Except for busy holiday periods, you can usually buy tickets the same day. But to begin with:

Use the Estrella de Oro / ADO site: http://www.ado.com.mx/ado/?acceso=66

In Castilian Spanish (there are certainly indigenous Mexican languages, but you're not likely to find them on a Mexican transport site):

¿De donde sales? = Where are you departing from?

¿A donde vas? = Where are you going?

Redondo = Round Trip

Sencillo = One Way

One way PLUSS MEX (Taxqueña, where Estrella de Oro departs in Mexico City) to ACA is shown as MXN 470, and for MXN 615 for DIAMANTE / Diamond service.

I don't know if they accept US credit cards.

You can try ticketbus at http://www.ticketbus.com.mx/wtbkd/I1...e=en&region=US but the site is buggy as heck. You can try calling Ticketbus at 1.800.009.9090. Ticketbus is part of the ADO system and they claim to handle international MasterCard via the usual MasterCard verification process.

You could try calling Ticketbus or buying the day you travel (and buying the remainder of your tickets at Acapulco station - there is the main station for PLUSS services at ACA, and Acapulco Diamante station for DIAMANTE class busses. (PLUSS is fine, DIAMANTE is full Executive class.)

Of course, if you're not stopping in Acapulco buy a straight through connecting ticket.

Renting a car in Acapulco or Ixtapa can certainly be done, but I'd caution anyone to avoid driving at night and out of the city (or even some areas in the Acapulco greater area); driving into rural areas of the state of Guerrero is plain dangerous.

Guerrero is the most dangerous state to travel in in Mexico outside of controlled areas. The police are notoriously corrupt, gangs are proliferating - notably the "Guerreros Unidos" gang these days.

Last month, this hit the media worldwide: The police in Iguala, Guerrero were told by the mayor to prevent a group of 49 student teachers coming to town to protest discriminatory employment practices to intervene and not allow the students to disrupt his wife's speech.

The police opened fire on their bus, killing six, and removed all the rest in police vehicles. Three members of the Guerreros Unidos gang were detained, and they stated the police turned over the student teachers to them.

GU then transported the students in trucks to another, more remote, site. When they arrived seventeen had suffocated already; they executed all the others by gunshot, burned the remains for fourteen hours using petrol, wood, plastics, etc., crushed the remains, bagged them in sacks and dumped the remains in the (Mixcoac?) river

Federal authorities have not yet found the missing 43 student teachers, but whilst looking for them they have discovered other mass graves. In 2013, more murders were reported in the state of Guerrero than in any other state - and the reports are considered to be the tip of the ice berg.

While it seems safe to visit Taxco, and the nearby Grutas de Cacahuamilpa caves and Xochicalco Toltec archaeological site, Acapulco and Ixtapa, I'd strongly advise not go rural in Guerrero state.

I've visited Guerrero since the 1950s, and some areas have always been dicey.

A school chum and her brother camped on the beach just south of Acapulco (1960s). They were awakened by gunmen and tied up. The assailants sat around discussing what to do with them, but as "Adalberta" was obviously pregnant they chose to let them live. But they shot "Beto's" kneecaps and left them after robbing them.

On another occasion, we were camped in a secure area near Pie de la Cuesta when a camper arrived with obvious bullet holes (1970s). The couple told me they'd pulled over for the night in one of the scenic overlooks just south of Acapulco, between Acapulco and Puerto Marqués, when some armed men knocked and demanded to be let in.

When they declined, the men shot the door lock open (and ventilated the door for good measure). What saved them is they were show professionals traveling with a chimpanzee; the chimp went berzerko at the gunshots and the robbers fled.