Summer Vacation Part 2 | Outdoor Mountain Adventures | English Listening
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Hi, everybody. My name is Amy Whitney, and I'm here with Curtis Davies from realenglishconversations.com. And today we're going to continue on with the second part of our conversation discussing the summer vacation that we went on. We told you in the last episode all of the different things that we did in Guadalajara. And this time we're going to be talking about the time that we spent in Masamitla. So Curtis, where is Masamitla? And what is this town like?

Masamitla is about two and a half hours driving from Guadalajara. So it was really easy to get to. And it's got a lot of character. They call it one of the magic towns. And I think it's because this town specifically, Masamitla, looks like a historical European Swiss town. It's like Switzerland. The buildings have that kind of decoration. Maybe it's not.

Not historical. We don't have buildings from like the 1500s, but they've got like, the buildings are kind of all painted white and they have wood on the, I don't know how to describe them. But anyway, you can Google Massimila if you want to see what the town looks like. And it's a little cooler. It's up in the mountains. It's got a higher elevation. So we were wearing sweaters and jeans and stuff like that.

It was nice to feel a bit cooler compared to on the coast here, right? Yeah, definitely. And when we were arriving to Massamitla, we had to check into our cabin, of course. I think this for me is what really makes Massamitla unique is that they have all of these little cabins that are in the forest because Massamitla, due to its elevation, it's kind of in an area like the middle of a pine forest or something.

and they have all of these cabins with an inside fireplace. Some of them have an outside fireplace. Ours had both, which was really cool. And, um,

The place that I rented, I actually didn't know where it was. I just saw a point on the map. I booked it through Airbnb. And when we arrived, we were surprised to find out that it was at the very top of the mountain and actually in a new development where our cabin was pretty much the only cabin with no neighbors around it, which was super cool. So what was our cabin like and what was your favorite part about it?

Well, the cabin was fancy, I would say. It had a level of fanciness, but my favorite parts actually were the fireplace inside, the fire pit outside, but most importantly, this bed. I think I've never slept in a bed that was so comfortable. It was like sleeping on a cloud.

So that was one of my favorite parts as well. And the peacefulness, the quiet, like you said, there was nobody there at all. And then we had blackout blinds, you know, it was completely dark, pitch black. So sleeping in the darkness and completely silent with no sounds was

I had the best sleep ever. And those were some of my highlights. What about you? Well, you know, the cabin was really nice. I think the purpose of this portion of the trip was to kind of chill out and have some downtime just to relax a little bit. And, you know, we took advantage of the fireplace outside and, you know,

What did we cook on it? I think we cooked, we found, we went to the butcher and we got some sausages and what else did we cook? We cooked some,

smokies that are sausages that we already brought with us, but we needed more. Yeah. We needed more because we needed things to cook on the fire. So yeah, anyway, I enjoyed that time. And, um, one of the things, and I swear, this is just one of these random things about, uh, this particular area is that a lot of the cabins have jacuzzis in them. And, um,

Anyway, for us, I think being from Canada, I mean, everybody knows we're obsessed with hot springs and cabins. I mean, we just released, I think we might have talked about Massa Meat Lab before in our cabins getaway one. But anyway, being Canadians, going to hot springs, having hot tubs and this sort of thing or jacuzzis is really exciting for us. So I wanted to make sure that the cabin that I picked up

picked, had a jacuzzi and we were lucky to have that and a really, really comfortable bed. I agree. Probably the most comfortable bed that I've ever slept in. And the fire pit outside was covered. So even if it did rain...

We weren't worried about sitting around the fire. They had those wooden benches that were really cool too. So it was really comfortable, but you didn't have to worry about it. Yeah. And the temperature as well. It was cool, but it wasn't cold. So it was nice to be able to wear pants and a sweater, but not really be cold at the same time. So

The very first day that we came into Massamitla, I think we were waiting to check into our cabin or something. I can't remember. I can't remember. I think that's what it was. But we walked into the town and we saw a guy and he was selling tours. What did we decide that we wanted to do for our tour? Ah, this was the ATV quadding tour. And I was really excited about it because we'd

Been on an ATV before in a different Mexican town, but I was really excited to see if we could get one of our own ATVs to actually drive it. And I think you said to me too, Curtis, you're going to be doing the driving. You're going to be driving this. Are you ready for this? You've never driven one before. Yeah.

But it just it just how it happened was like the guy was meant it was meant to happen. The guy was meant to approach us with this tour. And so he told us the time and and we decided to say, yeah, OK, let's go on this tour.

Exactly. He was trying to convince us to go the same day, but we literally just arrived to town and we wanted to book it for, I think it was Saturday if we decided. So anyway, on Saturday morning at 11 o'clock, we went down to this tour and we departed on our ATV and Curtis decided he was going to be the first one to drive, which was fine. And how did that go? So they start everybody's engine up.

I'm ready to go. And I'm like, oh, in my head, I'm thinking, oh, I've never done this before. And some of the staff is on the other side of the street waiting for us to go. And the tour guides are like, okay, it's your turn. You go. So you control the gas with your thumb.

And when I pressed the gas, it jumped forward. The quad moved forward. It had quite a bit of power. I was surprised. But the steering was really hard. It was like... Like Armstrong steering. Yeah, Armstrong steering, right. So when it jumped forward, I went towards the girl on the other side of the street. She screamed. And she screamed. She was like...

And jumped out of the way and everybody else, like it was a tour, there was a big family with us and everybody's laughing at me and saying, no, no, turn, use your muscles. So the second time I tried to turn, I almost hit her the second time too until I got control of these things.

really difficult handlebars. I had to put a bit of strength in. Maybe I should, you know, lift some weights here. I would say as the passenger,

I think for the first five minutes or so, I was like, Curtis, because I hadn't ridden this bike. I don't know what the control was like or what the gas was like. But I was saying to you, Curtis, there's got to be something in between go and not go. Like, can you try to control the gas somewhere in the middle? Yeah, it took me about five or 10 minutes driving up a hill and driving around and to get that slow.

soft spot there. So... The sweet spot. The sweet spot, yeah. So we wanted to take some turns of driving, obviously. Amy was like, oh, I want to drive now. I want to go fast. Amy likes to drive fast. So...

How fast did you get this thing? We were flying down the highway. It wasn't me. I wasn't at the front of the line, by the way. This was the whole Mexican family. And anyway, what happened was I took over. I went down the hill because we went up to the top of a mountain. We had a beautiful view. We took some pictures. That was cool.

And from the viewpoint, we could actually see down below a water source like a lake or something. And we found out that there was a dam that was there. So it was a river with a dam. And from there, we descended from the top of the mountain down to this little town with the dam. And...

Anyway, after we went to the dam, we had to carry along for a while with the highway to go back to Massamitla. And I think I got up to 68, maybe 70 kilometers an hour on the highway. But

The funny thing is that during the signup process, the girl said to us, oh, do you want helmets and goggles? They're 30 pesos extra or something, which is like $1.50. So we're like, oh yeah, I'd like to have a helmet. You never know what's going to happen. It's basic safety equipment. And we were the only people in this entire family of 15 that were wearing helmets. And

And knowing, not knowing actually, that we would be going down the highway at 70 kilometers an hour. I'm like, oh man, only in Mexico does this happen. But anyway, everybody was safe. Nobody had problems. Everything was good. And it was a lot of fun. A lot of fun. It was the first time I've ever felt that adrenaline rush of driving the quad. I think I was like, Amy, can we buy one now? You're like, no, we'll just rent them. Yeah, we can just rent one whenever we want.

Okay, so we had a great time in Massimila and did a lot of cool things. But on our way back, we decided to go to this sand temple that Amy discovered through watching a YouTube video or something, I think. And this was this special temple that was made out of sandstone or some sort of type of sand. But they were more like these...

like a system of tunnels.

really dark and there were some bats in there that kind of made me feel a little bit uncomfortable. We had a tour guide with a flashlight, but I wanted to turn around and run out of there as soon as I saw the bats, but I took a deep breath and he was telling a story along the way of how these things were created. How did you feel inside of those tunnels, Nick?

Did it make you feel uncomfortable? I think because I had watched the YouTube video about it, which I showed you. So you kind of had an idea what you were getting into. But, you know, I watched the YouTube video, so I had a pretty good idea of what it was going to be like. I knew that it would be really dark inside and there were kind of these tunnels. They were actually pretty large.

And I read an article about it after. The tunnels were made with arched ceilings and the passages were wide enough to be able to fit a city bus through. I don't know if they're that big, but I would say maybe like a small bus or a van or something like that. And it was pretty...

pretty amazing. Like it went on for quite a while, maybe 200 meters. These tunnels had different like branches, I guess. Sometimes it would come to a dead end and there was one that looped around and brought you back to the entranceway. So I didn't really feel, I mean, I wasn't comfortable because it was really dark and without the flashlight, you couldn't see anything.

your hand in front of you. Like it was completely dark. But we had our cell phone flashlights with us. The guide had his flashlight. I already knew about the bat, so I wasn't too freaked out about it. But yeah, it was pretty impressive. And I just remember thinking the whole time, why are there so many tunnels?

And I asked him, like, you know, I understand the reason why he was building this for the temple or the church that he was constructing. But like, why are these tunnels here? And I guess what had happened is his dad and his grandfather, they were building and excavating out the dirt manually by hand. And they had planned on putting the main

area, like the biggest room in a certain place, but it wasn't deep enough for them to be able to make the ceiling as high as they wanted it to be.

So they decided after doing all this work that they were going to restart again and to create a temple in a different area of the hill that was a little bit taller and it also gave more light. So the light from the outside could actually go into the temple so people could see where they were going and that that would be a better thing. So about this guy, a little bit of history. He

He was a veteran from the Mexican Revolution. And what happened was back in 1939, he had this vision that came to him about or from the Virgin Lourdes. And she basically said,

said, you know, I want you to build a temple, a place of worship in the mountain or something like that. I don't know what was in his vision, but it was something like that. And he ended up discovering that there was this hill in this area where the Virgin had told him that she wanted to have the temple built. And it was on the outside of this town.

And the dirt in this area, it was made of what they called jal, which is volcanic ash and pumice mixed together. So it's a very soft material and easy for them to excavate with just a shovel and a pick, basically. So it took them 50 years of constructing this tunnel. And they did everything by hand, like a massive labor project.

And our guide was telling us that he even helped before he went to the United States for a period of time. He even helped with some of the work and he remembers digging out some of these tunnels. So anyway, I have to say that I was really surprised with the size of the actual chapel and how high the ceiling was. And, you know, they had the

typical kind of branches or rooms off to the side that have different figures or paintings and things like that of the of Jesus and you know the the different things that they are worshiping and the virgins and that sort of thing so it was um it was pretty cool what did you think about the main room

It was impressive, a really high amount of detail. When you look in these things, in these temples and I guess places of worship, the attention to detail and knowing that they did this by hand is just mind-blowing, astonishing. Yeah, astonishing. So if you're ever in an area like that,

Make it part of your trip to go and experience this and find out the history. It was a learning experience, really. That was an amazing part. Yeah. Oh, there was one more part that was really interesting. And the guide did explain this to us that their family was a very poor family and they, you know, didn't really go about constructing this in the right way with permits and things like that. So they didn't have permission to

to actually build this structure. And after the guy had been working on it for who knows how many years, he finally asked for permission and the president, it was, which president, I haven't noted here, Lázaro César,

He came because he had heard about this massive project that was happening and he officially gave them permission so that the guy could rest easy and know that his church was never going to be taken away from him. And he had the rights to construct this beautiful piece of, I don't know if it's architecture, I guess it is architecture, but underground. Anyway, yeah.

He even had a picture of the president and his grandfather. Exactly, which was a really exciting part of, I guess, the history of this place. So that's it. That's all that we have for the conversation about our awesome summer vacation. And I hope that you enjoyed hearing about our adventures and we will see you in a future episode.

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