I made my first trip down to Mexico in 1970. Drove across at Matamoros, drove all the way to the Yucatan, got on the ferry and went to Isla Mujeres. Lived there for 2 months.
Lots of girls from England, Germany, and America like to vacation on Isla Mujeres. I was 19, had a great time.

Went back in 1975, drove all over the country, had a great time.
Went back in 1978 and had lots of fun. Cheap place to vacation. This time, my buddy George and I drove all the way across Mexico, crossed the border into Guatemala, and went down to El Salvador, went surfing down there. Stayed down there 6 weeks.
If you think Mexico is a dirty, third world sh*t hole, you ought to see El Salvador!
It was funny, we ran into an American engineer, who had been in El Salvador building a bridge. Had been down there for 6 months.
He said to me, "It didn't work."
I said, "What didn't work?"
He said, "The cross-breed between the Spaniard and the Indian."

Two problems. It was common to run into roadblocks where Federales would search your car. We heard of Gringos getting their car confiscated, for no good reason. Also, every time I went down got dysentery.

Went back five more times in the eighties, each time flew to Cancun and rented a car. Figured if the corrupt Mex cops wanted to confiscate a car, the could go ahead, and then argue with Hertz about it.
Hung out on the beach, living in a straw hut for ten bucks a day. Good food, good beer, lots of girls in bikinis. Went 100 miles south of Cancun to a remote beach town named Tulum.
Got the G-D dysentery on each of those trips. Back then in the Cancun/Yucatan area there were no drugs around. Drug activity was up near the border.
Now, as some of the reports on this thread have stated, heavy drug activity in the Yucatan. This is the eastern tip of Mexico in the Caribbean.

So, no going back for me.

Oh, I left out, visited many Maya ruins there in the Yucatan. These really are fantastic! Damn pyramids 200 feet high made of stone blocks.
The Maya had a sophisticated solar observatory there at Chichen Itza.
Unreal, when you consider that the peak of civilization of US Indians was an arrowhead chipped from flint. I must say, visiting the Maya ruins was one of the highlights of my life.

But, no, dopers running amok now even in that area of the Maya ruins, a guarantee of dysentery, no, I am not going back.