Goooooooooooaaaaaal!!!

As you probably know, I am from the great and beautiful city of Seattle. If you aren't aware, Seattle is a football town, and behind the walls of the Emerald city, the Seahawks reign supreme. The sad thing though, is that I couldn't care less about the Seahawks. If you try to tell me about a game, about 3 words into your high and mighty speech, I'll be fast asleep. I've got zero interest. Zero I tell you. Zero.

Before my good friends from Seattle who may be reading this start throwing a tissy-fit about the blasphemous words I just typed, let me explain myself. A few years ago, back before we left on our big adventure, I was just as much of a fan as the next guy. I would look forward to and watch all of the games, usually on a friends couch because we have never owned a TV, and whoop and holler and scream in excitement (thanks to those of you who let me stink up your house while watching the games and eating your food). Back then, while I was neck deep in the daily grind, a distraction from normal life was a necessity. Seahawks football filled that need. I could forget about deadlines, customers, and tomorrow morning's traffic for a few hours while eating someone else's food and yelling at their TV.

These days, a distraction is not what I want. It's the furthest thing from my mind. I don't want anything that takes me away from what it is we are seeing and doing or the people we are meeting on a daily basis. More time is what I desire and a distraction like a football game, well, it doesn't fit into my lifestyle or schedule anymore. After nearly 3 years of wandering, the Seahawks have slowly faded away and are now a distant memory.

So where am I going with this you ask? Well, we've just returned to our floating home in Puerto Vallarta after spending a handful of days in the big city of Guadalajara, Mexico. Our past 4 months in Mexico have been spent roaming through it's coastal cities, towns, and villages, and we wanted to see a different part of the country. But more than that, we wanted to see a living and breathing, large Mexican city with lots of history, traffic, and smog. So, we grabbed our good friend Mike from S/V Easy and hopped on a bus for a 6 hour trip up and over the jungle laden Sierra Madre mountains to see some of Mexico's interior.

Since I know that the vast majority of you reading this will probably never set foot in Guadalajara, I figured I should take a quick break from this nonsense and give you a few facts about the place before I get back to more of the rambling.

Guadalajara is the second largest city in Mexico and in it's greater metropolitan area lives roughly 4.5 million people. It's a big city. It was founded in 1542, it's located in central Mexico, and it's the capital of the state of Jalisco. It's where Tequila and Mariachi music were born and being that it was founded in 1542, it's got some pretty old and amazing architecture that still stands today. And blah, blah, blah. If you want more facts or info on the city, do yourself a favor and Google Guadalajara. I'll just say that it's truly an amazing place. And if you ever find yourself in the center of Mexico with a few days to kill, it's definitely worth the time and effort to check it out.

Of course we did the normal tourist activities, like wandering the city while checking out the architecture (it's a perfect city for doing just this...I would have been happy if we did nothing more), we ate some good food, and we hopped on a double-decker bus for a guided tour to learn more about the city's history. We even saw the world's largest indoor market which holds over 3,000 vendors. You can get anything you want there. Anything.

One of the highlights of our trip to Guadalajara was a kind and generous man named Jorge. While we were wandering aimlessly, probably with a look of bewilderment on our faces, he stopped us on the street and asked us where we were trying to go. “We are looking for someplace good for lunch and we want to eat where the locals eat” we said in terrible Spanish. With that simple phrase, he walked us through the city to a market which serves his favorite tacos (this taco stand has been around for nearly 50 years...and yes they were delicious!!!). And on the way to get these tacos, he stopped by his favorite cheese shop to pick up a special cheese for us to sprinkle on these special tacos because that makes them that much more special. And he wouldn't let us pay for lunch, “because we are his guests”. Amazing.

Our new friend Jorge just happens to manage the facilities of a 350 year old ranch just outside of town. During lunch, he invited us to visit him at his work the following morning so he could give us a tour of the hacienda. Why not? So, the following morning, we hopped in an Uber, rode the 45 minutes out of town, and met with Jorge at an incredible place. He gave us the grand tour of an amazing building, he told us about the history of the place, but best of all, we got to spend some time with a beautifully welcoming and kind human being. Jorge is definitely one of the highlights of this trip for me.

Even though we got to do all of that stuff, we still wanted more. We did sit on a bus for nearly 6 hours after all. We wanted a truly Mexican cultural experience. By that, you may be thinking we bought some sombreros and drank too much Tequila (Guadalajara is the birthplace of tequila). Well, if you are thinking that was our choice of a cultural experience you would be wrong. First of all, I'm not a drinker, and second of all, I didn't want to hold back Brenda's hair as she vomited up her too much Tequila. We decided on something else.

The best thing we could come up with to truly be a part of this magical city on our short stay was to go to a “Chivas” Futbol game. Now, before we go any farther, you may remember from the beginning of this bit of nonsense that I am no longer a football fan. Really, I'm not a sports fan at all. Zero interest. Zero. But a Chivas game with 40,000 of our closest friends? Who wouldn't want to be a part of that? There is no better Mexican or Latin American cultural experience that I can think of than going to see what is arguably one of the most beloved teams in the world.

To fully appreciate this game, we of course needed jerseys. The best place for said jerseys is at the largest indoor market in the world. With over 3,000 venders selling anything and everything you can imagine, jerseys were easy to find, and yes, bartering was expected (with limited Spanish, this is even more fun).

After we were decked out in our fancy new Chivas jerseys (we looked incredible), it was off to the game. In the interest of keeping this rambling somewhat short, I'm not going to give you a play by play of the game, but I will tell you that the crowd was electrifying. Singing, dancing, yelling, and screaming with 40,000 of our closest friends while rooting for the home team was pretty amazing. And when the Chivas scored, look out. The building almost exploded. Goooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaal!!! Just hearing that one simple word in a volume that made my ears bleed, well, that was awesome to say the least and worth the trip alone.