Mexico is located in North America and is bordered by the United States at the north, with Central America with Guatemala and Belize at the south. The capital of the country is Mexico City, which is one of the biggest cities in the world. Mexico is also the 11th most populated city, having a population of 108 million people, who mostly speak Spanish. Mexico has a rugged land terrain, limited farmland, with rapidly growing population, and has a series of economic crises.

Some of the earliest civilisation in the western Hemisphere has been found to exist in ancient Mexico and Central America. Historically this region is known as Mesoamerica. Mesoamerica referees to the geographic area, culture and traditions of the pre-Columbian civilisations of Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Evidences have shown that people with skills of hunting and gathering existed in Mesoamerica more than 15,000 years ago.

The civilisation in Mesoamerica began to appear around 2500 BC, and soon the people found their food source in agriculture which met the needs of the growing number of people. The Nomadic people of Mesoamerica settled down in permanent settlement, since they were not required to travel from one place to another for food any more. People started to devote to architectural and cultural pursuits as their lives revolved more around agriculture and village life, shifting away from a hunting-gathering existence.

The culture of Mexico reflects the country's rich history. With Spain conquering the Aztec Empire in the early 16th century, there were widespread inter-racial marriage between the Spaniards and Native Americans. As late as early 19th century, the population in Mexico comprised of two-thirds of Native Americans. During that period, the racial composition of Mexico was made up of distinct Europeans, who were mainly the Spanish people, and the indigenous populations. This began to change to one made up largely of mestizos-people, who were mainly from mixed Spanish and Native American descent. Presently the Mestizos accounts for 80% of the population in Mexico.

The majority of the rivers in Mexico are not navigable and since 1950s, rather than communication links, they have been harnessed for hydroelectric power. One of the most important rivers in Mexico is the Grijalva. It originates in Guatemala, and flows through the Mexican State of Chiapas and empties into the Gulf of Mexico. The other important river is the Usumacinta, which also originates in Guatemala and takes a more easterly route, flowing through Chiapas, joining the Grijalva near the Gulf of Mexico. Southwest of Mexico City on the Balsas River, the Infiernillo dam forms the largest of all the reservoirs in the country.

At the time the Spaniards conquered Mexico in the early part of 1500's, there were many advanced Native American civilisations existing. The Maya was one of the most important civilisations that existed in the southern and southeastern part of what is now Mexico, which included the areas comprised of the present states of Chiapas, Quintana Roo, and Yucatán. The other civilisation was the Aztecs, who dominated Central Mexico and had their capital at the present location of the Mexico City.

When the Spaniards conquered the Native American civilisation, they started to control the entire region and called it New Spain. Unlike the British, who settled in North America, the intermarriage between the Spaniards and the Native Americans produced a growing population of mestizos, or people of mixed European and Native American ancestry. The mestizos became the largest ethnic group in the population of Mexico.

Most part of the Mexican land is covered by desert vegetation growth, which includes mesquite, cactus, desert scrub, and some grasses. The upper regions have thick forests formed mostly by hardwoods, such as, oak trees, needle-leafed trees such as pine and fir. The low lying area in Mexico is typically covered by rain forests that consist of variety of trees and ferns. Some of the animals that are found in the Central and South American regions are, monkeys, tapirs, and jaguars, which are also found in parts of the Southern Mexico. They are found especially in the rain forest of Chiapas and the southern Pacific coast, where human settlement is scarcely located.

Mexico City, the capital of Mexico, is often referred to as a primary city, being a single metropolitan area larger than the next four cities combined. The city has a population of 8,605,239 by the census in the year 2000. Mexico City is the center of activities in economic, political, and cultural resources, which is not seen anywhere in the country. Many of the manufacturing units are located in Mexico City. Since the political power remained with the Federal Government, México City has always dominated the countries political affairs during the 20th century.

You will find the fascinating blend of the traditions of the Native Americans and the Spanish colonial influences, in the culture that exists in Mexico. Long before the Spaniards arrived in Mexico, the indigenous people of that country were already developing arts, such as, ceramics, music, poetry, sculpture, and weaving. After Spain conquered Mexico, the creative art started to take a different shape, with a blend of the bright colours of the Native American arts, mixed with the European techniques and religious themes, created an unique combination of hybrid Native American art. There are many churches that you can find in Mexico, built by the Spaniards, with influences of their architectural designs mixed with the handiwork of Native American workers who built and decorated the buildings.

Mexico's economy is highly depended on tourism. Tourism helps Mexico's economy to hold, when other sectors fail to generate the revenue required by those sectors. The government of Mexico has always worked hard to establish the country as a tourist attraction and a cabinet-level body of the government exclusively oversees the improvement of tourist facilities. The numerous beach resorts are the primary tourist spots in Mexico, some of them include, Cancún, an island and resort town just off the Yucatán Peninsula in the State of Quintana Roo, Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, and Mazatlán, all resort cities on Mexico's Pacific coast and Los Cabos, a sport fishing and resort center at the end of the peninsula of Baja California in the State of Baja California Sur.

If you are taking your cell phone with you to Mexico, you may be concerned about the expenses that you would be incurring in remaining in touch with your business associates, friends and family back home. You would be making local as well as international calls. Expenses are bound to be quite high.

Let us examine a couple of scenarios.

During the time mobile telephony was a dream, you had gone on such visits to countries abroad. You had to be in touch with your people, especially with the business that you have left back home and have come away on a long deserved holiday. You have been calling up your friends at home and also to your family. You had no option but to use the telephone available in your hotel room. That turned out to be expensive.

With the advent of cellular phones, you had taken your cell phone with you on roaming, in your visit abroad. While you were roaming with your phone and you had been making and receiving calls. The charges for these calls, including the incoming ones were considerably high, since these were the calls that you made and received while your cell phone was on roaming.

In providing you with the facility to roam with your cell phone in a foreign country, your home service provider has entered into a business contract with the service provider of the country that you are visiting. This contract enables you to use the services of the foreign provider when you roam with your cell phone in that country. Therefore, each time you make a call from your cell phone or receive a call, you are utilising the services of that particular foreign service provider. In such cases, your home service provider pays to the foreign operator each time you are using your cell phone in that foreign land, for either, making a call or receiving a call. This is the reason why you are charged when you are on roaming in a foreign country. Roaming is expensive.

A pre-paid SIM card for Mexico will save up to 80% of your call expenses. Here is how it does. When you buy a pre-paid SIM card for Mexico, you get a local number and you are charged at local rates. All your incoming calls are free from any charges, and it matters less where they generate from. You do not pay for roaming charges. You do not have to enter into any service contract with a service provider and you are not going to receive any bill at the end of the month.

When you buy a pre-paid SIM card for Mexico, you receive a small talk time credit with it. This enables you to use your cell phone right away when you reach your destination city in Mexico. To replenish your talk time credit, there are recharge coupons or vouchers available in practically any shop in the Mexican cities. These vouchers are available in many denominations and you have the option to buy the value of the credit that you want. Since your calls are pre-paid, you are in control of the expenses that you incur in using your cell phone and that is how you never over-run your budget.

For more information regarding the prices of pre-paid SIM card for Mexico, visit www.planetomni.com/FAQ_sim.shtml

A Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card is a little smaller than a postage stamp which goes in a slot at the back of your cell phone, accessible as you take off the back cover. It is a printed circuit board, forming the intelligent module in your cell phone. It is a smart card, having microprocessor and memory circuitry and, as the name suggests, holds your identity as a cell phone user. It holds your unique information in form of identifying you, your service plan, the SIM card and your cell phone identity, the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) and other security details. When you switch on yor phone each time, this information is transmitted to the nearest network tower in the city that you are in. This is checked against the database information, matching them with the ones transmitted. When a match takes place, your cell phone is logged into the network and you are now ready to make or receive calls or send SMS messages. The SIM card also holds your address book, which you use to store the names and phone numbers of the people you frequently get in touch with. It also logs each of your incoming nd outgoing calls and even those calls that you fail to answer. These are logged according to the date and time of the respective calls.

You will need a GSM cell phone to make and receive calls when you visit Mexico. If you have a GSM cell phone, it is quite likely that it will work in that country. The United States, Canada and a few other countries in the Americas use 850MHz and 1900MHz as GSM frequency bandwidths. The networks in Mexico operate on 1900MHz GSM frequency band, which is a common bandwidth with that of the United States. Therefore, if you should possess a GSM handset, you can take that along with you and use it with your pre-paid SIM card for Mexico.

If you do not have a GSM cell phone, an economical solution would be to rent a phone compatible with the bandwidth of the Mexican networks. If you are a frequent traveller, then you should consider buying a multiple frequency cell phone, so it complies with the network frequency bands of the countries that you visit. For more information on the various models of cell phones and its purchase and renting prices, you may visit www.planetomni.com/FAQ_gsm.shtml

Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) is a digital mobile communication technology developed in Europe and is called the second generation (2G) system in mobile telephony. GSM replaces the old analog first generation (1G) system. The technology is used by over 214 countries and has 80% subscribers out of the total mobile users in the world. There are four sets of GSM frequency bands, which are, 850 MHz, 900 MHz, and 1800 MHz and 1900 MHz. The networks in North America, Canada and a few other countries in the Americas, operate on 850MHz and 1900MHz GSM frequency bands, which remain exclusive to this part of the world. Majority of the GSM regions use different frequency bandwidths, which really sets these countries apart from the ones using those exclusive bandwidths. If you would have been travelling to Europe and if you possessed a GSM cell phone, it would have been very unlikely that your cell phone would have worked there, unless you had a multiple frequency cell phone. The GSM technology provides you with the facility of roaming. It is this facility which lets you make calls to people in any part of this world and receive calls from just about anywhere in this planet.

Whether you take your cell phone, buy or rent one, you need to make sure that your phone is SIM unlocked. If your GSM cell phone is SIM locked, you will not be able to use your pre-paid SIM card for Mexico or any other SIM card for that matter. Let us look into a typical instance.

When you sign a contract with a service provider and one of the clauses in that contract stipulates that you are bound by the contract to use the services of this provider for a definite period of time, the cell phone that you receive from your service provider, which come to you free of cost, is SIM locked. This would mean that you cannot use that cell phone with any other SIM card other than the one received by you from your service provider. This is simply done to ensure that you do not switch on to another service provider while you are still under the obligations of the contract that you have signed. As soon as the contract period is over, your service provider would help you to SIM unlock your phone. You are now free to use any SIM card with your cell phone.

Therefore, before you leave for your trip to Mexico, you should look into two aspects. You need to ensure that your phone, if you are buying one or renting, is compatible with the frequency bands in Mexico, and that the phone that you are taking with you is not SIM locked.

A pre-paid SIM card for Mexico is affordable and saves you substantially on your cell phone use. With such a SIM card, you pay for your calls as the locals do and all your incoming calls are free. You do not pay any charges for roaming. You do not have to enter into any service agreement and you do not receive any bill at the end of the month.