Cruising the Mexican Riviera: A World Cup Journey with More Than Football
Cruising the Mexican Riviera: A World Cup Journey with More Than Football
Ed Grenby - 19 June 2026
A cruise to the World Cup co-hosts may be the goal, but the fabulous fun and food could prove distracting
FOOTBALL? FORGET IT. The biggest sporting spectacle in North America right now is me (on my 15th attempt) getting a ball through the mini Stonehenge on my cruise ship’s crazy-golf course.
My home for t he week, Norwegian Bliss, is sailing from Los Angeles down the Mexican Riviera, giving me a flavour of more than one of this World Cup’s hosts. (LA holds eight games, including a quarter-final; Mexico is putting on 13 matches, across three cities.)
For me, though, the appeal of the trip is nothing to do with the Beautiful Game; it’s a chance to taste some of Mexico’s colour and exoticism (and, if we’re honest, food) while escaping its more intimidating aspects with the cosseting security blanket of a lovely, shiny cruise ship.
After the mini-golf, then, I mosey over to the swimming pool, then the hot tub, then the water slides. (Another attraction of this itinerary is the wall-to-wall swimwear weather.)
The aqua-tubes loop and curve right over the side of the ship – with see-through sections for that full there’s-only-a-centimetre-of-plastic-between-me-and-the-Pacific thrill you didn’t know you wanted – and, as if my humiliation at Stonehenge wasn’t enough, I get stuck on my first go down.
It’s not because I’m fat, a crew member assures me – but give me a week on this boat, I reckon, and it could be.
There are dozens of different food and drink options on this 4,000-guest giant, but the most dangerously delicious, for me at least, are the Med-seafoody Palomar, and Q Texas Smokehouse, a finger-lickin’ barbecue joint with a terrific country-and-western house band who happen to hail from Eastern Europe.
Pre- and post-dinner entertainment was on point, too. Our cruise line, Norwegian (ncl.com), is well-known for bagging transfers of big Broadway shows instead of the usual generic cruise-boat crooners and hoofers.
I loved Jersey Boys, although I went back to see the onboard Beatles tribute band several times, too.
Their drawn-on Sgt Pepper moustaches might have been as unconvincing as the ersatz Liverpudlian look of the ship’s “Cavern Club” (I’m not sure what a 60s scouser would have made of the Walk the Lemon mocktail on the drinks list here), but the sounds were amazing.
Squint a little, and you really could be watching the Fab Four in their world-shaking heyday.
A FTER A COUPLE of days at sea, mind, I was ready for Mexico – albeit starting at the shallow end, in Puerto Vallarta, with a gentle Mexican Cooking Class Experience from the ship’s list of excursions.
I’d expected the usual tourist culinary experience: a polite demonstration, a few pre-measured ingredients, some chopping, some smiling, and something vaguely edible at the end.
Instead we were thrown right into the thick of it with real hands-on cooking and some serious spice – and ended up with tacos so tasty my tongue still tingles at the thought of them.
Margaritas arrived (without even being asked for) – they weren’t the sugary, neon vacation version, either: these had a salty, smoked-chilli rim like la vida loca in a glass.
I drifted towards a hammock, and drifted off as the Rio Mascota truckled gently in the background and butterflies flitted in and out of sunbeams.
The next day I turned the dial up a few notches at Mazatlán, with another shore excursion that could have been tacky but ended up terrific.
Lucha libre is the traditional Mexican masked all-in wrestling – like pantomime but with piledrivers – and at Bodega Franco it’s alive and flying-kicking.
We cheered the técnicos, we booed the rudos, we winced when either was whacked in the face with a chair inches from our front-row seats, and we – OK, I – couldn’t resist having pictures taken with the muscle-bound oddballs afterward.
A NICE LONG DAY in port meant there was still time to climb 157 metres up to El Faro, the highest natural lighthouse in the world.
I sweated out enough salt to garnish 20 tequilas, but the view was worth it: beaches, boats, islands, a sprawling city and the endless blue Pacific.
A sense of scale, too, as even a 333-metre-long cruise ship looks very small from above.
At Cabo San Lucas the next day, I skipped the official excursions and haggled myself a boat trip across the bay from one of the many portside operators.
I waded ashore at justly popular Lovers’ Beach, then a mere four-minute barefoot stroll across the strand took me to Divorce Beach – huge, empty, sugar-soft sand and the tumultuous waves that give it its name.
I spent a perfect day doing nothing but gazing.
One more sea day brought us, a little unwillingly, back to LA, but I’d given myself an extra night here (at, of course, Mexican-influenced Hotel Maya (themayalongbeach.com), in agreeably sleepy Long Beach.
That meant I could hit my favourite part of the megalopomegalopolis, Santa Monica, for its beaches, beer bars, burger joints, Baywatch lifeguard huts and bodies beautiful.
On the beach, people played frisbee, juggled, surfed, yoga’d – did, essentially, anything but soccer.
Well who needs it?
Coverage of the World Cup continues all week on BBC One, ITV, Radio 5 Live and Talksport
FOOTBALL? FORGET IT. The biggest sporting spectacle in North America right now is me (on my 15th attempt) getting a ball through the mini Stonehenge on my cruise ship’s crazy-golf course.
My home for t he week, Norwegian Bliss, is sailing from Los Angeles down the Mexican Riviera, giving me a flavour of more than one of this World Cup’s hosts. (LA holds eight games, including a quarter-final; Mexico is putting on 13 matches, across three cities.)
For me, though, the appeal of the trip is nothing to do with the Beautiful Game; it’s a chance to taste some of Mexico’s colour and exoticism (and, if we’re honest, food) while escaping its more intimidating aspects with the cosseting security blanket of a lovely, shiny cruise ship.
After the mini-golf, then, I mosey over to the swimming pool, then the hot tub, then the water slides. (Another attraction of this itinerary is the wall-to-wall swimwear weather.)
The aqua-tubes loop and curve right over the side of the ship – with see-through sections for that full there’s-only-a-centimetre-of-plastic-between-me-and-the-Pacific thrill you didn’t know you wanted – and, as if my humiliation at Stonehenge wasn’t enough, I get stuck on my first go down.
It’s not because I’m fat, a crew member assures me – but give me a week on this boat, I reckon, and it could be.
There are dozens of different food and drink options on this 4,000-guest giant, but the most dangerously delicious, for me at least, are the Med-seafoody Palomar, and Q Texas Smokehouse, a finger-lickin’ barbecue joint with a terrific country-and-western house band who happen to hail from Eastern Europe.
Pre- and post-dinner entertainment was on point, too. Our cruise line, Norwegian (ncl.com), is well-known for bagging transfers of big Broadway shows instead of the usual generic cruise-boat crooners and hoofers.
I loved Jersey Boys, although I went back to see the onboard Beatles tribute band several times, too.
Their drawn-on Sgt Pepper moustaches might have been as unconvincing as the ersatz Liverpudlian look of the ship’s “Cavern Club” (I’m not sure what a 60s scouser would have made of the Walk the Lemon mocktail on the drinks list here), but the sounds were amazing.
Squint a little, and you really could be watching the Fab Four in their world-shaking heyday.
A FTER A COUPLE of days at sea, mind, I was ready for Mexico – albeit starting at the shallow end, in Puerto Vallarta, with a gentle Mexican Cooking Class Experience from the ship’s list of excursions.
I’d expected the usual tourist culinary experience: a polite demonstration, a few pre-measured ingredients, some chopping, some smiling, and something vaguely edible at the end.
Instead we were thrown right into the thick of it with real hands-on cooking and some serious spice – and ended up with tacos so tasty my tongue still tingles at the thought of them.
Margaritas arrived (without even being asked for) – they weren’t the sugary, neon vacation version, either: these had a salty, smoked-chilli rim like la vida loca in a glass.
I drifted towards a hammock, and drifted off as the Rio Mascota truckled gently in the background and butterflies flitted in and out of sunbeams.
The next day I turned the dial up a few notches at Mazatlán, with another shore excursion that could have been tacky but ended up terrific.
Lucha libre is the traditional Mexican masked all-in wrestling – like pantomime but with piledrivers – and at Bodega Franco it’s alive and flying-kicking.
We cheered the técnicos, we booed the rudos, we winced when either was whacked in the face with a chair inches from our front-row seats, and we – OK, I – couldn’t resist having pictures taken with the muscle-bound oddballs afterward.
A NICE LONG DAY in port meant there was still time to climb 157 metres up to El Faro, the highest natural lighthouse in the world.
I sweated out enough salt to garnish 20 tequilas, but the view was worth it: beaches, boats, islands, a sprawling city and the endless blue Pacific.
A sense of scale, too, as even a 333-metre-long cruise ship looks very small from above.
At Cabo San Lucas the next day, I skipped the official excursions and haggled myself a boat trip across the bay from one of the many portside operators.
I waded ashore at justly popular Lovers’ Beach, then a mere four-minute barefoot stroll across the strand took me to Divorce Beach – huge, empty, sugar-soft sand and the tumultuous waves that give it its name.
I spent a perfect day doing nothing but gazing.
One more sea day brought us, a little unwillingly, back to LA, but I’d given myself an extra night here (at, of course, Mexican-influenced Hotel Maya (themayalongbeach.com), in agreeably sleepy Long Beach.
That meant I could hit my favourite part of the megalopomegalopolis, Santa Monica, for its beaches, beer bars, burger joints, Baywatch lifeguard huts and bodies beautiful.On the beach, people played frisbee, juggled, surfed, yoga’d – did, essentially, anything but soccer.
Well who needs it?
Coverage of the World Cup continues all week on BBC One, ITV, Radio 5 Live and Talksport