Hola familia y amigos,

After a weekend with Leilani’s family, we decided to spend some time in the state of Jalisco. Leilani’s sister Linette is living there in the Metropolitan area of Guadalajara, the second biggest city of Mexico with around 1.9 Million people living there and another 5 Million in the surrounding region. We had the opportunity to be accommodated in her house for the time of our stay. After an approximately 5 hours drive from Toluca to Guadalajara we arrived in “Las Terrazas” a gated community on a hill, full of houses built in terraces down the slope. On top of that, there is a very futuristic-looking signal tower station, which looks like it is calling for aliens in outer space. It is a very nice and calm neighborhood with tons of pet owners. Speaking of these little adorable devils, Leilani’s little cat “El Rey” Rio is living in Linette’s house, so when we arrived we had a little surprise to clean up since he and Linette’s boyfriend’s dog were left there all weekend long. On our arrival day, we didn’t do anything but the bare necessary, like buying water and groceries for breakfast the next day, since it was already 22:00 and we were accordingly roasted.

The next day we took all day long to clean the house from any smell or hair we could find. To make it more fun for us, Rio was in his fur-changing season, so he was making a statement of himself as the head of the house by leaving balls of hair everywhere, it was like playing treasure hunt, when we picked up a ball he had already left another two for us somewhere else. Later that night we went for a little drive in Linette’s car. Yannick decided it was time to practice his driving in Mexico a bit more and took us for some groceries and cat sand shopping. That was basically it. Nothing fancy happened that day. Leilani was starting to feel a little sick and so we took the rest of our day off.

On Tuesday we didn’t want to wait around any longer and went to the city center of Tlaquepaque, the town Linette is living in. Yannick drove us there and it was quite a journey. All the fame of the Mexican streets and drivers is well deserved. After an adventurous ride, we arrived. The center is very lovely and considered a “Pueblo mágico” (magic town). We liked it a lot because it’s calm and there was barely any traffic in the center area, with lots of passages which are pedestrians only.

We wanted to have some breakfast so we started our trip there with a visit to the local market, always the number one spot to find delicious local food for very reasonable prices. Well, you cannot expect a fancy interior and other overrated restaurant features, but you have the chance to find the tastiest food stalls. We chose one of our liking and Oh boy! were we in for a surprise. Yannick had a full plate with 5 different dishes and a drink for 60$ (around 3€) while Leilani ordered a bowl of pozole ( a Mexican specialty soup made out of corn, very tasty) which was accompanied by two tacos for the same price. We loved the place a lot, one of the best market experiences we had so far, so we decided to take some quesadillas to go for later. We would even go to Tlaquepaque just for the food again.

For the rest of our stay, we used our time to walk around the nice streets and the plaza of the town. We checked out a ceramic museum with some hidden botanical history back rooms and stayed some time in a café to set up this blog and download some episodes to watch later that night. We didn’t stay too long though, because we were paying 20 Pesos per hour for the parking lot and so we hurried to check out the local artisans market, where we got some nice pictures taken from us by some nice ladies full of botox and got ourselves a little souvenir to remember. Anyone interested to know what we got is invited to our apartment in Germany to check out our collection of souvenirs from places we have visited together.

That was our day in Tlaquepaque. In summary, we enjoyed our day there. Especially all the nice and funky-looking statues around the center make the walk a nice experience we would recommend anyone to have. Yannick also got a nice pair of white summer pants, which he loves wearing in the warm weather. The day was nearly perfect, but for one little inconvenience: the heat. It was a bit too strong for the german head and Yannick suffered from a heat headache he got from the hot weather. The suffering was vocally hearable for the next few days but nothing too wild and he recovered by Thursday.

On the next day, Linette did home-office. Thankfully she is provided with a work cellphone to give her a sufficient connection to her work network and travel internet, so she could drive us to the lovely nearby town Chapala, situated at a huge lake (which is also called Chapala) nearby Guadalajara. We drove there for around one hour including a little turn-in because we missed an exit and arrived hot but happily at a parking lot at the shoreline. The place was nice to walk around on the promenade and to take a few pictures, we also saw “Los voladores de Papantla” flying down in their ropes, this is an ancient ritual performed by the Totonacas to ask the Gods for a fertile land and rains, now a days is a tradition that can be witness in some touristic places. Apart from that we felt we had seen enough and decided to take a drive to a nearby village, famous for having almost 20,000 foreigners living in the small town.

On the way there we stopped at a bigger supermarket to restock on toilet paper and withdraw some money, we got some money at an ATM and drove off happily eating our baby carrots with chili. It sounds crazy (for non-Mexicans), but tastes very good and we do recommend trying some.

After a lovely drive of around 20 min. we arrived at the gringo town Ajijic. It was super weird seeing so many white people at once in such a small village in Mexico considering is no way nearby Quintana Roo or Baja California (famous touristic spots), nearly all of them were elderly Americans, retired in the warm weather. For our taste, it was a bit too hot, but maybe we would feel different once we reach a certain age. The city has very narrow streets made out of stones, which leads to minimal traffic and tons of nice walkable areas, probably one of the reasons why so many old people like living there. It is very calm. Well, also the huge lake right in front of the doorstep may play a role.

After chilling a little in the main plaza while Linette bossed around some employees via phone calls, we decided to grab a bite in a nearby restaurant. The whole village has a very strong American influence and sadly we could also feel it in the prices of the food. It was nearly like eating in Europe. We had some mediocre overpriced vegetarian burgers and some nice cucumber lemon water which was actually pretty good. Once we paid too much for it we went on to check out the local beachside. Yannick was still feeling weak from the heatstroke he caught the day before and we decided to stay in the shade and skip a sunny walk on the promenade. After taking some pictures we went back to the car and the apartment of Linette’s boyfriend.

Sadly we had no access to the actual apartment and so we stayed at the poolside and waited for him to arrive. We were planning to go to a nice restaurant in town, which was famous for its live Mariachis playing there. To our luck or misfortune, whatever one may see it, the restaurant Bariachi was hosting a live concert that day and we where were forced to buy tickets for it to be able to enter and eat there, which the boyfriend of Linette generously paid. The food was good, but the concert took its time. We had to wait around 1,5 hours and our food and drinks were long gone until it finally started.

They performed not just a concert but multiple acts of singers and dances from different regions of the country, followed by a nice band of Mariachis to see. The main act, a mariachi group made only out of women was performing too late and we were too tired to wait to witness their performance. We couldn’t stay all night long and we were all exhausted from a whole day of traveling. On top of that Linette and her boyfriend had to work again early the next morning and so we decided to skip the act and rather have a decent rest. After falling into our beds late at night our day ended.

On Thursday, the next day, we took a day off. We had two long days behind us and both of us didn’t feel that great. The only interesting thing that happened was that Yannick went to the local store to get a fresh tank of water and got scammed with his return money. He wasn’t quite sure if the change was right and already had a feeling he got less than he should have but wasn’t sure if he understood the numbers correctly. Once he told Leilani they drove back to the store together, so a tired, sick, and now an angry Leilani reclaimed the money and under the lines of her argument she let them know, that just because Yannick doesn’t speak the language and didn’t understand what they said, they can fool him. When it comes to injustice the fiery Latino side of this tiny little woman comes out for sure, so naturally, the guy that we assumed was the son of the owner called the unfaithful clerk which gave us a made up excuse and our money back. We went back home we called it a day and only practiced some numbers and counting in Spanish.

One last funny and awkward event happening on that day was hearing the neighbors enjoying each other in a very vocal way, but Yannick imitating their sounds loudly out of the window solved this little incident without further disruptions.

The following day on Friday we went for a visit to the apartment of Linette’s boyfriend, Linette was having another day of home-office and we were chilling and cooking with her. At the end of the afternoon, we went shopping at the big supermarket across the street. Mexican supermarkets are very convenient, they follow the American example, by having stores like Walmart, Sams Club, Costco, and many similar stores, in which one can find everything, from TVs to motorcycles, groceries to medicine, clothes to paint or house tools and all sorts of things. For the Mexican readers we know this is normal for you, but in Germany, we go buy our groceries in Edeka or Aldi, our hygiene products in the DM, Electrodomestics at Saturn and tools in a Baumarkt.

Anyways, back to context, later that night we cooked vegetarian tacos together and played some casino games with Linette and his boyfriend, Leilani made her beginners luck shine in Roulette and kicked everybody’s butt by being the rich bitch of the game. As a group, we arranged the details for the exciting trip the following day, which we will cover in the second part of this blog.

Thank you very much for reading us.

Liebe Grüße
Leilani & Yannick

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More pictures from Tlaquepaque, Chapala and Ajijic

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