You have to follow the signs, and it goes easily from one station to the other. Then you pay at a machine and that’s it. You have to follow the signs, and it goes easily from one station to the other. Then you pay at a machine and that’s it.
And we arrived 🙂
Find a pier
Pay the right price in Xochimilco, don’t be fooled!
In our case, we were not looking for a particular pier, but it seems that there are some better than others. The truth is that I was barely recovering from the stomach problem, which turned the end of our visit to Taxco into a prolonged stay at the hotel and I did not have much encouragement to think about which was the best, but it was already there. I was not going to miss the opportunity to get on the colorful trajineras (that’s the name of those typical boats).
Price of the Xochimilco trajineras
When we went, in 2014, the official price was 350 pesos for an hour of trajinera ride. It doesn’t matter whether there are 10 or 1 person, the price is the same, you have to be very alert with that.
In 2022, the official price is 600 pesos per hour of trajinera. It remains the same PER TRAJINERA and not per person. You can always check the official price of the Mayor’s Office of Xochimilco here.
We arrived at the pier (if I remember correctly it was Belem) and I asked the price. Obviously, the man left me with an exorbitant sum to which I “bargained” for him to charge me the right price, that was funny haggling to get the official price :/ anyway. Total, he didn’t want to, but when he realized that I already knew about the official prices, he had no choice but to accept, it’s not like it was full of people, he couldn’t afford to lose a customer.
I have to admit that it was difficult for me to ask for the official price, even knowing that it is correct, but I am very ashamed to haggle. If this time I decided to do it, it was because it gave me a lot of anger that they wanted to scam me. And it is that I, with my northern accent, you can tell from leagues that I am not from there and moreover Vicente who looks quite European, oh that man must have thought that he was going to get a good wool from there.
But he didn’t make it, and that’s the moral of the story: don’t give up.
How is to take a trajinera ride?
After the bitter drink of haggling, and once having obtained the right price in Xochimilco, the good part comes: get on the trajinera and sail.
Get your flight to Mexico at the best price
The tour begins, the boy grabs, and our boat begins to move, and the sky was pretty gray, and I was beginning to fear that the place was totally black out. The image I had of Xochimilco was that of an explosion of colors and music, with those colorful trajineras that brought mariachis that played as many songs as possible. After a few minutes, I had that image in front of me, other boats that made the same route as us began to appear before us, some more festive than others but all very lively.
There are many things you can enjoy
That’s when we started to meet the trajineras who did their business in Xochimilco: sellers of food, drinks, souvenirs, flowers, musicians. With great sadness, I had to say no to the corn vendor who passed by us, the same with the micheladas, the reason: despite feeling better, my stomach was still not 100%, and I was afraid of relapse. Same for Vincent. But the same thing did not happen when the mariachi boat passed by, we paid them 50 pesos to sing “Mexico Lindo y Querido” a song that reaches more to the heart when you live outside the country.
The dolls island
In that we passed through the area of the island of the dolls, which can be visited, but a longer tour is needed (we took only one hour) the only thing I could see were many old dolls hanging from the trees. During the day it didn’t impress me much, but surely at night it must be a bit scary.
Flowers in Xochimilco
We reached a point where the trajinero had to turn around so that the time would not catch us, and we would not be able to return to the starting point. After turning around, we stopped at a nursery on the lake and were able to see the great variety of flowers that grow there.
As we continue on our way we meet another souvenir vendor, and we buy him a mini trajinera, oh and of course: we named it CHARCOTRIP.
Along the way we met puppies in the trajineras, also several herons, but the icing on the cake was seeing a duck with her ducklings, There will surely be more fauna in the place, but that was the one I managed to photograph.
And with this, we end our tour of Xochimilco. I still have to eat something in the trajinera and be on a sunny day, so we’ll be back.
Don’t forget this when you go to Xochimilco
- There is an official price, don’t let them scam you.
- During the tour, there is the possibility of stopping to go to the bathroom, you just have to tell the driver.
- At the end of the tour you can give the trajinero a tip, of course, if he behaved nicely.
- Enjoy the colors of Xochimilco.
The series: A journey through the center of Mexico
1 – Arrival in Cuernavaca and tour of the city
2 – Xochicalco and more from Cuernavaca (Cuauhnáhuac Museum)
3 – Taxco
4 – Journey from Taxco to Mexico DF (and how to deal with a sick stomach)
5 – Xochimilco
6 – Tula and the atlantes
Some of the links in this article include affiliate links. This means that if you buy a product listed here by following these links, we'll receive a commission. The use of this link does not increase the final price for you and thus helps us to keep our blog alive.
