GuadalaVallarta

We flew from Oaxaca to Guadalajara, to see the map click here.

Guadalajara is Mexico’s second largest city with 7 million inhabitants. The land of Tequila and Mariachis does not have tall buildings, so to contain this amount of people the city is sprawled-our over many miles and traffic was a little messy.

Design Shop with Lots O Lights

We started off by heading over to Tlaquepaque.  It’s a cute suburb/neighborhood of Guadalajara.  It has lots of designer shops and trendy restaurants.

Band Playing & Celebatrating!!!!!

The city was alive with lots of energy while we were there. The Pan American games were held here & lots of people were out & about.

Gabe's Mom & Brother With Marcelo

We stayed with Gabe’s mom & brother, both of who was very gracious & hospitable. We also went to see some fencing & got to see the Canadian vs USA men’s volleyball. It was tons o fun as the sets were quite close. Canadians were triumphant in the 5th set by 3 points.

Canucks vs Yankees

We drove to Puerto Vallarta, click here to see the route: beautiful drive through the mountains into a lush tropical forest as you get closer to the Pacific coast.

Puerto Vallarta View from the Boardwalk

PV is located in a large bay, surrounded by large green mountains. It is extremely hot during the day & is filled with several beach-lined hotels. Gabe’s mom traveled with us & we stayed 3 days at a super-convenient “all-inclusive” resort. These kinds of places have their good & bad points, but the main draw back is that as a tourist, you don’t explore the area as much.

Relaxing close to the beach

We went back to Guadalajara to stay two nights and bid a fond-farewell to Gabe & François. Our last night out in the city was amazing as we met a lot of people and stayed out dancing until the late morning and got to see the final leg of the Pan American Games’ Marathon. The runners are troopers and so are we.

The food on these legs of the trip has been especially good. Locals always know where to go. One really good, but slightly expensive restaurant in PV is worth mentioning: No Way José had amazing food & really good service.

Finally we would like to say MUCHAS GRACIAS to Gabriel and François, Gabriel’s mother and brother who received us sooooo well in GDL an so many people who showed us the city and places that made our visit to this area extra-special.

To see more pics of Guadalajara & Puerto Vallarta, click here.

Next up Yucatan Peninsula.