We took a four day trip to Guadalajara, a city in western Mexico known for tequila and mariachi music. Guadalajara is Mexico’s second biggest city with about 7-million people in the metro area. Located in the central mountains of Mexico, Guadalajara is at 1566 meters elevation, just short of a mile. With it’s cooler weather and location in the Mexican state of Jalisco, it’s ideally suited for growing green agaves and in fact is not far from the town of Tequila, the traditional home of the liquor by the same name. We travelled with sailing friends from SV Felicita, Tim and Gretchen. Our trip started with a 3.5 hour bus trip through the Sierra Madre mountains near the coast. The bus was quite nice with reclining seats and TV screens and headphones for everyone. We could watch tele-novelas in Spanish and feature films with subtitles. Mexican drivers, including the bus-drivers are quite willing to pass on two lane roads and blind corners. Everyone moves over and the roads become temporary 3-lane roads. Renting a car is a feasible option for this trip but the bus was much more relaxing. Guadalajara is very metropolitan, and really felt like a city in Europe. There are options for fine dining and we had dinner at Restaurante Bruna. Besides having wonderful food, the restaurant felt like a combination art gallery and garden. There were walking paths around bonsai trees over a century old and rooms full of contemporary Mexican art. One of the appetizers we tried was a sample plate of 10 different mole sauces. Who knew there were that many different flavors! Guadalajara has a rich colonial history and features a governor’s mansion (now mostly used as a museum) filled with murals and a clock with a bullet hole from Pancho Villa’s gun. We also visited the historic town of Tlaquepaque with old saloons that still serve food and drinks and of course more street art and good food. It’s hard to find a ‘highlight’ of this trip because it was all pretty fun, but a day trip to the town of Tequila with a tour of Tres Mujeres (Three Women) distillery was certainly memorable. We saw the agave ovens and walked through a long cave filled with Tequila aging in barrels. We visited a colonial era estate with a pre-historic hand dug cave back to a natural spring complete with pure drinkable water at the end and bats that flew past us as we disturbed them with our phone lights.
We visited Cantarito el Guero ( https://cantaritoselguero.mx/ ) This is by far the largest Tequila party I’ve ever seen. Here one can purchase fruity tequila drinks in various sizes from 16 oz with 4 shots of Tequila to a large clay bucket with two bottles of Tequila in it. There was a girl selling cocaine near the restroom (no thanks) and a special sink to vomit in. We tasted many different kinds of Tequila and eventually visited the town of Tequila and walked along Jose Cuervo street next to the distillery of the same name. Too soon it was time to board the bus again and head back through the winding mountain roads back to our floating home Island Summers and Riley who had stayed at a dog resort in La Cruz.
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