Las Muchachas de Arriba

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have had our first real Mexican Tequila drinking experience. I know everyone’s been waiting for this, you can now breathe easy. Friday evening Katy and I met with three Mexican friends for a night of walking, walking, walking, weird food and tequila. One friend knows a lot of GDL history, so took us for a bit of a tour, we then went to a parque with a great day of the dead market. One amigo ate possibly the most disgusting thing I’ve ever witnessed someone eating, mmm trotters tortilla. We then walked for a long time trying to find a famous cantina, which was a fantastic old style saloon bar. Katy and I were ordered a glass (of several shots, I’m sure) of tequila each, which comes with a little bowl of limes on top of salt. You sip the tequila then suck on the lime, if you want you put the lime in the salt first, but other than that you don’t really use the salt. It tasted very different to “tequila” in England, it was quite nice, very strong. Also in pubs you often get snacks with your drinks, so yay for free potatoes, cucumber and peanuts. The musical entertainment at the saloon was abysmal, the “band” was a woman who couldn’t sing and a man with a keyboard set to “80s awesomeness” playing traditional songs which included happy birthday. So that was interesting.

After another period of extended walking, we proceeded to a friend’s house, where we drank a fair amount of his very fancy, special edition tequila. His family has two dogs, both of which are ex-strays, and neither of which named, this is great. Tongue twisters, lindy hop and stupid youtube videos ensued (eh marine!).

More walking. Upon realizing we were all starving we entered an OXXO shop, which is basically Londis. We requested chorizo sandwiches, and then the fun really began. In the backroom/kitchen (kitchen? At Londis?) the lovely ladies working that night cooked us some chorizo sausages, heated up some tortillas, and opened up a pot of salsa. Four chairs materialized in the centre of the shop floor, the till became a buffet, and we chowed down on our bizarre 2am snack. It was brilliant and bizarre, I’ll try and put up a photo. And after a little more walking, that was then end of our first tequila adventure.

Ciao for now, E

Our run in with The Law.

A lovely Friday spent in the nearby (larger than expected) city of Zapopan. Following a fantastic fish lunch, fan-tas-tic, we paid a visit to the Museo de Arte de Zapopan, an art museum with a surprisingly large police presence at reception.  We sauntered in a cultural manner around the two downstairs exhibitions, predominantly filled with portraits of patients in a psychiatric hospital, and of dead bodies in a morgue. We proceeded up a very fancy, black staircase to the open second floor exhibition space which was dominated but a strange wooden contraption: a pulley system leading to a crate of coconuts at the top from which extended a long, winding and somewhat unstable slide that appeared to lead to the end of the second floor and out. There was a long explanation in Spanish of what it was meant to represent, but we were too hot to be bothered to read it. But what’s this, some instructions on the wall on how to work this large wooden coconut playground, well, don’t mind if I do. 1) Take a coconut from the bag on the floor and place in the wooden box, 2) pull rope to lift wooden box up to crate at the top (box tilts, enters top crate), 3) watch as this pushes another coconut from the crate into the chute.

We did as we were told and unsurprisingly the second coconut began its long winding journey along the chute, shooting out from the second floor to the police-ridden reception. Good. We cautiously approach the edge to see what has become of our round brown friend. Needless to say he is in pieces. The receptionist and various policemen are staring up at us from a coconut smattered floor. One policeman looks at us and says, in a not slightly accusatory tone, “did you smash this coconut?”, we later discover our reaction to this question had been entirely opposed. Well done team. We fairly quickly vacated the coconut guillotine area in search of more “art”, there wasn’t any. Katy answered a call and Ellie attempted to go down an empty passageway. We were taken aback at the sudden appearance of a suspicious policeman at the end of the passage, he rather insistently requested we accompany him back in the direction of the nameless coconut device. Katy: “Sorry Jonathan, got to go, small problem with the police” – hangs up. We follow him feeling like naughty school girls, trying VERY hard not to laugh, unsure of how seriously to take the situation. We would never have guessed what happened next. He had painstakingly re-set up the contraption 1) Take a coconut from the bag on the floor and place in the wooden box, 2) pull rope to lift wooden box up to crate at the top (box tilts, enters top crate), 3) watch as this pushes another coconut from the crate into the chute. Except somehow he had stopped the second suicidal fruit in its path – the obvious police reaction in suicide situations – he sent us to the edge of the chute to watch the chaos unfurl.  Upon removing his hand, the poor fruit tumbled to join the first casualty, coconut milk puddles abounded.

It took a while for what had happened to sink in – our reaction was to laugh in disbelief, we do not remember if we thanked him. Not got much going on for the police in the SAFEST CITY IN MEXICO (MUM). It seems their time is taken up with showing tourists how coconuts smash onto reception floors. In the future, when sending fruit down a chute, we will run to the end to survey the outcome. Thanks for the lesson.

K and E. Bless em.

Lupita - Me encanta la Birerria!

Just a keeping you guys up to date this time, a post absent from astute observations and the like - more a round robin.... We haven’t been that busy this week, just bobbing along, getting used to it all. Its hurricane season here so today we’re sheltering inside from the rain. We went to the Cathedral and a great art museum which had some wonderful Orozco murals – I’m very much looking forward to visiting the Orozco house and museum to learn more. His murals are like nothing I’ve seen before, totally arresting – miserable and violent . Also intriguing that as far as I can tell he had some interesting views on the Mexican conquest/ revolution i.e. he didn’t see the conquest as entirely a terrible affair. We spent a considerable amount of time in a bookshop this weekend, which was frustrating and useful at the same time – but the books were all wrapped in plastic! The idea you can’t look in a book before deciding to buy it is beyond my comprehension. Still I found a good book on Mexico’s history and a not so good book on the revolution. Ellie found a good book about gender relations in Mexico which is all lovely (not the gender relations, that she found a good book). Other than that we’ve been doing life-admin, eating lots, getting confused by the bus system (apparently if a bus says its going somewhere on the front, that’s sometimes just a massive lie). We found a great restaurant, Mexican again, with a lovely homely feel and delicious Mole, the cocoa based sauce the Mexicans eat with meat – YUM! Annoyingly whilst we were there they were filming a puppet based comedy show so grating voices repeating the same un-funny lines was the background to an otherwise perfect lunch. I start my course on Monday, which I am looking forward to, although these couple of weeks of not doing much have been great, I think I will be suddenly overwhelmed and will feel like I have very little free time, we’ll see.

K

Park and Taco Critics

On the quest for a nice walk, we strolled to the "lovely" park around the corner. This park is rubbish and small and full of kissing couples. In fact, a large part of the Mexican population seems to be made up of overly affectionate couples. Further down the road, we stumbled (literally, the pavements are very uneven and broken up, looking around whilst walking can prove dangerous) on amazing park. It is a large outdoor sports arena I suppose, fenced in, around 20p to enter, but it is fan-tas-tic. Football, basketball, running track, picnic benches, trees, pond, ducks, more ducks, grass - super.

Upon my arrival in Mexico (about 4 hours before Katy's severely delayed flight) I was taken for Tacos by the family picking us up. It pleases me to say that my first meal in Mexico was Tacos (excluding aeroplane food, which I am indeed excluding). They weren't very nice, but hey, TACOS! Tacos in Mexico are small fajitas, about the size of the palm of your hand, with meat (so many variations) and onions and sauce etc. piled on in the middle, eaten with your fingers. However, never fear, it was not long till my bad taco experience was corrected. Tuesday night Katy and I went to a taco/quesadilla/and everything else stand nearby and had, yes that's right, delicious tacos. Our stay here seems to be fairly cullinary based, but I am quite alright with that.

We'll try to update regularly with our adventures, so come back. Soon. We miss you already.
E

Bienvenidos a Guadalajara.

Everyone, but everyone has been welcoming us to Guadalajara with open arms. We feel the most welcome one could possibly feel. Our little flat in Jardines Alcalce in 20 minutes north of the centre suits us perfectly and we are lucky to be living above the most friendly family who offer us food, advice, anything we could possibly need. So far so good. That's not to say its all been going smoothly, the bus system here is confusing to say the least (there's no timetables/ bus route guides!) and everything tastes different. One observation Ellie made yesterday is that EVERYTHING is made form corn. This nugget of golden corn came to her after Jesús downstairs kindly took us to the next neighbourhood along, keen we should try the Jalisco specialty Tejuino drink. It's a beverage based on fermented corn, with lemon, salt and snow (crushed ice). We only had a small cup but it was extremely filling as we felt the need to drink it up out of politeness although the thought of the taste is not a happy memory. We're hoping a ride on the Tequila Express in the near future will prove that Jalisco has better drinks to offer. In fact we know it does as the other day Jesús and co invited us for Rompope, a delicious creamy rum drink served in intricate little cups, apparently its similar to the american egg-nog. Lovely stuff. After that it seems we had been lured into a false sense of security by our drinks serving hosts and we were ripe to be hit with the tejuino awakener. Hopefully this explains the name our of blog, in which we hope to keep you all up to date with our various taste bud and other adventures....


K