Catching up on things

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OK, so we left off at Christmas night. The next day I had planned to hit Tonola and Tlaquepaque but we were offered a ride to Lake Chapala by Danny from Mexico City (here they just say I´m from Mexico and it´s assumed that they mean Mexico City or DF) After I went to the bus station agani to look for my journal (no dice) and bought a shirt and a belt from various street vendors, I returned to the hostel. Then, a few of us... Paulina, Wendy, this guy Martin who was from somewhere in Europe.... I forget. Gah! Anyway... hopped in the mid 90´s ¨VW golf and raced on down to Chapala. There is a town, Ajijic that is also on the lake, but it was further away, so we went to Chapala. It was much more touristy than Guadalajara and Tequila, kind of like a beach town only there was no beach. Chapala is the largest freshwater lake in Mexico, so of course it is polluted and drained from overuse of water. there is this stone pier that juts out and on one side has lots of shallow boats with colorful shades. it was really expensive to rent one, something like $40 a person, so we decided not to. On the left of the pier was a shallow, floating mass of plants and trash that kind of tricked you into thinking it was solid until you saw it waving slightly up and down. Took some good pictures, etc, then we walked up the waterfront and headed into the street market. This consisted of two rows of little shops/tents. Most everything was of poor quality, but I did find and buy some interesting things. It was fun and the weather has been like 75 to 80 degrees F, sunny, not humid, beautiful, EVERY DAY. It´s hilarious because it cools down to maybe 55 at night and all the Mexicans are on the streets with winter coats on. And I´m talking about the same coats we would wear in Chicago, or to go skiing. Really funny. I bought a bunch of these little bracelet things that are just TOO COOL, it´s like a spring that folds up really tight, but then you put it on someone´s wrist and fold it down flat, plus they´re rainbow colored. I haggled, which was also fun, and got a quantity discount. Later Danny showed me to a booth that had lots of empty beer bottles stacked up and said something along the lines of ¨you have to try this¨.... thinknig I´d be getting ¨a beer¨, I pointed to one and the woman behind the counter grabbed a styro cup of about 40 oz, started shakign these bottles of hot sauce and tomato juice and I was like ¨wait... what???¨ so it turns out, this is a drink, famous in Guadalajara and the surrounding area, called a Michelada. Danny recommended something but I told the woman to make it like she normally would. Martin got one like Danny recommended, with only lime and salt. So she pours some hot sauce in, some tomato juice, about 32oz of beer (Indio), the juice of two limes, and tops it off with like a handful of salt. As you can imagine, I was not impressed by the ingenuity of the tapatios (Guadalajarans) when it comes to dressing up beer. Martin´s wasn´t much better, as the salt was what killed the whole experience. I kind of forged on, to see if I´d get used to it. No one else liked either and Martin threw his away. Along with the Michelada, I also tried a weird food ... Mariscos de Chapala, which are these tiny fish which apparently still live in the Lake, they take them and deep fry them whole with this really thin batter. some are coated in hot powder. They were both OK, but no one else wanted to try because they still had eyes. I declined to actually buy some, because 100 or so would be too many. After an eternity of shopping and trying to get used to Michelada (seriously, tell them only a little itty bit of salt) we headed to a restaurant off the main drag to eat lunch. I was out of money so Danny and I went to search for an ATM. We found one and while waiting in line, I met a guy from california and we joked about the amazing taste of Michelada. Btw, there is no need to bring travelers cheques here, as the banks accept normal atm cards and don´t charge an extra fee. It is really cool to see your bank balance in pesos too. Lunch took forever, really slow service, and I had guacamole with quesadillas, which would have been good if they hadn´t put so much SALT in it! Jeez... so that was the end of the Michelada, only made it through about half of that crazy thing. Too much salt... but after that we looked at a bunch of shops, laughed at these girls in a clothing store who had these lower=half=of=the=female=body=only mannequins and were attempting to put jeans on them. really funny. I got a couple postcards and then we headed back to Guadalajara. Once back, we found a load of new people had arrived (it´s weird, because it feels like a dorm here, but the people are constantly changing, 10 new people arrive and leave every day and I miss the crowd at the christmas party already) I gave shelley one of those bracelet things as a birthday present (I think I got three for 10 pesos, then later saw them at the ¨three peso store¨ which is what they have here instead of dollar stores). Oh well. I dragged a bunch of people to the Taqueria that I´d been to a couple nights before and we all ate this astounding amount of tacos. They´re so cheap! This italian guy was a RIOT, he was a seasoned traveler and new spanish, so he kept talking with everybody really fast and making friends and such, difficult to describe this guy. Me, italian guy, shelley, and some other guy from france went to Lucha Libre! (Ie, Nacho LIbre!) Yeah. Mexican WWF wrestling. we got there late and had to really yell and scream and throw a fit to get let in, then we were in the balcony, some of the only people there. we almost got thrown out for taking pictures, and then the italian guy wanted to smoke a cigarrette so we had to walk around to the other side of the arena. The whole crowd turned on us! Picture the entire crowd yelling something incomprehensible while these masked mexican wrestlers are making a big poorly executed show of beating on each other. I bought a mask on the way out for 100 pesos and we took turns wearign it on the way home and playing at beating on each other, Lucha Libre style. That night, the plan was for a whole bunch of people to go out dancing to celebrate shelley´s birthday. We had started a game of this type of cards, nameless as far as I know, and so we told the dancing group we´d meet up with them and made sure we knew where they were going. finished our game, gathered some more people, and headed out. We walked about 6 blocks and got to this dance club, showed our passports (except for Paulina, who headed home alone despite numerous offers of accompaniment... probably ok, but her call) and were let in. We get upstairs to find that it´s a gay club and our friends are not there. (it turned out they went somewhere else first, then went to the gay club where they had a blast and saw some guy dancing whose pants fell off and he just kept going half naked. fun times) we decided to leave right away and continue looking. we asked if there were other clubs nearby and were told to go some way or another, and the group of us... Wendy, Nori (photographer from Japan), a couple from singapore, and I wandered around Guadalajara at night. We tried a couple different places to no avail, but saw a bunch of cool stuff. parks, and so forth, an outside restaurant with great music, a cow (the cow exhibit is in Guadalajara this year. haha... remember the cows?) and then went in Super G, the 24 hour supermarket. I got a mexican form of minute maid orange juice and we got some snacks and things for a meal later. headed on out, eventually got home and sat around talking. Wendy, Nori, and I went to a couch and cuddled, the rest of the party returned, way drunk. I danced with Shelley which was funny because she was wasted... apparently she barely drinks ever. people were being loud, some people got in trouble for smoking, then various unnamed persons started having sex on the beds out in the main, shared room. we sat and watched, they were under covers and not making much noise but it was still pretty voyeur. Nori got sick. Wendy and I talked more, went to bed.

I need to go eat breakfast and pack for Puerto Vallarta. So that´s it for now.

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