Guadalajara

I was supposed to stay with Ileana, but she had informed me I would stay with her twin Gabriella for the 3 nights I was in Guadalajara. I arrived in the city and asked an old couple on the bus if this was Guadalajara. They said yes. While technically they were correct, they were only just. I asked the man in the bus station if this was the old or the new one. He said neither it is Zapopan. This is like Guadalajara´s Beverley Hills but it was still 8km out to the west of town. I decided to walk it in full pack. I got most of the way as well until Gabriela insisted it was better I take a taxi. On my way in I found some tell tail signs I was a long way out of town. A strip club and a motel. The staple foundations of all suburbs in big cities. The taxi I did get for the last bit did a U-turn and reversed across an intersection into a one way street. Now that was cool. I met up with Ilena and with one of her friends we went to a swanky little bar (reminded me of the type I go to in London) and chatted about travel. Her friend was tired so she bailed early. Ileana and I went on to a rock club that played mainly classic British rock and it was a good night. The band gave a shout out to foreigners (which was basically just me). Afterwards we met a friend of hers who was completely hammered. She was telling me about Bob Marley living in her head and then she drove home. As we drove back we saw her speeding down the wrong way on the road and only changed back when a truck beaped her. Fugured we maybe should have given her a lift home. Ilena had mentioned how it was weird she had had brief flings with her other two couchsurfers and I wasn´t sure if it was a proposition or a warning so I left it dangling there. I met her sister Gabriela when I got back and had also met the American guy Scott from Utah. Gabriela was living with two Yankees. Jesus had been right though. The girls in Jalisco are phenomenally stunning. Need to find out about this French thing.

My first morning in Guadalajara I was taken out for breakfast by Scott and his girlfriend Anna (she was a local lawyer and he worked in computing and could base himself anywhere). They paid for breakfast (pork dish thing) and even drove me all over town looking for Lonely Planet Caribbean Islands before showing me the best sites to visit (They are both incredibly ncie people. Scott even suggested I use his house when in Nicaragua). They made a really cool couple. They had met when he had seen her on a street corner. He did not ask her out and later saw her at a restauarant. Waited for her by the bathroom, but she took ages and eventually they only met because she stepped on an escalator in front of him. Good story and fate seems to have handed them each other, even if they had problems getting a flat because they weren't married. I started off my siteseeing at the Instituto Central de Cabanas. Its a cool building with really impressive murals by Orozco in the middle. They sold me a ticket and I went in. The main chapel had a speech being given on Mexican History and so it was difficult to get a clear vision of the murals. I asked a guard why all the doors to the museum were shut and where the entrance was. He informed me that it was all shut, so that was money well spent. I wandered round the plazas, the cathedral and the Palacio de Gobierno (which has a cool, huge mural of Hidalgo on the back staircase that almost makes you topple over with its presence). The centre of the city is very pretty and picturesque. You can walk around it for a few hours. The art gallery shut at four so I went to the regional history museum (good, but did not explain the French thing) and they have a plaza of Jalisco heros. I returned to the house and met Gabriela with her friend Luis (he ran his own bar for three years and is now planning on going to London to study fashion management). We went to his old bar to pick up some speakers for Gabriela's party. His old bar was really cool. Three stories that looked like art students lounges. Very chilled, but apparently in the wrong neighbourhoods for profit. We grabbed them and took them to the top floor penthouse apartment downtown. It had amazing views. Guadalajara's skyline is not too high so you can see almost all of the city and it was a great place for a party. We went back to the flat and met Rafa (a fashion photographer) and Madison (a model from Washington). Madison would later tell me Rafa was cool but a bit of a perv. I thought that was a requirement in the job spec for that profession surely. I found out Rafa played football with Pele when he was a kid and we chatted about various things before we left to set up the party.

When we arrived at the bar, we had accumulated two kids who were to watch the door for the night and they had walkie talkies to report any problems. We got there and the DJ (a friend of Gabbys and a citywide known DJ) was setting up. We helped him prop up these huge speakers on tripods on one side of the terrace walkway. Now these tripods were not stable and the wall was only just above my knee in height. I figured someone drunk may go over the balcony. Rafa says thats common in Cancun with spring breakers. I figured a speaker may go over the wall and brain someone 8 floors down. The others figured it would hold however. I hoped they did not have too much wind as it was already blowing out the candles. The DJ set up and played cool electronica music. People tried to crahs downstairs as we were broadcasting for the whole city. I mingled and chatted as best I can with my shit Spanish. It was an artsy crowd of cool people with a great view. I chatted with Luis and another painter for ages before I ended up spending most of the night drinking with Madison. Couchsurfing offers not such a bad life. Drinking free beer in a penthouse suite overlooking a beautiful city, with cool electronica music and a Yankee model for company. Hostels have a long way to go lol. There was another French girl teaching there who was off hiking in the morning and Madison and I disappeared off to her car so she could change shoes. Whenw e came back we were locked out and the kids had disappeared. Crowds gathered both sides of the gates like the Titanic and eventually we had to usher in through the crowd while the other were held back. It was a good party and at 6am me and Madison retired to smoke weed in the lounge at home. She had told me she had once taken Meth to prove to her friend (who was addicted) that he could kick it. That makes tow Yankee meth takers I now know. We also talked about life, general things and ghosts, because there were some weird ghostly goings on across the road. Luis had told me the carpark of the building was apparently haunted. There was another Yankee painter from Boston at the party and he was smoking the strongest weed I have ever had. One hit rocked me when usually it does nothing.

In the afternoon I got up and went to the modern art gallery I had missed the day before. It had an exhibition by Colunga and he is one of the most interesting modern artists I have seen. Very innovative. The best piece was a painting of Mary (mother of Jesus) worshipped as a devil figure. Red and black figurines in a twist on the usual religious art. Lots of weird imagery like a church pew complete with praying mice. You should check his stuff out. I walked to a park with lots of people in it, but seemingly no entrance. Then I went back and planned the 23 days in the Caribbean. I have to organise a ferry and I think I concluded I can do 4-5 days in Haiti without hopefully being killed. In the evening we went to an architects house and watched Broken Flowers. Boston guy was there and he has an interesting story. He hitchhiked and hiked through the jungle from Chile to Cuba with no m,oney and two shirts. He owns a lot of businesses etc, but apparently just hikes off in the jungle with only a machete for a few days like a Yankee Steve Irwin. He was deported from Cuba for troubles and found himself there after his ship shipwrecked in the Caribbean. He also once hitched a plane to the middle of the jungle and had to starvingly hike and beg back for a week. He told me that Peruvians are aggressive and Colombians not so, but if they get angry they´ll hack off a limb. Gabriela told me he had a trouble childhood. I was just sad I could not get more stories from him. Which reminds me of two I missed. Yoana from Monterrey once had to hitch a ride down a ski slope on the backs of the Swiss national ski coach. That must have made for a really cool version of one of those simulators. The West Virginian as a pilot was once offered $200,000 to fly drugs to the US from Bahamas and said the drug dealers weren´t scared to go to prison in the US because it was seen as cushy compared to the jails in the Bahamas. The Bostonian's last bit of advice was quite profound. "The worst thing that can happen to you is nothing." Then he told me to go find some trouble lol.

In the morning Gabriela made breakfast and we discussed the book project she was assisting her mother with. It was a compilation of works for abused women and would be distributed in mental asylums and prisons around Mexico and beyond. I thought that was cool and they have their own publishing company as her mother is a famous poet. On the way to the bus station I got to practice my crap Spanish with the taxi driver and in the bus station I fed some poor people with tacos. In the station was one of the fittest women I have seen in a long time. Damn Jalisco is a good looking province. I've written something about figuring out power ratios. I think that means with new groups of people. It takes a while to study who has the power and what a group dynamic is. Sometimes as an outsider you can even change the dynamic by lending power to group elements who usually lack it and gain it through a quasi alliance. Anyway I am wandering off topic. On the bus I saw the Swedish film ´The Black Pimpernel'. Fucking awesome. Watch it. Its about Allende and Chile and the lengths one Swedish Ambassador went to in the name of freedom and honour. Everyone who knows me will have an idea what its like, but this guy was immense. Kudos to the filmmakers for bringing him to mainstream attention. i want to read his biography if he has one. Anyway on to Aguascalientes.