Guadalajara

The bus to Guadalajara was probably the most comfortable bus I've evere been on, the seats almost reclined back to a lying position and there was plenty of leg room too. On the tv they were showing the film 'Troy' in Spanish so a good opportunity to improve my Spamish there! Guadalajara is the second largest city in Mexico and the bus left us off on the outskirts from where I had to get a local bus into the centre. This was easy enough but the bus wasn't exactly the most direct and the traffic was also pretthy heavy. One thing you notice straight away in Mexico is the amount of old style VW Beatles on the road, they're everywhere even being used as taxis. All the other cars are fairly old too although you still see quite a lot of brand new SUVs, just like everywhere else.

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The actual centre of Guadlajara is failry small, centered around a few big squares with a big cathedral in the middle.Similar to everywhere in Mexico you could always find music at these squares with some Mariachis playing one of the nights and various aother musicians around too giving the centre and nice laid back atmosphere. Some people have the impression that Mexico is a bit dangerous but wandering around the streets of Guadalajara at night felt a lot safer than doing the same in San Francisco or Los Angeles.

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Of course there was also the nightlife to be sampled and a group of us from the hostel went along to one of the local clubsa with a few of the guys who worked in the hostel. This was really my first chance to speak Spanisg, in a loud club with booming music in the background but I soon found how friendly the Mexicans can be , they're always willing to talk to strangers and even having only a basic level of Spanish is enough to get a conversation. Some of them could speak English but really a bit of Spanish is essential to get talking with the locals.

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