Water

In the Netherlands you can drink water straight from the tap and it is of good quality. Most of the countries we have travelled through you could also drink the tap water but sometimes you could taste the chlorine. A lot of the countries also had free, clean drinking water coming form mountain springs alongside a mountain road.

This is not the case in Mexico. Drinking tap water in Mexico isn’t advisable. Some sources say you can, some claim that only locals can drink it and some say it is really dangerous. So far we have seen a lot of locals getting water from a purificado so they don’t drink the water either. Apparently it depends on the location. All the water is purified at the treatment centre before it is distributed to homes. But the distribution system is often polluted or the pipes are made of lead or asbestos. So drinking water is bought in garrafones. Which are big, 20L. bottles. They are bought at stores or a company that fills and distributes these bottles. There are a lot of “purificados” where you can fill up your garrafone or a smaller bottle with purified water. The water tastes good. 20L. of water costs 12 pesos (100 pesos = E4,38) at a purificado. if you buy it from a shop it is often more expensive. If you have the water delivered to your home the price varies from 15-20 pesos. Just for drinking we use about 30 litres per week.

It is a bit inconvenient not being able to use the tap water. When we stayed at the house in Cancun we would fill up a big cup of water and put it in the bathroom to brush our teeth with. You can’t wash fruit under the tap or fill up a cooking pan under the tap. If your want to fill a small bottle of water from a garrafone you have to use a funnel. The garrafones are big, heavy and not easy to handle.

Now that we travel we fill up our two tanks (40l. each) with free water from the gas station. We have a very good filter (5um and carbon) and add Hadex, which mostly consists of chlorine. We brush our teeth with this water and cook our food in it. Our water system works, so far we haven’t been sick. But because of the taste, we don’t drink it, not even after it is cooked. So we drive around with a 10l. garrafone and two smaller bottles that fit in our fridge. Filling up a smaller bottle is a 2 person job as one person has to hold the small bottle and funnel and the other person the garrafone.