Into Mexico, Guadalajara

Being bored retaking photos at landmarks after camera loss.
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We arrived in Tijuana around 8am for our flight to Guadalajara. The border control passing from the US into Mexico is laughably relaxed, you pretty much just walk through a one way gate. I somehow suspect the border crossing in the other direction is not quite so easy. No one was interested in looking at our passports or anything. We weren't sure if we needed a visa as we'd be staying a few weeks but the officials we asked didn't seem particularly interested and seemed to think it would all be sorted out when we got to the the airport.

Tequila, with a shot of tomato and lemon juice.
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When we got to the airport we found out our flight was delayed by a couple of hours and would no longer be direct. So much for our plan of getting into Guadalajara in the morning!

Habla Ingles? No? Damn!

When we did arrive, it was late afternoon. The Hostel we were staying at was surprisingly nice especially when you took into account how grim everywhere seemed on the taxi ride from the airport. The taxi driver warned us the area was dangerous after dark and first impressions seemed to back it up. Although we didn't see any trouble while we there, it certainly felt like somewhere you should watch your back and not walk around alone.

Chris from Canada, Rick, Nikki, Patrice, Min He from Korea and David from Mexico
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After unpacking we headed out to get some food and to goto a Lucha Libre fight. This is Mexico's equivalent of the heavily scripted WWf wrestling, but where the combatants where bizzare and colourful masks. The recent Jack Black film Nacho Libre was about this sport. Unfortunatley, by the time we'd found somewhere to eat (all the resturants seemed to be hiding) the fight was booked up and we couldn't get in.

We'd not planned on staying for that long in Guadalajara but the hostel was nice and we enjoyed just relaxing for while after the frantic pace we'd been touring around the US. We spent a few days wandering around the old town and just chilling out and a few nights at the local bar called La Vaca (The Cow) playing pool with the locals. One thing that quickly became apparent was that we'd need to improve our Spanish. We'd expected that given the the border with the States, English would be spoken widely enough for us to get away with not really needing Spanish. This is not the case. We got used to being misunderstood, for instance, "Can I have the bill (La Quenta, por favor)" may result in being given an ashtray. Ordering food was a gamble. We didn't know what most things were and the staff couldn't explain the dishes. It wasn't unusual for us to wait tentatively for our food only to discover we'd ended up ordering enough food for about 10 people, with at least one dish being too unpalatable to consider eating. We bought a phase book and alot of communication was done with lots of pointing, gesticulating and long pauses while words were looked up.

What kind of resturant would think it a good idea to use rotting sheep heads to entice people in off the street? A Mexican resturant.
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I primarily blame the purchase of a Spanish/English dictionary as the cause of me losing my camera. Let me explain: While travelling, I'm always very careful of my belongings and have a number of methods of ensuring I never lose anything. I always keep things in the same pocket; my wallet in the front left pocket, camera in front right pocket. This means I can quickly tap my pockets and know I've got everything. This almost becomes second nature and means if I walk out of a resturant or off a bus I'm safe in the knowledge I've got everything. The others are very disorganised. Camera sometimes in a bag, or moving between pockets, money loose in pockets. Its a mess, and yes I agree with you, it's only a matter of time until they lose something.

A meal out, you'll notice I've recovered from my hat loss.
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Unfortunatly, the spanish/english dictionary was the same size as my camera, and did not have a designated pocket. Oh dear. The long and short of it was that my camera got left at the resturant and the pocket tap test failed to identify its departure as dictionary was impresonating it in my pocket. Damn you dictionary.

The consequence of the loss was that we had to revist all the sites we'd been to, to retake the pictures as I was the only one who'd been taking a camera out with me. The new pics are fairly crap compared to the originals too. Nevermind. I managed to get an indentical camera off ebay for 50 quid so it wasn't too great a loss.

Our penultimate night was Mexian Independance day. A huge celebration on the Mexican calendar. We went out to a party in town, we'd been invited by one of the few mexicans we'd met who actually spoke any english. Unfortunately he was the only one of the party goers as well and after a few slightly awkward attempts to chat with the others without much success we decided to go back to our local bar and drink with some of the other guys staying at our hostel. Our hostel had been pretty quiet but filled up on the run up to independance day so we had quite a few of us out.

We had a great night and drank many a Tequila. At one place, rather than the usual salt and lemon accompaniment you got a shot of sweet tomato juice and a shot of lemon juice to sink after the unpleastness of the tequila. Pretty nice. Actually the tequila in general was not as grim as the stuff you get back home. All the mexicans were in high spirits and very friendly. We went to a couple of different bars and returned back in the early hours.

More Guadalajara pics here:

Guadalajara pics