tequila!!

Yes, we made it to the town of Tequila, about 50 kms from Guadalajara. Beautiful situation surrounded by ranges and by farms growing blue agave. The town is still small, but thriving with a good tourist trade and from tequila. Jose Cuervo has a factory tour there, which showed us the barrels, vats and the bad smell, but also gave us a free margarita at the end. You will have to visit Connie.

which is tyce

One of the pictures is Tyce and one is of Jose's nephew Juan Pablo, who is 4 years old and might be even naughtier than Tyce. When I showed him the picture of Tyce and asked who it was, he said me.

spanish lesson 1 - greetings

mexicans part 2

There is a strong sense of identity in Mexico, with flags and symbols everywhere. There is also a strong security presence with security and police walking around with sawn off shotguns in the cities.
At 6 pm the soldiers are taking down this huge flag in the middle of Mexico Cityand they had to make sure no part touched the ground. There was a bit of a wind blowing so they had a hard time of it at first.
I suppose if you have such a big neighbor, you like to stand up for your own special character. I didn't expect it to be so obvious or so catchy. It feels good to be Mexicano, and since they are not so tall and fairly solid, I fit right in.

mexican army

the old and the new

Mexico City is a massive place about the same size as all of Tokyo. We stayed at the Guadelupe missionaries seminary on the south side, which meant about an hour and a half commutes to the places of interest. Metrobuses (bendy buses like in Brisbane) with dedicated stations and lanes are big both in Mexico City and Guadalajara. I use one to get to Spanish school and it is fast and reasonably cheap, only about 1 dollar Aus. Some of the buses are extra long with two bends in them. In Mexico after the pyramids we went to the Anthropology Museum. Thats where I got a real eye-opening into the rich and diverse history of Mexico. Alot of it is still being dug up, with new civilizations still being discovered. We did less than half of the museum that was plenty.

climbing pyramids

Mexico is an old country and has a long diverse history. We visited the pyramids outside of Mexico City at Teotihuacan, called the pyramids of the sun and the moon. There was major city here for 700 years from the time of Christ, before the Aztec or Maya. There were alot of civilizations that interacted with each other throughout central America.
The climb wasn't too bad, like walking up out of the subways. Still it a special feeling being on something so old that still has a kind of energy about it. My back had been aching sitting in the mini-van as we toured around, and either the climb or the special psychic power of the place made it feel better.