VICARIOUS | Featured Region: Guadalajara and the Real GTR

Story | Steven Bochenek

To many beach-bewitched travellers, Mexico’s Jalisco state contains Puerto Vallarta, end of story. Leave them pinkening in the touristy surf.

Veer inland, basing yourself instead in this state’s capital, Guadalajara. Wander this majestic town centre’s acres of connected pedestrian plazas, where exquisitely preserved Spanish colonial architecture converses vibrantly with daring modern decisions.

Mexico’s second-largest city, Guadalajara has sprawled L.A.- like, swallowing neighbouring barrios. Some retained their original character, like the city of Tlaquepaque. Pronounced “ttell-AH-kay-PAH-kay”, this spaghett plate of pedestrianized streets, teeming restaurants, and craft shops is as fun to explore as to say. Of course, by now you’re hungry.

Is there, anywhere, a more adaptable yet distinct food than tacos? They mesh with all cuisines, haute and low-brow. For this ultimate street food, forget Yelp. Trust the “Busy Rule”. Meaning? Mexican people are understandably suspicious of idle street-food vendors.

The corollary: the busier and more mobbed a taco stand is, the better it must be. Hate waiting in lines? No hay problema! There isn’t one; just a mob. Join.

Speaking of mob experiences, you’ll never forget lucha libre, the chaotic passion-play-cum-soap-opera that is local wrestling. In good-natured class warfare, chanting fans in the upper decks trade insults back and forth with the ringside wealthy, their mantras usually attacking the virtue of the other group’s mothers.

By now you need a drink! Luckily, Guadalajara and its surrounding territory are the home of tequila. And doesn’t GTR sound friendlier as Greater Tequila Region?

Speaking of definitions, VICARIOUS itself means living through someone else’s experience. Despite the overwhelmingly automotive surrounding content, let someone else drive for this next suggestion: a tour of a centuries-old countryside distillery.

Casa Herradura still creates superb tequilas on its original hacienda (Mexico’s answer to the Québecois’ seigneury). On weekends, a train chugs directly onsite from central Guadalajara — 50-ish km—all the while plying riders with foods, tequila-based drinks, and mariachi.

Jalisco purports, also, to be the birthplace of mariachi. The taco of music, mariachi subsumes other genres, as easily rendering a 19-century local love song as Ozzy Osbourne’s situationally appropriate Crazy Train.

The daylong tour includes demonstrations by the skilled manipulators of a jima. Jimadors slice the heart from the local plant grown for tequila production. Borrowed from the aboriginal language meaning ‘to cut’, this lethal implement looks like a shovel and scimitar had kids. Stand back if you’ve already enjoyed samples.

Here in the country or back in Guadalajara, pack a parasol. Between January and May, there is an average of two days of rain falls, ideal for growing blue agave, the cactuslike plant jimadors sculpt. This corner of Jalisco and four contiguous regions plant endless arid hectares of agave. The view is hypnotically lovely. But explore farther to view Jalisco’s technicoloured desert flowers: delicate orchids, polychromatic creepers, and brazen heliconias.

Stop. Breathe. Smile. The unexpectedly lush desert is especially peaceful after the din of Guadalajara’s streets, the roaring of wrestling fans, any ugly consequences of open tequila spigots, and the congested predictability of, ho-hum, beach vacationers.