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May 27, 2007
Midnight cinema in Mexico
Musicians from La muerte cruzó el río Bravo
Alberto thinks Mexican cinema mostly sucks. It's a widely-held belief here in Mexico, especially among those that don't remember the good old days when stars like Andrea Palma and Ramón Novarro graced the screens.
But I've mentioned before that Mexicans tend to think their own stuff is crap. Shawn's students don't want to get candies from Mexican marcas, the only kind that will do is something like Hershey's® or M&M Mars®. I hated to see Mexicans with no pride in their national products. I mean, who doesn't like candy?
I've had a lot of types of Mexican candies now and I have to say, I can see where they might be coming from. Some Mexican candies are hideous. I am sure some are just an acquired taste, but there seems to be a trend in Mexican confections for things that are perhaps very sweet, but also very bitter, sour or burning. Maybe there is a cultural subtext behind it and coming to love those candies is coming to terms with the national condition. Maybe kids hate them because they've not yet learned to courageously smile on through the sour of the tamarind paste or to maintain a graceful composure through the searing of your mouth lining brought on by the powdered chile dusting. There might be something there that speaks directly to the resigned calm of the Mexican spirit in that. Maybe there is no psychology involved, and we all hate them simply because they suck.
Mexican cinema has the same thing going on. There are films that are breathtaking additions to world cinema and some that would make Ed Wood recoil in horror. And just like I enjoy some exotic Mexican candies that taste a little strange, I also have a strange fondness for some trashy Mexican films because they're so alien to me. I often cannot sit and watch one paying full attention to it, nor usually do I make it through a whole one before I change the channel. Still, I've seen enough in bits and pieces that I feel comfortable making a few comments on some interesting aspects of midnight Mexican cinema. (I call it that because it's usually shown late at night before 6 or 6 am, when the Mexican movie channels go back to showing classics from la época de oro or "golden age" of Mexican cinema.)
I have difficulty accurately judging the age the films. They look to be about five to ten years older than they really are. Sometimes you can date them properly from products, advertisements or fashion, but the film stock itself will look like a bad 70s movie when it's really a bad 80s movie. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe the cameras and other equipment used were old? Perhaps the processing was not as cutting edge as what I'm used to seeing from the 80s? In any case, when watching Mexican color films from the 60s through the 80s, they're usually a lot more recent than you think they are.
Grieving Wife, Mil caminos tiene la muerte
Contrary to the oft-heard complaint, there is no shortage of roles for older women in Mexican films of this (or any) era. It tends to always be the same role: the elderly grandmother or the devastated wife crying at the side of the coffin of a recently murdered innocent during a wake or funeral.
The imminent threat, La muerte cruzó el río Bravo
Younger women don't often fare too well either. They're usually the victims of rape. Whether this serves as a twisted gratification in the male gaze or merely as the realization of the ultimate national masculine nightmare, I am unsure. During the era of these films, all good guys are macho and all the women in their lives chaste and pure. Contrary to popular belief, machismo does not dominate contemporary Mexican culture. You see those stereotypes nowadays once in a while, but more often than not, they're the subject of gentle mocking.
The destiny of a young female character, La muerte cruzó el río Bravo
Not so in the midnight movies that take place in the countryside or desert, with a cast of all cowboy-clad males. They look like cowboys everywhere, but of course, they're Mexican. They don't necessarily have to be cowboys. They might ride horses or they might use motorcycles. They might be the toughs of no specific career other than initiating random violence and criminal escapades. In any case, the cowboy otfit means tough and macho.
I once saw a movie here once where the enemy was the gringo hydrological engineer that came to a small agricultural pueblo to help with their irrigation problems. He was tall, skinny, white, blond and wore glasses, and while he had a ridiculous accent in his Spanish, when things turned ugly in a town meeting and the crowd (dressed in flannel, jeans and cowboy hats) threatened to lynch him, he understood every word they were saying, even in the heat of the moment. Maybe he was a highly educated spy or a plant from a multi-national narcotics ring. I don't know because I stopped watching.
This type of film usually plays upon the fear of a violent disturbance to domestic tranquility in a family or small town by an outsider, like Shadow of a Doubt. In a similar vein, you have films wherein a group of outsiders, like a gang of ruffians on motorcycles, comes to a place simply to terrorize it. Sometimes this involves violence committed for kicks and other times it is an orchestrated plot like a kidnapping or attempted robbery of a poor family mistakenly thought to have money hidden somewhere in their house.
Motorcycle gang rides into town, Mil caminos tiene la muerte
Often in the end of these fearmongering movies, the love interest gets killed. I don't mean they are killed in the beginning of the film, giving the hero or heroine cause to take up a mission of avenging their deaths. I mean that at the very end of the film, they're killed by some pointless tragedy or accidental oversight, like not making sure that the bad guy is really dead and he comes back to life just long enough to aim his gun at and fatally shoot the girl whose father has just been rescued by the hero-boyfriend from the gang of maniacal kidnappers. It seems that films of this era needed to have an unhappy ending for some reason, even after all is said and done and the day has been saved. The moral is that you should never be too happy, I guess.
A more lighthearted genre popular in the 70s and 80s is the sex romp. These are just like the sex romps in the rest of the world, but in Mexico they have Sasha Montenegro.
Sasha Montenegro
She's interesting because she was born (1950) in what was then Yugoslavia, moved to Argentina, then ended up in Mexico, but best of all, she had a 20-year affair with a president (1976-1982): José López Portillo y Pacheco. He was still married at the time, but he got a divorce and the two married in 1995. She had two children with him. He was taken sick though, and she had to struggle with his children from his former marriage for visitation rights in the hospital. Since his death in 2004, she has been battling them in court for her part of the estate.
De todas todas (1985) demonstrates a common feature of the Mexican sex romp: the male lead can look like Ron Jeremy, but he's always surrounded by beautiful women.
Dinner scene from De todas todas
Yet despite these ridiculous aspects of Mexican films from the 70s and 80s, they are not without their charms. First off, they do more with less. They are obviously low-budget productions, but it seems that a lot of thought has gone into their production. Even in cheap movies with absurd storylines, you will come across creative blocking, breathtaking lighting or incredibly sharp editing.
Maribel Guardia and Rafael Inclán, De todas todas
In Mil caminos tiene la muerte, from 1977, the group of toughs is a little more nuanced than in most films. The group is detained by the inevitable Man, who is acting as the man does and threatening the toughs. As the toughs are pushed into a corner by the Man, they strike back. First we see the faces of individuals in the group just as they are starting to act, punching a cop or hitting a townsperson over the head with a chair. Before the blow lands, we cut to a scene in which that particular character is having a very bad previous experience with a prior Man (an abusive father that beat on the individual and his mother), then cuts back to the individual landing a punch on the Man in the present day story. This way the characters are developed, and you identify and sympathize with the individual. You know that in attacking the Man, they're accomplishing the greater social feat of breaking with the will of authority.
These films often evidence Mexicans' love for their country, or more specifically, for the diversity to be found within it. The various cities in Mexico are all renowned for their own particular characteristics or attractions. For example, Guanajuato is known for its tunnels and mummies, where as Tijuana is historically famous for bordertown excitement. The midnight movies you see here often exploit those characteristics in their locations, and it's a fun way to find out about the different regions of of the country and their specialties. It's especially fun to check out, say, Tijuana of 1975.
There is no shortage of music in Mexican movies from the 70s and 80s. Whether it's a mariachi ensemble or two drunk guys singing off key in a roadhouse, you hear all kinds of stuff. There are a lot of films from the 50s and 60s that were showcases for that hip new music that all the teens were listening too. These often have juvenille deliquency themes also, which makes them doubly entertaining for me. (My favorite is La edad de la violencia from 1964, which has a Spanish-language version of "Moon River" and the classic Sonora Santanera, "La boa.") The films of the 70s and 80s do not live up to the quality of these classics, but you can see how they're similarly throwing in music to try and liven it up a bit and give the audience a little more pow for their peso.
Perhaps my favorite thing about the trashier side of Mexican cinema is taking screen captures of the outrageous things they do and posting them on my blog. Someday, maybe I'll figure out a way to take motion picture clips from the tv and post them on here, so you can see their nuttiness in action. Until then, if you want to check it out, maybe you can order it through your local provider.
Posted by crispy at 02:13 PM | Comments (2)
La muerte cruzó el río Bravo
I was watching La muerte cruzó el río Bravo on de Película, one of our better movie channels here. It was the undisputed best before they started cutting the films and showing commercials.
It shows a lot of Mexican films that are more recent. A lot of these are, well, disappointing. Yet a gem comes along once in a while that knocks your cultural socks off. I looked up from reading the news online to see if La muerte cruzó el río Bravo had gotten any more interesting.
Unfortunately, I was so stunned it took me a while to boot up our camera, discover there was no charge at all in the batteries, change the batteries, then snap a few shots of this scene. I shall call it, 'the playing pool on horseback scene' from La muerte cruzó el río Bravo:
Playing Pool on Horseback from La muerte cruzó el río Bravo
It's hard to tell, but that's a pool cue in his hand, and another one in the hand of his opponent.
Playing Pool on Horseback from La muerte cruzó el río Bravo
It is even harder to tell that they are both riding horses, but they are.
Playing Pool on Horseback from La muerte cruzó el río Bravo
Here the pool table is a little easier to see. As you can see, playing pool on horseback is very popular with the locals in this part of Mexico. I'm hardly one to criticize. I was fascinated by the whole thing.
Playing Pool on Horseback from La muerte cruzó el río Bravo
With the game over, a tie is declared between the two sportsmen.
Playing Pool on Horseback from La muerte cruzó el río Bravo
The scene ends with this:
Playing Pool on Horseback from La muerte cruzó el río Bravo
Posted by crispy at 02:13 AM | Comments (4)
May 23, 2007
el soplón
I was reading the subtitles in Los Tres Huastecos and the word soplón was used to falsely describe an average José that everyone liked, justifying his being killed by El Coyote, a wild outlaw, whose true identity was unknown. I looked the word up, and I read:
soplón,-ona m,f fam (chivato) grass, informer
(acusica) sneak, telltale
Grass? I'd never heard the word 'grass' used as a synonym for 'informer.' But there among the meanings of 'grass' that I do know, was this British slang sense of the word, in Merriam-Webster:
2. slang British : inform 2 — often used with on
Of course, this uses the word 'grass' as a verb. It's not listed in the entry for the word's sense as a noun. In the Mexican film, the subtitles used it as a noun, as in, "He was a drunk and a grass."
The subtitles could be taking this wrong, or my dictionary might be less than exhaustive. I'm not so concerned with that. I just think it's interesting that in studying and learning Spanish, I often learn things about English that I never knew before.
It might be the one thing with which I agree with President Bush: it's good to study a foreign language!
Posted by crispy at 04:26 AM | Comments (1)
May 15, 2007
Guanajuato
Guanajuato, Guanajuato
Shawn and I went to Guanajuato, the capital of the state of Guanajuato this past weekend with Charles and Carmen.
Guanajuato is known for two things that seem to overshadow many of its other interesting aspects. Still, the facts that the city's most famous citizens are mummies and that the majority of the streets crisscrossing the town run below ground in tunnels is rather interesting, so I should probably talk about those things a bit first.
The so-called mummies are really petrified corpses, but they have been called mummies for so long that the distinction has become unimportant. One can go to a museum to view the city's collection of these petrified corpses, so preserved because of the dry climate and soil characteristics in the area. This unusual phenomenon would remain unknown however, were it not for an unusual policy at the graveyard that allowed for the bodies to be exhumed from their resting places. It used to be the case that local laws required families of the dead to pay a grave tax. They could pay it just once or yearly, with the installment plan being popular among the less wealthy families. If a family failed to pay their annual installment for three years running, the law allowed for the removal of the bodies from their graves, when they would become property of the municipality to do with as they pleased. The municipality seemed pleased to display them as a kind of freak show for the public, and now, even though the law has been changed and the removal of bodies from graves for failure to pay a grave tax is no longer practiced, the corpses removed during that period remain available for your viewing pleasure.
Taking pictures of the exhibits is prohibited, so I don't have any photos of them to post here. Still, if you're interested, you can view a few photos of the mummies of Guanajuato elsewhere.
Tunnel Entrance, Guanajuato
The other thing that comes up whenever Guanajuato is mentioned is the system of tunnels that run under the city. The city was built over the Guanajuato River, which continued to flow beneath it through a system of tunnels. In the middle of the last century, a dam was built to halt the flow of the river and provide the town with a reservoir, allowing the tunnels to be paved in with cobblestones and used for traffic. According to Charles, only two major roads running through the city are above ground. The rest are all running through the tunnels. They are quite amazing, and just like a developing city continues to build roads, the city of Guanajuato continues to dig new tunnels to serve the cars driving through it.
Plaza de la Paz and the Basílica Colegiata de Nuestra Señora de Guanajuato, Guanajuato
When people talk about Guanajuato, it is the discussion of these two subterranean oddities that dominate the conversation, but it is the stuff above ground that makes a visit to Guanajuato special. Not only are there a fair number of well-groomed parks and plazas, but there is a considerable amount of street life going on.
Street Scene, Guanajuato
Cafés, bars and shops line the streets of the city, which are filled with pedestrian traffic. This is unusual in colonial towns, because the city centers are usually filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic squeezing through the old, narrow streets. Because most of the traffic through Guanajuato runs beneath the city, the roads above ground can be used by people walking about town.
Street Scene, Guanajuato
During the day, street performers entertain tourists for donations.
Street Performance, Guanajuato
At night, traveling bands of musicians known as estudiantinas lead revelers through the streets in what is called a callejoneada. The same thing is done in Zacatecas, but there the bands play banda and the musicians don't wear 17th-century costumes like they do in Guanajuato.
People on Steps of Teatro Juárez, Guanajuato
The city also has a fine old theater for more formal productions, the Teatro Juárez, built in 1875.
Teatro Juárez, Guanajuato
We debated with Carmen and Charles whether the Teatro Degollado (in Guadalajara) or the Teatro Juárez is cooler, and we decided that the one in our town is best. I suspect guanajuatenses might disagree.
Teatro Juárez, Guanajuato
Another of the city's attractions is a very narrow street, which comes with its own legend. The Callejón del Beso or 'Alley of the Kiss' is supposedly where a father killed his own daughter upon discovering her kissing a miner across the balcony. You see, the balconies are just 68 centimeters apart.
Callejón del Beso, Guanajuato
Supposedly, if you kiss your partner on the third step, you are assured seven years of good luck. Leave it to Mexicans to put such a positive twist on such an unhappy ending.
Carmen and Charles at the top of the Callejón del Beso, Guanajuato
The Callejón del Beso illustrates well one of the more challenging aspects of Guanajuato for tourists exploring on foot: because the city is built up the sides of hills, there are always stairs between where you are and the place you are trying to reach.
Attractions Up Stairs, Guanajuato
While I found this a bit annoying and exhausting, it does reward those that perservere with some nice views of the colorful houses lining the valleys.
Hillside Houses, Guanajuato
Guanajuato has a lot of political history as well. When Miguel Hidalgo started the war for independence in 1810, he was in the state of Guanajuato. After his capture, execution and subsequent beheading, the Spanish put his severed head in a cage (as they did with the heads of his co-conspirators, Ignacio Allende, José Mariano Jiménez and Juan Aldama) and hung it from the corner of the granary in the state's capital, Guanajuato. That building is the Alhóndiga de Granaditas, which has since been converted into a regional museum.
Detail of Mural by José Chávez Morado in the Alhóndiga, Guanajuato
The stairs of the museum are graced with a mural by José Chávez Morado, whose style in this work greatly resembles that of Jaliscan artist José Clemente Orozco.
Detail of Mural by José Chávez Morado in the Alhóndiga, Guanajuato
Guanajuato has some pretty good food too. At night, in the strip running just below the Plaza de la Paz, we had some delicious gorditas de nata. These are like the most delicious pancakes you could ever hope to eat - they're sweet, fluffy and piping hot as they're fried on the griddle right in front of you when you order them. (Supposedly we can get them here in Guadalajara somewhere, but it's rumored that the ones from Guanajuato are superior.)
I was also able to try out a regional specialty called enchiladas mineras, or 'miners' enchiladas,' which are vegetarian because supposedly miners are too poor to afford meat. Too bad for the miners, I guess, but great for me, because these babies are delicious. (Ours were prepared with corn oil, not the "butter of pig" listed on the previous link.) They consist of cheese and onion enchiladas covered by fried carrots and potatoes. In Mexico, these are considered comida típica of the state of Guanajuato, although you also find the same dish, made in the same fashion, in Argentina. In Morelia, in the state of Michoacán, we enjoyed a type of enchilada that seems like a somewhat distant relative, known as the enchilada placera. I would have a hard time deciding which of the two I favor. Hopefully I will never have to.
Our finest dining experience took place on Sunday night, when Charles decided to track down a really nice restaurant with a great view of the city. After asking a few cab drivers, he was directed up a series of twisting narrow roadways to the Refugio Casa Colorada, a hotel with six nice rooms and a lovely restaurant perched atop one of the hills surrounding the city. It used to be a residence for Luis Echeverría (president of Mexico from 1970 to 1976) and his wife, but it was turned into a hotel in 1975. For Shawn and me, it was a nice change of pace from the same old dishes we've come to expect. Shawn had a salad and cream of pistachio soup, while I enjoyed a cream of guajillo chile with camembert and a canelloni stuffed with spinach in a light cream sauce. After dinner, one of the chefs came out of the kitchen, and Charles called him over to pay his respects. The chef was very nice, and took us on a tour of all but one of the rooms.
View of Guanajuato from the dining room of the Refugio Casa Colorada
We also did a number of other things: visited a former hacienda where torture devices and corpses of people buried alive by the Spanish were unearthed, went to visit the monument to El Pípila, and saw the Templo de San Cayetano de Valencia, which was adorned with very elaborate detail work plated in pure gold as a gift from the owner of the nearby Valencia mine.
Gold, Gold, Gold at the Templo de San Cayetano de Valencia, Guanajuato
Charles told us that the owner of the mine had a carpet made of pure gold that reached from his front door to the church so that his daughter could walk to the altar over it on her wedding day. The gold from that carpet was then used to create the three large ornamented structures like the one shown above that adorn the altar.
Visiting Guanajuato, I felt like I saw perhaps the widest stroke of Mexican history that I've seen at any one time in any of the colonial towns I've visited, from the history of the indigenous people of Guanajuato who gave the place its name (originally spelled 'Quanax-Huato' meaning 'Place of the Frogs') to the home of a relatively recent president. Tourists can find a lot of things to keep them busy in town, but there are two things they won't find. First, they won't find an elevator. I don't think I've ever climbed so many stairs in my whole life as I did during my two days in Guanajuato. Nor will they find a whorehouse. According to a cab driver we had, that's not permitted in the city of Guanajuato because it's a city for tourists. "You have to go to Leon for that," he told us.
Visitors planning a trip to Guanajuato may want to look at the Virtual Tourist guide to Guanajuato and the resources at guanajuatocapital.com.
Posted by crispy at 09:42 AM | Comments (3)
May 08, 2007
El tamaño
From Charles:
Q: What's the difference between lástima and lastima?
A: The size.
Posted by crispy at 11:38 PM | Comments (1)
May 07, 2007
Mexico Cooks!
Once in a while, I get exasperated with my chosen life as a vegetarian. It's not that I regret not eating animals, but rather, I'm infuriated with the fact that the world seems hell-bent on adding meat products to things that don't really need them. One big example here in Mexico is the caldo de jitomate (tomato broth) that one can buy in the stores here. It's a big component of many Mexican dishes. The grocery stores all offer multiple shelves and multiple brands to choose from, but every single brand contains chicken stock. You can't buy any tomato broth that is just that: tomatoes. Why they don't call it 'chicken stock with tomato,' I don't know.
Of course, it's the same situation in the United States, where you specifically have to buy vegetarian vegetable soup from Campbell's because their standard vegetable soup is made with beef stock. One can't eat the miso soup with tofu at any Japanese restaurants because it always has an undetectable, but for some reason manditory, addition of bonito. Onion gravy? Think again! That just means someone looked at an onion from across the room while they fried up flour and beef fat.
You would think that after 18 years, I'd be used to it, but I'm not. Day in and day out, I have to deal with meat bias, just like I did in the United States. Otherwise tasty enchiladas have their rich tortillas fried in lard. Those frijoles would be melting in my mouth, if only they didn't have big chunks of pork in them. Then there are the delicious potato tacos I could eat, if only they didn't have chorizo thrown in. There are times the whole experience just makes me want to lock myself in a room with a stack of rice cakes and a bunch of k.d. lang CDs, telling the rest of the world to go beat their meat elsewhere.
Then, a wonderful woman we have been most fortunate to befriend here in Guadalajara steps up to the plate, rolls up her sleeves and lets loose with a torrent of the good stuff that completely restores my love for the miracle that is Mexican food. Her name is Cristina, and she is the author of Mexico Cooks!, the most informative blog on Mexican food you'll find. With well-crafted first-person accounts and photos, she leads you around La República to sample the national staples as well as regional delicacies. She tells you the names of all those things you love but don't know how to ask for. She explains exactly what is in that curious stew that you saw but were afraid to try. She holds your hand and guides your lily-white behind through the market, removing the mystery behind things like chapulines and escamoles. Best of all, she reminds you of the sacred link between food, family and history that runs strong here in Mexico and makes the people so passionate about it.
Even after the most frustrating food experiences I encounter here in Guadalajara, Mexico Cooks! always lulls me back into a state of warm, bubbly love for the people and the food of our new country. And don't worry meat eaters. While she frequently writes about things that I can eat, she doesn't shy away from all those rich meaty treats for which Mexico is so well known. If reading Mexico Cooks! makes you so hungry you just can't stand it anymore and you want to come to Mexico to try out all the things she so lovingly describes, you're in luck. In addition to sharing her experiences through her blog, she also leads specialty tours here where you can go about and sample some of the delicious dishes she details in her blog.
Well? Why are you still here? Go check out Mexico Cooks!
Posted by crispy at 07:03 AM | Comments (0)
May 06, 2007
The Tequila Express
Tequila Express, photo courtesy of Ian Morich
Yesterday we went with our friend Ian on The Tequila Express, one of only two passenger trains still operating in Mexico (the other traverses the Copper Canyon), which goes to the town of Amatitán, where riders are given a tour of the Casa Herradura facilities.
It's a lot more than that though, and for MXN $850 (around USD $78), one would hope so.
First, you get more or less unlimited tequila, beer, or this stuff, sold only in Mexico, that is tequila combined with a soft drink in aluminum cans called "New Mix." (If you prefer, you can get plain soft drinks too.) You also get seemingly non-stop mariachi from an exceptional ensemble, a lunch buffet of traditional Mexican food, and a floor show offering folkloric dancing, ranchera singers, and a father-and-son team performing impressive lasso tricks. For the Latinos among my readers, rest assured that you also get the opporunity to dance during and after the show.
We signed up over a month ago, because, as we found out when trying to get tickets to take our friend Tara, they sell out in advance. They currently run only on Saturday and Sunday, but they are going to add a Friday tour, starting this summer.
The train is immaculate and well-maintained. There were a few seats where the trays in the back would either not stay up or would not come down, but other than that, there were no technical problems that I spotted. The staff is well-informed and not only fills you in on the process during the tour, but they give you some interesting background on the way out to the hacienda. The material is presented in both Spanish and English (although for a tour of the facility, an English-speaking group had to be arranged, but it only took a request to the guy in charge of our train car), and they go to great lengths to make sure that all their passengers are comfortable and that any special needs are met. All in all, it's one of the most professionally run things I've ever seen or done in Mexico.
The biggest drawback is that it can get hot. The train is air-conditioned, but the buses that take you from the train station in Amatitán to the hacienda (and drive around a bit on the grounds) are not. You don't usually have to wait for more than 5 minutes on the buses in the heat, but you might be smart to board the bus last, if you can swing it. The lunch buffet and the show takes place under shade (the first time we went, they had event-style tents; this last time they had it under a structure containing some actual agave ovens), but even so, you want to dress in light clothes and maybe bring along something with which you can fan yourself. The booze doesn't necessarily help you cool down either, so you might want to come up with an alternating tequila and non-alcoholic drink regimen and stick to it on the trip.
People can get kind of wasted too, so if that's unpleasant for you, you might not choose to do this activity. As we pulled into the train station, an obviously drunken woman latched on to Shawn's arm, and he at first thought it was only because she needed the physical support. When she started rubbing his backside amorously, he realized that wasn't all she needed. On the whole though, we're talking mostly about Mexicans, who as a rule, are pretty well behaved in public, whether drunk or sober.
Last but not least, I would warn against the fact that this is in no way a tour where you truly get to have a sampling of a wide range of tequilas. You only get to try products by Casa Herradura, and even then, they don't really offer you any of their higher-end stuff. It's decent stuff, for sure. However, if you are looking to get a wide sampling of the national beverage in its many diverse incarnations, you need to look elsewhere.
For a single activity that covers a lot of the Mexican experience, this is a great ride. I've now done it twice and I would not hesitate to do it again. In fact, they announced at the end of the trip that they are going to start doing nighttime tours before the end of the year, and I can't wait to check that out. Yet as it stands, it is a wonderful way to see part of the beautiful countryside of Jalisco without having to deal with driving and traffic, learn about the process and history of tequila, and party down with a bunch of Mexicans. And if you've not yet had the pleasure, let me assure you, Mexicans really know how to have fun at a party.
For more photos, you can check out the gallery at Ian's blog, soswell.com!
Posted by crispy at 09:44 AM | Comments (2)