One thing about sleeping in someones back garden is that they almost ALL have pets. At least one dog anyway. This lady had 3 dogs, chickens, roosters…you name it, it was there. Alex seems to draw alot of attention from all of these said dogs and they all LOVE his feet.
Thompson was the dog of the day. The young but fully grown, hyperactive
weimaraner jumped at him, nibbled his extremeties, mainly his legs and licked his feet wherever he tried to walk. Its so funny as Alex just stands stock still and shouts of me. We also had a house guest for the evening…luckily not Thompson..which made for a bit of excitement!

The next morning we managed to get packed up without Thompson actually getting in the van and he looked really sad as we waved goodbye.

We drove through fields and fields of the tequila plants growing and made it to Tequila by 10 am and then realised what we had done…we were in Tequila at 10 am with a whole days driving ahead of us! With this in mind we weren’t going to be doing so much tasting! We wandered into one of the MANY stores and looked bewildered at the walls filled with all different tequilas. The man behind the counter offered us several samples and we tried tiny sips of about 6 very different tequilas, not one of them anything like the terrible tasting stuff I
remember drinking too much of in Germany of all places! We bought a pack of mini bottles so we could repeat the tasting another day and also bought a bottle of locally produced coffee flavoured tequila. Mmmm.
Before we hit the road we stopped at the front of a house where the happiest looking Mexican woman was making tortillas and sat down for a bite to eat. Everything has so much flavour and Alex’s spicy hot pocket of chicken was lovely.

From Tequila we were heading for Guadalajara (said Gwad-lah-hah-rah) which is the second largest city in Mexico. The traffic was as bad as you would expect of a city of 4 million people and the roads were incomprehendable. You went right to go left, you couldn’t turn off the road unless you got into the side road, the streets were all one way etc, etc. Imagine being blind and trying to drive the wrong way down the M1 at rush hour…that will give you an idea of what it was like!”Why would you go there?” I hear you scream…the HUGE municiple market is why! We are, as you know, suckers for local produce and wandering around a food market! So we fought our way in to town and found a terrible little campsite to stay the night. The ants were absolutely huge, you know the ones you see in wildlife documentaries carrying things 15 times their body size down their little ant streets…yup, they’re the ones! We watched them happily busy and hoped they didn’t fancy life on the road!

The next morning we jumped up bright and breezy and went to the market.
We parked as near as the hand drawn map told us we could and set off in the (hopefully) general direction in the baking heat. After about 20 blocks (to you English…about 2 miles) we reached the market. It was as described…HUGE. It covered streets all around it and inside covered 3 floors absolutely cram packed floor to ceiling with everything you can imagine in a Mexican market. From sombreros to pigs feet, to tomatillos, to Mary statues to tripe, they had it all. It was brilliant mayhem. The sights, sounds and smells were unbelievable. We wandered around, mouths gaping, repeating ‘No Gracias’, ‘No Hablo Espanol Gracias’, ‘cuanta esesta por favor’ and not really understanding any of the answers!

We mooched around the kitchens and watched everyone eating the most weird and wonderful things, enjoying the diversity in the cuisine. From Pozole to torillas to sushi, food everywhere! We left with bags of fruit and veg (which we had promised ourselves we wouldn’t do because of the walk back, but let me tell you just how amazing Mexican potatoes are! You have never had a good potato until you have tried these! I am desperate to find out what variety they are!!! Sad I know!) Anyway, we walked the 20 blocks back to Peggy and decided to get out of the city!

After learning our 8 hour long lesson of the libre (free) roads we took the toll and headed further inland to Guanajuato (pronounced Gwana-Hwa-tow) Our next stop on the map! 1200 miles into our Mexican roadtrip and we are really beginning to settle in. We have managed to pick up some very basic Spanish and are throroughly enjoying everything Mexico has to offer!

Find out what happens next on our traveling wedding adventure!