Summer Vacation Part 1 | Adventures in Guadalajara | Real English Stories
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Hi, everybody. It's Curtis Davies and Amy Whitney from realenglishconversations.com. And today we're going to tell you about our most recent vacation that we went on to Guadalajara and Masamidla. And where did we go first, Amy? Well, we decided to go to Guadalajara first because it's actually five hours from Puerto Vallarta. And we figured that that was enough driving for one day. But

Interestingly enough, and anybody from Mexico that is listening to this is probably like,

oh, okay, yeah, Guadalajara is not far from Puerto Vallarta. You've probably been there a thousand times. Actually, this was the very first time that we went to this particular city, which is surprising because it's the second biggest city in Mexico. There's so much to see and it's actually really close to where we are. So we were excited to go check it out. And I found a

really good Airbnb that was fairly close to an area in Guadalajara that's sort of the center of food and bars and cafes and all of these cool things. So what did we do when we decided to venture out of the house after we arrived? Well, we went to this really cool, trendy area called Chapo de Pecque.

And like you described, it's got restaurants and shops and bars. But before we actually discovered more of what was going on in that area, we

We decided to sample some craft beers at a brewery. And we walked in and they had this huge, I think, two or three menu boards on the wall of, I don't know, how many, 38 to 40 different beers to choose from. And so we sampled a few of those and they were playing my favorite rock album from the 90s by a band named Incubus.

and it just brought this good vibe, this good energy, a good start to the trip because it's an album that I haven't heard or listened to forever, and I was just like, Amy, I can't believe that they're playing this English rock in Guadalajara and Mexico.

It was just what started off the whole energy for the whole trip. Yeah, it seemed like it was just really, I guess, I mean, really, what are the chances of something like that happening, that you go into this random restaurant in the middle of a city in Mexico, and they happen to be playing not only Curtis is a big fan of

of this particular band but they were playing your favorite album and it was the whole album so the whole time that we were there we were listening to the album basically so yeah it was just kind of the start of a good vacation and in this place um they also had cider which is really really uncommon or i'm not going to say uncommon of course they have cider here in mexico but um

While they're brewing beer, there's a fruit variation where you can make a cider. And here, oh, they had this really, really tasty Mandarin cider that I was really excited about. And yeah, after that, where did we go next? Well, we decided to go for a stroll into this kind of area where they had no traffic, but like a pedestrian area in the middle of

of the street. Okay, hold on a minute. That was a bit confusing. So not that there was no traffic, there was traffic. But so it was the center part, the main part of Chapultepec Avenue. And it's a two-lane road on each side. One is going one direction, the other one is coming the other direction. But in the center, there's this kind of pedestrian walkway area that had a really cool vibe, right? Yeah. So-

A lot of people were out and we came across these street performers, well, break dancers that were dancing and they had a little tip jar or like a little box where people could throw in a few coins or bills. Pesos. Pesos, yeah. And kind of, you know, say, oh, yeah, okay, good job dancing. But they were break dancers. Right.

And this goes back to my childhood. I used to breakdance, not in the streets, but...

I used to be obsessed with it. I still can do some of the dance movements and stuff. What is it? It's popping and locking, it's called? Popping and locking. Yeah, popping and locking. And it's kind of like the robotic movements that you can do with your arms and legs and body. But these guys were so good at it, they actually almost looked like they were machines, like moving like...

robots and not like humans. They're really, really good at it. And we were there taking videos. And, you know, after coming from hearing my favorite album in the bar that we were in to another kind of, what are the chances of seeing these break dancers in the street?

It just kind of transitioned into another highlight of the trip. It was highlight after highlight, and we had only been there for a few hours.

Yeah, it was a really cool vibe there. And I think for Curtis, it was really exciting just to see, I mean, anytime that there's a breakdancer, whether it's a good breakdancer or not, he's like, oh, look at the breakdancers. So this is, you know, something that we stop and we watch every time. But I agree. These guys were exceptional. They were really, really talented. And yeah,

What they had was a music speaker or something, and they were playing different songs and they would take turns. So one would go up and he would dance for a couple of minutes and all of his buddies would be like, oh, wow. You know, and when he did something cool and then he'd sit down and the next one would jump in and they would kind of take turns. So, yeah, it was really nice. And then meanwhile...

Down the same block, there was some performer, like, wasn't he on a unicycle, like a clown or something? Yeah, yeah. Was that the guy that was on the tightrope, that rope? Yeah.

The balance that he had. It was crazy. So this guy, he's like performing on this unicycle, first of all. I mean, obviously he does it often and he knows how to do it, but he's performing and juggling and doing whatever on this unicycle. And then I noticed that he had a rope that he had put up and he was, I mean, he didn't have a rope.

safety belt or anything he's just doing this on the street over concrete you know in the downtown and he starts like getting up on this rope to do tightrope walking basically above the sidewalk and I mean it looked super sketchy but he was able to do it and then he started juggling on the tightrope tightrope like crazy how can you actually make that happen without

falling. And I don't know, lots of practice, that's for sure. And I wasn't even paying attention to him. I was, you know, paying attention to the break dancers and Amy's like, no, Curtis, look over here. Like, you got to watch this guy. This is insane. Exactly. It was awesome. So what did we do after that? We got hungry, I think, right? Yeah, I think we went out for dinner. It wasn't, you know, normally I'm very

picky and specific about where I would like to eat. But we saw this place, it was like a Japanese restaurant with gyoza or something like that, and curry, and it looked good, and it had a line and things like that, but it wasn't.

It wasn't very good food. So anyway, whatever. We had a mediocre dinner, not worth talking about. But what did we do the next day? I think we went downtown. Yeah, we went downtown. We really wanted to do this cool experience. Downtown, you can take a tour in a horse-drawn carriage in this buggy that is pulled by a horse.

And so we decided to rent one of these and we, I think we took a taxi. It was a little farther from where we were staying. I didn't know what the parking situation or the traffic situation is. So it's just easier to catch an Uber or a taxi or something, but whatever. We got downtown.

And for this tour, the reason why we decided to do this was because we didn't really have much time to explore the downtown and we wanted to kind of see as much as we could within the two or three hours that we were going to be down there.

But yeah, I had seen a video about this horse-drawn carriage. So after walking around a little bit and taking some pictures of some of the old historic buildings, and I mean, the buildings are pretty impressive. They're from, I think, the 1500s when Spain conquered Mexico. They brought a lot of the architecture to Mexico. So in all of the big cities, we have very beautiful buildings.

old buildings and cathedrals and things like that that are always quite spectacular to go and see. But we really didn't have our bearings. We didn't know where anything was. And taking this carriage ride seemed like a good way of, I don't know, getting to know the downtown and like, how often do you get to go on a horse-drawn carriage? I've never been on one. What was it like?

It was amazing. We had the whole conversation in Spanish, which was really interesting and good for our Spanish practice. And he told us about his horse and that they... Yeah, I think his name was Ratón, wasn't it? Yeah. Which is like mouse. Yeah.

How old was he? He was a young horse too, like 11 years old or 12? Yeah, 11 years old. Exactly. And we found out actually just a little random piece of data about this. Because I mean, when you're utilizing animals for tourism, one of the concerns that I had was about how they care for the animals. Because these animals are basically carrying around a cart all day with people on carts.

cement. They're walking on cement roads and things like that. And the guy explained that they actually let the horses rest every second day. So they work one day and then they take a break the next day so that they have a balance and they can have a rest and recover and that sort of thing. And there were some carriages that didn't have a horse pulling them as well.

But as a balance, to strike a balance between completely eliminating the horses due to animal cruelty or whatever it was that the conditions were previously, they decided to have regulations around it. So they require, if they're going to have an actual horse, they require that they have one day of work and one day of rest. So anyway, just for some context that the animals are cared for, but we hopped in the carriage and...

What was it like? It was really, really interesting and neat because you could hear the cluck, cluck, cluck of the horse trotting. And it was kind of – I'm a bit of a romantic guy. So in this carriage, it was – it had these hearts and stuff. So I found it interesting.

really romantic, right? So I'm like, aww, you know, in this horse-john carriage with Amy and, you know, it was kind of a romantic thing. And what was really surprising though is we came to this intersection and it was completely silent when he stopped for the traffic light. Because they have to obey the traffic rules. Yeah, even with a horse.

It was like somebody hit the mute button, you know, and it went silent. No horns hawking, no... Cars, no music, nothing. No music. And in Mexico, these are actually the sounds of Mexico, dogs and cars and music and horns and...

You would expect that in a big city, but it was just like the world was on hold for a few minutes. And also it was because when we left this area, I mean, we were going down the road in the carriage and the guys pointing out different points.

points of interest and we had cars going by us like there were like two or three lanes of cars on a highway and we were in the horse lane I guess I don't know we were taking off one of the lanes anyway and

Yeah. Anyway, it was weird because we left a situation where you really did feel that you were in this mix of back in the old times and then in the modern times where you could see the metro train and the highways and the overpasses and this sort of thing. And we just turned the corner and it was like totally silent. Super strange. Even the driver said something. He was like,

Yeah, it is really quiet. Super quiet. Yeah, yeah. So what else did we do when we were in the downtown area? Well, we wanted to take some pictures and we decided to check out this area that has...

fountains and statues and it's surrounded by buildings and like we talked about museums and stuff but these fountains were huge and there were kids playing and splashing and swimming around it was actually a really warm day the first day um so people were out really in enjoying that and um

Yeah, so we decided to wander around. Just wander around downtown. We bought a few little souvenirs, like a Chia Pet monkey. Yeah. The thing that broke, the massaging thing that broke.

Oh, yeah, yeah. There was like, you know, these little gimmicks that people sell and oh, that seems like a good idea at the time. And the first time that I plugged it in, it just stopped working. So I don't know what happened, but we checked it out. It wasn't.

It wasn't really good. But the chia pet, I still have it. He's getting pretty furry now. It's this little monkey that has chia seeds all over it. And you get the seeds wet and then it starts to grow. So he's okay. He's growing in all parts, but he's a bald monkey. So he has no growth on the top of his head, you know? So we bought some souvenirs and stuff to take back with us.

And the next day, we had a plan to get out of the city a little bit. And as you guys know, or if you've been listening to our podcast for a while, this comes up over and over again. You guys know that we're big fans of hot springs. And I've been eyeing this hot spring for a while, you know, because I've looked at different hot springs that are in the area or things that we could get to. And

I think it was called Pelitas Hot Spring. And the Pelitas Hot Spring is probably about

maybe half an hour outside of Guadalajara, outside of like a suburb or a town that's kind of merged into Guadalajara called Tonola. And this place here was actually really incredible. We had a great experience. And this was in a national park, a Mexican national park, which meant that the hot springs were completely free.

And, uh, what was, oh yeah, geez, I almost forgot the adventure part of the day because the traffic of Guadalajara, I think we got lucky when we came into town initially.

We're like, oh, this isn't so bad. I was expecting a big fight like Mexico City traffic again, you know. And we came in. We got to our Airbnb. No problem. It was super, super easy, super mellow driving. And the next day going to the historic center, same thing. No problem. It was pretty mellow. Pretty smooth sailing, smooth going. Oh, man. When we went to the hot springs, no, we went into the heart of the beast. It was like, oh, there's the traffic. Okay. Yeah.

What were the roundabouts like? Because I think we went through about three or four of them. They were insane. They were insane because people would turn in front of you. So you had to slow down or speed up according to what was going on. And there was people going, luckily you were driving. Yeah.

You have a little bit more awareness to what's going around you. My only objective in that roundabout was not to hit other cars. That was it. I'm like, I don't care if I miss the exit. I'm going to try to get over there. But if I have to go around this thing three times, whatever, so be it. There were people going left and right and straight. How many lanes were in the roundabout? Three? No. Three?

Or is that four? There were four lanes. Four. Plus two that were exit and entry lanes. So there were six lanes and people flying left, right, crossing lanes, no signal lights, complete chaos, you know, several traffic lights within each of these roundabouts. So.

Anyway, I was completely blindsided as a driver coming into this. I'm like, oh, we just need to follow the highway like a line on Google Maps. And when we came into the first roundabout, I remember being at the traffic light and looking at it and looking at the map and being like, oh, my God, how do I get over there? Like I had to do a left turn. We had to go left.

No, no, that was the one with the weird left turn in the middle of the roundabout. So it had the highway going through the center of it. And I was on like the, you know, out of the six lanes that were there, I was in the second lane closest to the right hand side.

Which is probably very confusing for anyone listening to this, but just think we've got six lanes, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six. I was in lane number five and I had to get across all of the traffic for one, two, three, and four lanes.

all within like I don't know 100 meters or something like that so yeah these anyway the traffic was super crazy it's like when the light turned green we had to we had to go we had to punch it punch it let's go so we got throughout that chaos uh we we survived and

No accidents. Without accidents. We were good. We had into the hot springs. And then we had some different road construction as we were on our way into the national park. I don't know about construction. Maybe lava construction. Like massive potholes.

That made me appreciate driving an SUV, really. But anyway, it was a rough road getting down to the Hot Springs. But when we got there, finally, the National Park, the road conditions were actually really, really nice within the National Park, no problem. I was concerned when they made me sign a waiver upon entry, but it was okay. What was it like when we finally got to the Hot Springs?

It was amazing. Lots of local people there. All locals. All locals spending – it was on a weekend, so everybody's there just with their families, with their –

coolers and having picnics in these hot pools. And they had different levels of these pools, which related to the different temperatures. Some were hotter than others. So the one at the very top was the hottest. And then like there were maybe, I don't know how many pools, but I would say five or six, maybe seven pools. And the top one being the hottest and the lowest one being the coolest.

And the natural landscape was very similar to hot springs that we had been to in Canada. So it kind of reminded me of, you know, some of the places that we've talked about in previous podcasts. And it was really beautiful. But my favorite part was making almost like a friendship connection with an older couple.

that said hi to us right away as we were kind of just looking around before we got into the pools. And they were telling us there are more...

pools to this side and over here. You can put some mud on over there if you want, because it's supposed to be therapeutic for your skin to put the mud on and then go soak in the hot spring or whatever. Yeah, we didn't do that, but a lot of other people were because the minerals in these natural hot springs are good for your skin. Yeah, exactly. And they were hot. Honestly, these hot springs, they were hot and it wasn't

a cool day either. I would say it was probably 27 or 28 degrees. And, um, the water was definitely 40 degrees, um, probably a little bit warmer. I used to have a hot tub when I was growing up. So I kind of have an idea of what, uh, too hot temperature is versus not hot enough and how it corresponds with the temperature. But, um, I'd say, yeah, they were definitely 40 degrees. So, um,

hotter than that up top and maybe a couple of degrees cooler down below. But, you know, these people that we met, it was really neat because, and we hope to go back to visit this area. They were from Tonola and Tonola has this massive market, like the

Artisans, artisanal goods, people selling anything that you can imagine is going to be in this area. And they have an open market two times a week that's just absolutely enormous. And this couple, they were two of the artisans and they make crafts related to mirrors.

And little broken pieces of glass from mirrors, they put it together into different shapes like a sun or a gecko or whatever. And I actually love this type of art. So I'm really excited to go back next time, make contact with them and see all of the things that they have in there.

their store and maybe get something from them. I think that that would be fun. But it wasn't just the hot springs. It was also the connection with this couple and having a great conversation during our time there. We're going to wrap up this first part of the conversation now, and we're going to tell you about part two of what we did in Mazamitla in the next episode. Talk to you soon.

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