MEXICO BONITO
Carlos y Amber Joined: December 29th 2005
Logged in: December 10th 2009
Logged in: December 10th 2009
Carlos is returning home to Mexico for the next four months. Coming home to spend time with family is the most important thing to Carlos. With his incredibly large family, 31 aunts and uncles, it is the most important thing to him.
Amber most recently resigned her postion as a Ceritifed Player Agent to live and travel in Mexico for the next four months as well. She is going to take this time to get to know Carlos' family and of course, continue working on her language skills.
Together they will enjoy the peaceful, yet vibrant Mexican culture with Carlos' family and friends. They look forward to meeting new friends as well and expanding their minds as they live and travel together in MEXICO BONITO!!!
Please take a minute of your day to see and read the stories of their adventure in Mexico.
FELIZ VIAJE!!!
Travel Blog Posts
A Rainbow in the Mountains of Guerrero
We waited to finish the last entry until we arrived back in Chicago and while we are happy to he be back, it is definitely a shock to our senses. We loved every minute of our time in Mexico and now, appreciate those moments we had more so than we thought we would. The life is good in Mexico, a life we know we will return to at some point, hopefully sooner than later. Mexico is colorful, full of love and truly free for those that are willing to take the time to take it all in. Those that do will be pleasantly rewarded with the good life. To summarize our time in Mexico is impossible, but it is something that we share together and the memories will be ours forever. As we move forward with ... read more
Zacatecas
The last stop, Zacatecas, couldn't have been any better. This was one of our favorite cities in Mexico and also a favorite by many others as it is a Unesco World Heritage site. The state of Zacateces is actually one of Mexico's largest, but smallest in population. The city of Zacatecas has an altitude of 2445m, which is 5m higher than Mexico City, which makes for some hot days and cold nights, even in the summer. Zacatecas is approx. 4 hours from Guadalajara, with good weather and good traffic which we had. The scenery quickly changes as we traveled further north. This is actually the farthest north that we had traveled during our time in Mexico. Once again, as you can see from the photos, Zacatecas is quite an impressive Mexican city, but it is much ... read more
Agave Fields
Our travels took us to Tequila, Jalisco. Yes, there is actually a place called Tequila and we spent an entire day there!!!On the way to Tequila your mouth starts to water as you pass the blue fields of the agave plant, the cactus-like plant from which tequila is distilled. Less than one hour later, we had arrived and to our surprise the finality of one of the most popular telenovela's was being taped that day. Distilando Amor, the telenovela, in Mexico can be equated to Grey's Anatomy or in the past, Friends. Our morning started off a bit slower than we had planned because we spent time watching the taping of the wedding for the final episode along with the rest of the town of Tequila. We just watched the final show of Distilando Amor on ... read more
Guadalajara, Jalisco
Our next stop was to the second largest city in Mexico, Guadalajara. With a population of 4 million people, we expected Guadalajara to be a bit more touristy, dangerous and dirty, but to our surprise it was the exact opposite. We truly enjoyed our time visiting Guadalajara, home to our favorite Chivas soccer team...Somos Chivas...Super Chivas!!! I won't bore you with all the details of our visit here as you can see the beauty and fun we had in the state of Jalisco through our eyes - our photos. The large twin-towered cathedral surrounded by four plazas, is the heart of the city. At night the buildings are all lit up with lights as well making the perfect city day and night. While visiting Guadalajara, we also spent some time with a friend of Carlos' who ... read more
Streets of Quiroga - Home of Carnitas
During on of our days in Morelia, we decided to take a tour which took us to some of the nearby towns. After traveling in Mexico for nearly four months, we feel we have a good handle on evaluating the good, mediocre and bad tours. This tour was ranked right in the middle with mediocre mark. We were picked up from our hotel in the morning around 10:00 a.m. and we were both surprised that your tour guide was actually an American from Minnesota that moved to the area some 20 years ago. While he knew Spanish well, his accent was horrible. With a full tour group of Mexicans on this tour, except for me of course, there were many jokes made about his accent during the hours we spent with him. Our first stop was ... read more
Morelia, Michoacan
The start of our last trip while in Mexico was to the state of Michoacan, which some consider it to be the most beautiful state. Our first stop was to the well-preserved capital, Morelia. The historic center of Morelia was declared a Unesco World Heritage site in 1991. Morelia is not overly touristy, which we can be a good thing because accomodations, tours, food, etc. is even less expensive. We didn't see or hear any other non-Spanish speaking tourists while in Morelia. It is a beautiful and very traquil city and well worth the time we spent. We left Chilpancingo in the morning for a 7 hour trip to Morelia, but instead of 7 hours it took us more than 11 hours. Needless to say, it was a very long and unexpected bus ride. At one ... read more
Our Beach Lounge
We celebrated Carlos' birthday with his parents, brother, sister-in-law, nephew, Aunt Gaby, Uncle Benny and their three children, in Acapulco. We spent the day on the south side of Acapulco where it is all open water. At night we partied at the local club in Chilpancingo, Liquid. We also celebrated one year together the day after his birthday so I guess you could say I was his gift!... read more
Preparing for Hurricane Dean
We were well prepared for Hurricane Dean, unlike many other tourists. As soon as we heard the news of the hurricane from Carlos' parents 4 days before it was going to hit we made our plans. We first bought plane tickets on-line flying out of Chetumal to Mexico City. At the time of when we bought the tickets the hurricane was suppose to hit further north, but that changed a couple of days before we arrived in Chetumal. Our tickets were for Monday the 20th at 1:00 p.m. so we gave ourselves 12 hours before the hurricane was suppose to hit...good timing on our part. We continued our trip in Playa del Carmen and continued on to Tulum as well. As soon as we arrived in Tulum we bought our bus tickets to Chetumal. We had ... read more
Papaya Playa in Tulum
Seriously, can it get any better? From Playa del Carmen we took a second class bus to Tulum, approx. 1 hour and a half. In this case the second class bus was the best option because after 1:00 p.m. they leave every hour and we didn't have to wait in line to purchase tickets, we bought them on the bus. You have two options in Tulum, stay in the main center or at one of the 60 some beach cabanas. We chose the beach cabanas and the one we chose was an easy decision because as soon as we walked out of the bus station we were met by the owner of Papaya Playa. Papaya Playa is a beach resort located in the jungle, but directly off of the beach. There are cabanas, some with bathrooms ... read more
Monkeys Seem to be Very Popular Pets in the Area
During one of our days in Playa del Carmen, we decided to take a tour through the tour company, Alltournative. The salesperson had a great spiel and sold us on the tour. He made us believe that this was going to be the best tour we had been on, but that wasn't the case. Little did he know of our past travels and tours. We did enjoy a the tour for the most part, but felt that the many things that were promised to us never occurred, especially for the price we paid. Playa del Carmen is one of the more expensive places in Mexico so these companies can get away with higher prices and not as well run tours. We started off of day in a typical Maya village where were ziplined, only once and ... read more
