A Day in Guadalajara

A big comedown in hostels from the Funky Monkey to the “Roof Backpacker’s Hostel” in downtown Guadalajara.  Neighborhood: from a pretty domestic street—to a slum area of nightclubs, ruined pavement, graffiti’d walls.  Appearance: from spotlessly maintained rooms decorated with Bohemian charm—to a dark fish-green lobby like an elevator shaft underwater, and a foyer used as a storage room.  Staff: from instant friendships and a relaxed universal welcome—to a stiff, scowling Mexican lady who took half an hour to appear behind the counter and who spoke no English. 

Most importantly: from a hub of traveller social life to a tomb.  I’m not quite the only guest here, but I might as well be for all anyone talks to anyone else.

The foyer of the Roof Hostel

But this is Guadalajara, a far cry (and an 8-hour drive) from the seaside fantasyland of Mazatlan.  This is a full-fledged metropolis, Mexico’s second-largest city: it’s crowded, it’s dirty, it’s chaotic, and it means business.  And my business was tourism.

I had one day here (unless I fell in love with the place, which I didn’t, though it’s possible the hostel had something to do with that).  And going by my guidebook there were three parts of town I had to see: the Main City, Chapultepec, and Tlaquepaque.  Sometimes it’s great having a car.

The Main City

I got a jump on the historic downtown the night I arrived, strolling over from my hostel.  In two mini-blocks I was out of my slum neighborhood and onto a broad avenue choked with cars, mobbed with pedestrians and lined with expensive shops.  It was like Madison Avenue except for the grand stone colonial buildings that wouldn’t have been out of place in Paris.

But what struck me the most were the people.  I had seen Mexican rural poverty and Mexican seaside capitalism, and in both cases Mexicans were distinctly Mexicans.  Here, suddenly, I was in a thoroughly cosmopolitan crowd: the people dressed, strode, chattered, dodged each other and trailed perfume like urbanites the world over.  Mexico mystifies me.  Just when I think the society is irrevocably destroyed, savagely severed into ultra-rich and cockroach-poor, I come across an evening fighting my way through a thriving city-state of the ordinary middle class. 

But fighting toward another world altogether.

Impressions of the Guadalajara historical center, gathered that evening and the next morning: a surf-pounded seashore where the stone is an archipelago of towering cathedrals, temples, museums, colonnades, old municipal buildings; and the surf surging around its base is a compacted, aroused city population of workers, tourists, couples, acrobats, bands, street preachers, vendors, beggars, religious processions, jewelry stores, underground donut shops, Burger Kings.  Cars wait to cross rivers of people, double-decker buses turn under 17th-Century stone, horse-and-carriage rides trot by.  Amplified music and speech from a dozen sources overlap and echo.  A breath of a bare-shouldered woman’s perfume passes by and the next breath is of raw sewage.  Sour heat blasts at you from subway vents next to the pretty girls licking ice-cream cones.  The interconnecting grand plazas go on for a mile of human tumult and traffic disruption, and the sun sets over a cauldron that at last can only be Mexico.

Chapultepec

Chapultepec was advertised as a place to get good food, and guided by Lonely Planet I went for a late breakfast at a small neat place called Coffee Legacy.  The Huevos Rancheros were authentic (i.e., not what I was expecting), covered in a weird orange sauce but with some killer accompanying salsa that made up for it, and the coffee was served in a fetching little tin-spout decanter. 

As might be glimpsed, Chapultepec seems a clean, hip, self-conscious little suburb.  The streets were leafy and broad, the restaurants plentiful and pretty.  When I took photos of the tidy little craft fair under the new skyscraper a policeman asked me what I was doing. 

Tlaquepaque

The suburb of Tlaquepaque “resembles your typical pueblo magico,” according to Lonely Planet, meaning, I guess, that its one-way streets were one car wide and I had to circle the block-wide convent-like building twice to find the tiny little entrance to the parking garage.  But once Pepin was parked and I walked back out, the streets did indeed sing immediately to my camera.

And the museum I visited there was great.  The Museo Pantalon Panduro houses a collection of ceramic art, many in the form of busy scenes composed of groups of tiny figures.  Below is just one of the many mini-sculptures that held my attention for hours.

After the museum I wandered through a plaza given over to a genuine street fair with vendor stands, rides, and happy crowds.  The day was now 92°, and I poked around with my camera for a half-hour or so, before suddenly being seized with panic: where was my green daypack?  I was no longer wearing it.  Had I set it down somewhere?  Had I left it at the museum?  It contained my laptop, all my photo files—everything.  In a sweaty rush I hastened back toward the museum...and was halfway there when I remembered I’d left it on purpose in my car in the garage.

Senior moment, heatstroke, or Guadalajara overdose?  Seemed a good opportunity to reclaim my Miata (attendant nowhere to be seen; I left the fee under the ticket on the workbench) and drive back to my scuzzy hostel for a nap.