Having recently published an article about Costco cruises to Mexico, we thought it would be helpful to round the subject out by listing the specific ports in Mexico you can sail to on a Costco cruise. As with any country, some places are worth visiting and others are not, and when taking a cruise somewhere, essentially the only places you visit are the port cities. Thus, it is especially important to know Costco cruises’ Mexican ports, which are Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, Cabo San Lucas, Huatulco, Acapulco, La Paz, Loreto, Costa Maya, Cozumel, Puerto Chiapas, Guaymas, Topolobampo, and Zihuatanejo.
The essential information of this list of ports is of course contained in the list itself. These are indeed the ports in Mexico that Costco offers cruises to, and there is not too much else to be said. However, we can note a couple of things about this list. First, the ports Costco sails to are by no means visited equally. The major resort cities you have likely heard of – such as Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas – are visited far more frequently than some of the other ports. Ports like Topolobampo and Zihuatanejo are hardly ever visited, but the occasional cruise does stop by. Zihuatanejo, for instance, is visited by a Holland America during a repositioning cruise from Fort Lauderdale to San Diego and vice versa. This may be the only time it is visited throughout the whole year. So, while the list above covers all the ports that Costco cruises sails to, you definitely don’t stand an equal chance of visiting these cities on any given cruise.
The second thing worth noting is that almost all of these cities are on the western coast of Mexico. (The exceptions are Costa Maya and Cozumel.) The cruises that start in California generally hit several places in Mexico before heading through the Panama Canal or returning to their port of departure. However, when cruises leave from Florida, the ships visit several ports (Puerto Limon, Colon, Cartagena, etc.) before going through the Canal or sailing back to Florida, but none of these places are in Mexico. So, despite their popularity as vacation destinations, there are very few cruises that go to or near the cities on the west coast of Mexico, like Cancun, Cozumel, or Playa del Carmen. In fact, the only exception we found was a 26-day Norwegian cruise from Tampa to Vancouver that stopped by Costa Maya and Cozumel.
If you are interested in booking a Mexican cruise through Costco, we recommend that you read both our general overview of Costco cruises and our guide to Costco cruises to Mexico in particular. The overview explains what Costco Travel is, and the guide outlines Costco’s cruise offerings to Mexico. While the latter does explain how to book cruises to Mexico, it worth mentioning as we conclude that you can’t search for Mexican cruises offered by Costco on the basis of the cities they visit. In other words, you can’t search for “cruises that stop by Mazatlan,” for instance, as this isn’t a possible search criteria. So, you have to look through all the cruises to Mexico and examine their ports of call. When you find a cruise that stops by the places you want to visit, that is the cruise for you, all other things being equal.