Alone in Tlaquepaque

And it is a bit of downer and sort of lonesome. John Paul left last Thursday and Dennis left Friday and here we are, just enjoying each others company and the great weather. We so enjoyed the time with our boys/men and they kept us pretty busy and active.

Also, you will see a bit of improvement in the quality of the photos. John Paul brought us a very nice Canon camera, just like the one that malfunctioned on us. We think we will take the one we bought at the pawn shop back and see what we can get for it.

And here is John Paul, freshly from Chicago, via Seattle and a bit tired. He and Dennis both make their living as techies so spent much time talking about things that Nancy and I had no idea about.

John Pauls first day here was just getting to know Tlaquepague so we just walked and walked and walked and enjoyed and enjoyed and enjoyed.

The part of Tlaqupaque that is west of the central park is pretty uptown with many upscale stores and very beautiful homes. The east side of the park, the side we live on is not so upscale, very middle class but wonderful and friendly people. This photo is the front yard from one of the homes on the west side of the park in Tlaquepaque.

When we hear the word Mariachi we think men but that is not always true. This is a mariachi band, of all women. They play in a very expensive restaurant so we really have not listened to them much, but this day they were playing and we sort of sneaked in, listened for a bit, and took some photos.

Last week there was lots of music and dance in the park in conjunction with a used book fair. The next three photos show folk dancing from this part of Mexico.

It seems on every one of our journeys, Nancy makes a very special friend. And this is her friend in this city. He has a most interesting job of which there are many here in Tlaquepaque. The streets are very narrow and all parking is parralel parking. He guides drivers into a spot that is one the street where he does his work. He also carries a cloth and will wipe the dust off the car if the driver so wishes. He works entirely for tips.

There was a water leak on our street and it was sort of messy getting in and our of our apartment with water runnng down the street and cars splashing it up on the sidewalk. We thought it might be like that for the rest of the time we were here but one day a big truck and many workers arrived and in a few hours the leak was fixed. The guy in the hole was up to his middle in water and still sweating. It was a hot day.

This photo is of Oliva, our most beautiful and wonderful landlady. She is having a street sale, that when on for two days, out on the street right across from our apartment and directly in front of her house and restaurant. Nancy bought some earrings and a necklace.

This is just a small part of Olivia's extended, and multi layered family. Just in her home and one of her apartments are 3 generations, the mom, 5 children and some grandchildren. She comes from a family of 10 so we also see many nieces and nephews and the man in the photo is her husband, Juan Carlos, who is always around to help out with the many tasks of renting apartments and running a restaurant. We love him dearly as well.

In our apartment in one of the cupboards was a hat. A very nice Panamanian hat and it fit Dennis perfectly and he liked a lot and he wanted so bad. So off to Olivia to purchase the hat and here he and she are, contemplating this purchase.

As you can see, he wants it badly and he came back so dejected. He was informed that the hat belonged to a previous renter and he was returning real soon so the hat had to stay.

The sign indicates that this is a doctors office and a consaltation with said doctor is 20 pesos, not 20 dollars. That 20 pesos is about $1.85 Canadian. This is the reason we never buy extra health insurance when we travel any place in the world except the US.

A girl, becoming 15 years of age, is a huge family event all over Latin America, and Mexico is no exception. The celebrations are very costly but of utmost importance. Today is this girls 15th birthday and she is showing off her dress that she will wear for the celebration that will happen this evening.

More folk dancing but on a different night. There is so much that happens in this city and every night that we walk to the center there is new and different events, especially on the weekend. We certainly do like this part of Guadaljara. We met folks this night who came out from Guadalajara, just to watch all the free entertainment.

And this is it for another week. We have nothing great planned for next week, maybe some journeys to some other barrios of Guadalajara.

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Another journey, to the south of Guadalajara

Glenn left last Sunday and we had a few days to explore so decided to head south and west of Guadalajara for a couple of days to the capital of Colima State, a city called Colima. It is close to the coast, much lower than Guadalajara and as a result much warmer. We also visited two other smaller places a short distance away. The first was Comala, another of the magical cities in Mexico and the second was Suchitlan, higher in the mountains, much cooler than Colima and best know for a famous restaurant.

We got to ride on ETN busses there and back and that is almost a holiday in itself as the busses are huge, with just 24 seats. They are three across and enough room between the seats to almost stretch out completely. They are definately worth the few dollars extra rather than just a regular 1st class bus. I always think it is a close to riding first class on an airplane as we will ever get.
These first two photos of are a Christmas market in Colima. This one of many hundreds of small Christmas figurines.

Ron and Dennis sitting in the central park in Comala.

This is the restaurant we went to in Suchitlan. It was huge with many 100`s of places to sit and we understand that on the weekend it is full. People come from all over to enjoy its delicacies. We are not sure we would go back and if we do we will try different entries. We also think it gets tour bus crowds.

As part of the celebration this day there was a huge food market set up in the park and some men women and children wore the style of clothes as you see on this woman

Another tradition on this day was to walk on your knees, up the isle of the church to the altar.

The foodstuffs for sale were numerous and varied as this photos shows. The red stuff is coconut with a red sweet milk covering. It was for sale on every table so it must be a big Christmas treat.

The little wagon in the aisle shows that everyone did not have to crawl the distance on their knees.

Two years ago when we were in Colima we watched a parade from the balcony of our hotel. And once again there was another parade this year passing by the window of our hotel room.

More of the same parade with the music of the Mariachies.

What to do when you are at a booth selling things and business is slow? This park had wireless internet and she was occupying her time on line.

There was a whole lot going on n the park this particular evening as it was the 1st of December and was a special day leading up to the 12th of Dec which is the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a very famous and holy day in Mexico. The church bells rang and rang and rang and not automatically as you can see by the next photo. People were in the belfry pulling the ropes to make the bells ring. It sounded pretty awesome

And lo and behold, as we were walking back to hotel, we encountered another parade. These were serene young girls on this float, and had more to do with the Virgin of Guadalupe celebration.

We are back in Tlaquepague and looking forward to our next great event. Our Seattle son is coming tomorrow for 4 sleeps and it will be exciting. We are not plannng any big trips, just visiting and getting him to know Guadalajara and Tlaquepaque.

A Family Post

Nancy is resting, Dennis and Glenn are out and about and I had some time to do a short blog with a couple of photos of our home here and a short trip we took to the center of Guadalajara yesterday

You can tell by the orange juice it was after breakfast. The toilet paper is used for napkins and blowing noses.
It is so nice to have wirless internet. Not once this journey have we had to find an internet cafe and then figure out how to function in it. Glenn did not bring his lap top as he is on his way to Peru to surf so we are sharing two computors with 4 people so they stay pretty busy.

It is just a 20 minute, 40 cent bus ride from here in Tlaquepaque to the center of Guadalajara and each time we go we like it a bit more. I am not sure what they were looking at but something that held their interest.

Downtown Guadalajara has many walk streets which Nancy and I love. They seem to be all very busy and great places for people watching. This is one such street.

And here we are all walking down a very similar street.

More of Tepic and on to Tequila

We meant to get this post out to you the day after our last post but too many children have arrived and have kept us sort of busy doing other things. It just shows the rest of our 4 day journey to Tepic with a stop at Tequila on the way home.

And one other bit of information. The past few days it has been a bit cool with highs of only 20 degrees C so we have to find a top shirt to go out. What a bummer. Today is very nice but the first part of next week it will get cool again so we are heading to Colima, a small city 3 hours away in the direction of the coast where the highs will be 26 and 27 degrees C and we can leave our top shirts here.

From the last post, this is a photo of a bingo game, that was part of the celebration that was going on in the central park. Young and old alike were all having such fun.

Nancy and I did a day trip to San Blas. We were not so very impressed as it is a bit of dump but it did have one very nice and very expensive hotel. This photo is part of the central courtyard of the hotel.

And this one shows its pool and some of the gardens.

While we went to San Blas, Dennis went hat shopping in Tepic and this is what he ended up with. It is a bit small for him so he doesent wear it so much until he figures out how to stretch it.

For almost every meal that we ate in Tepic we ate at the same restaurant. It was good and it was cheap and very local. And at times we had live entertainment. This is a group that seranaded us one early morning at breakfast time.

We have moved on to Tequila and our hotel was on the central park and Nancys and my room had a balcony that overlooked the central park. It was so very beautiful but not so busy as some central parks.

Mexico has a number of towns and cities that have been designated "magical towns" and Tequila is one of those towns. And it is very neat and tidy and a bit magical.

Just an interesting lady sitting in the park in Tequila.

Tequila is most know for just that, "Tequila". The surrounding country side is covered with the Agave plant of which Tequila and Mescal are made. This picture is of a very famous distillary where they make "Jose Cuervo" Tequila.

This was our breakfast place in Tequila. It is in the eating area of the central market. Most eating areas in central markets are a bit questionable but this one was very neat and clean, just like the rest of Tequila.

We think that somewhere in these blogs we told you that Glenn was also going to come to Tlaquepaque and spend a few days with us. About 3 sleeps ago he came and so now we have two of our sons to look after us. He is most fluent in spanish so now we get no surprises.

Will get some photos of him in our next blog.

A Short Journey to Tepic

We were getting too comfortable in our apartment so we decided to branch out, venture to the wild side and go see some new towns. There are many towns we had not visited just a few hours from here and one we chose was Tepic, actually a city of 200,000, just an hour from the coast and 3 hours by direct bus from here.

Leaving our apartments that were paid for and having to pay hotel bills in other towns caused us a bit of concern but what the heck. The journey there was very fast on a new 4 lane toll road with no stops and took exactly three hours but coming home was a different story. We wanted to stay in another town, Tequila, for one night so had to take a local bus and this bus did not go direct. We saw a lot more country side, many more towns and actually quite enjoyable as we broke it into two days but the total time was 6.5 hours to do the same distance.

We so love the Mariachis and this particular group (there are more of them than just these two) were playing for a couple at a particular table. They looked to be a grandmother and her grown grandson of about 25 years.


We have moved on to Tepic and photo is self describing. Kids and mud....... having fun.

Nancy and Dennis are trying to buy a hat for Dennis. There are many for sale in this part of the country and mostly in the cowboy style. Also boots and belts and all other paraphanelia that goes along with cowboys and cowgirls.

Shoe shine alley in Tepic. And there were lots of alleys just like this. All those cowboys do need to keep their boots shiny.

There seems to be quite a large indeginous population in this part of Mexico and this particular family fits that catagory. And they enjoy the parks as much as we do.

There was a bit of a celebration going on in the central park in Tepic and the following photos show various participants getting ready. The first two are of a cute dancer who would soon be center stage.

And two more very pretty dancers who's biggest admirers were their families. The park was swarming with aunts and uncles and grandmas and grandpas and neices and nephews and moms and dads.

The boys for this particular dance needed mustaches and here is mom getting one ready for someone too young to grow one.

Just two girls waiting for their time to be famous.

We have more photos of this journey, too many for this blog so you will more than likely get another one tomorrow that will show and tell about Tequila.

And exciting news for us. Son number 2, Glenn, is coming tonight and will be here over the weekend. Lots of visiting coming up.