Alright Tangerine Girl, tell them what's up today.
What's up Tangerineys! Thank you
for joining us today on this episode of "We're Back In Guadalajara!" for a day.
Because as we told you in the last video, we had to come back here to get more dog
food. Since they used it all up. Down to the point. So a couple people asked us
When we did The Ugly Side of Ajijic (video) "Well, you guys supposedly say that you like it
so much, why would you say all these things?" Basically, so many people were
saying that they were spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars to come
visit Ajijic or even potentially to come live there. We felt a little bit
obligated to show both sides of the story.
We can't have you guys like uprooting your entire life to come to a place
you've never been. Or spending thousands of dollars to visit a place you've never
been because of our telling you it's awesome, without telling you to other
side of the story. Exactly. With that, people were like "Well you spent so much
time in Guadalajara, why didn't you do anything there?" Let's be perfectly honest,
There's so much about Guadalajara that we really like and that's why we stayed
here for the majority of the time that we've been in Mexico. We didn't even
think to make a video like this because there aren't really anything, any details
here that strongly stressed us out or that we sort of felt were deal-breakers
or things like that. Yeah. But we thought long and hard to put a list together. Not
kidding. Like we had think hard! Pretty hard. But there are some and perhaps
these would be deal-breakers for you. And since people have equally, like Ajijic,
said that they are making plans to come to Guadalajara after seeing our videos,
We thought it's about time to make this one too.
So we're making a quick stop for dog food here in Costco but we'll start to
tell you the first thing on the list. Traffic. Although we didn't really ever
notice this within the city while taking Ubers or anything like that, it does get
pretty congested in and out of the city, and at certain times a day. Obviously,
rush hour time. I think the worst part of driving here are the glorietas. The
roundabouts. Yeah! It's horrifying!
So yes, the glorietas, those are extra
extra confusing! It can sometimes be like eight lanes coming up to this roundabout.
There's absolutely no rules inside of there, it's a free-for-all.
[Laughter] But certainly in Guadalajara, it's the most chaotic and confusing driving
we've experienced in all of Mexico, with the caveat that we have not yet been to
Mexico City. And we're told that that is as bad as it gets!
Geez! Oh my gosh!
The next thing on the list, which is very fitting because it just happened.
Our very first interaction with someone in Guadalajara. We have a lot of trouble
understanding people here when they speak Spanish.
Uhh, I don't understand.
0 2 0 5 5. Repeat that, please?
I don't know the last word. I'm sorry, can
Speak to my girlfriend?
[Incomprehensible Spanish] What a classically perfect example of
this is just the way that people talk in Guadalajara. Really fast, really
smooshed together, really difficult to understand.
We are living here for 3 or more months.
And so begins a horribly humiliating conversation where we try to keep up and
try to make small talk but ultimately we're going to talk in circles.
Are you going to stay here and live, or?
I've listed to this in my headphones while editing this like 300 times,
with the volume as high
as I can do. And I still have no idea what he's saying right here, so the fact
that I even answered this in the moment, I don't even know what I was doing.
No, we're going to continue our travels.
and we've hypothesized about what exactly this might be. The dialect? Talking faster?
Using more contraction. Mushing words together. Different vocabulary words.
Perhaps it's that people here are much more educated than in other cities?
Pretty much everyone we ran into was either going to school, had been to
school, a professor at a college or something like that.
Lots more education here. So it's very possible they're just using much more
complex words than we, at this point, have learned. Whatever the reason is
it's, pretty difficult to understand people here if you're like us learning
Spanish. But, since being in Ajijic, we're back to having basically full conversations in Spanish.
No issues. We can understand almost everyone. Yeah! In our last
video, we mentioned that we're learning Spanish. Not our last video.
One before. In two videos ago [Laughter] we mentioned that we're
learning Spanish with Rocket Languages and that's pretty much how we feel has
been the most successful and all-inclusive among the programs and
methods that we've been doing. Yeah, it's pretty much our go-to software program.
One of the really cool things about it is they have a ton of audio
lessons, which, if you've tried learning a new language, one of the hardest things
is getting comfortable speaking the language. And this helps you do it, and
gets you speaking full sentences pretty quickly. So it's more than just memorization, it kind of
puts it into practice, which is really helpful! Thank you to all you guys who
actually checked out Rocket Languages from our recommendation and either
started a trial or purchased it. We're curious to know what you think of it
after you've used it for a while! And for anyone else wanted to learn Spanish like
us, we put a link down in the description and that link goes to a free trial of it,
where you can sign up, no credit card required to try it out. And if you do end
up purchasing it, we get a commission from that which helps us continue
traveling and putting out videos about Mexico. So a lot of times when we talk
about Mexico in general, we say that people are more laid-back and it's a
slower pace. Well, that's not as much the case here. I would say people are
more of a rush where we came from in Phoenix than they are here.
Yeah, this was the first city
where I actually noticed that people were honking all the time, which we
mentioned something before getting to Guadalajara about like how crazy it is that
people aren't so impatiently honking at people if they don't go the second
the light turns green or something like that.
But that is not the case here. There is a lot of honking. People are in a rush.
They've got things to do, places to go, and people to see. Next thing on our
list of the ugly side of Guadalajara is that with more people and more cars,
yes it is a bigger city than most, you're gonna have a little bit more
pollution. And this wasn't something that we really noticed in the neighborhood
that we were living in for four months. But in certain parts of the city it's really noticeable!
It can be pretty bad. As well, I don't think this is the worst pollution that
we've ever seen. So we're standing in front of one of the famous glorietas
right now, or roundabouts. It's a weekend right now, so it's not as busy as normal,
So it might not look as crazy. It still looks crazy but it gets crazier.
With lots of people comes a whole lot more noise!
And again with this, this wasn't really
like a deal breaker for us. Where we were living was relatively quiet but
depending on the part of the city, it could be a little bit too much for you.
Between the buses, and the motorcycles, or the people playing random music, it's a
little bit more than like symphony of Mexico sounds like chickens or roosters
cockadoodledoo-ing. Or someone driving down the street selling whatever it is they're selling. Yeah, it's a
little more than that. So depending on the place, that could be kind of an ugly
thing you have to deal with. This one sort of ties into these previous ones that we
just mentioned, but it's not the small town Mexico vibe. The quaint, unique type
vibe that you might find in San Blas or Ajijic or Mazamitla or some place like that. This probably
goes without saying considering it's a second biggest
city in Mexico. But we get a lot of people saying like "Hey, I really want the
laid-back pace" and it might not be here .
And exactly, you might find that this is a good
transitional place for you because it's very similar to Houston, Texas. So if
you're sort of looking for a not quite full-on Mexico but still Mexico, of course,
this is a great place for that! But it doesn't have that small-town vibe. One
of the things that we miss while we're here, on this topic, are those small
stores that sell produce and vendors that are selling their artesanias. And
yes, you can get it here. Especially from places like Tonalá and Tlaquepaque which
are very close to the city. And in small patches. But, unlike in small town Mexico,
it's not like it's on every street corner or once a block.
On this one, we do recognize that
the sidewalks and the streets here are much better than in many cities that we
visited, like Ajijic, for instance, where just about all of the streets are
cobblestone and many sidewalks are either very small or don't exist. Here,
the sidewalks are typically much larger. Sorry. But there's lots of trees that
destroy them. Completely uproot the sidewalks. So if you, for instance, are in
a wheelchair or have injuries or something like that, sometimes it might
be a little bit difficult to get around. One person commented one time saying
that if you have a house and there's a tree right outside your house destroying
the sidewalk, you're not allowed to do anything about it. In addition, if you
wanted to build a wall or something, you can't cut the branch of a tree off. You
have to build the wall around the tree branch, or trunk, or whatever. And
apparently there's like some particular government agency that is responsible
for all that. And I don't know, it seems to me that they do a shit job. [Laughter] Or maybe
there's just too many trees. I find this like a unique aspect of Guadalajara, so I
don't really mind it. It's kind of just like "Oh my gosh, look what this tree just did!"
I mean, sometimes I think it's pretty cool when a tree is swallowing an entire sidewalk,
or a wall is built around a tree, or like a tree is swallowing a telephone pole. I
don't know, I think it's pretty cool sometimes. But if I was in a wheelchair, I
think I'd think it was less cool. So it's worth noting. Compared to other cities
we've been in Mexico, there are some things here in Guadalajara that are more
expensive as compared to other cities. And we do realize that some of this is a
little bit of like a first world problem, so please cut us a little bit of slack
here. But we still want to mention it anyway. Yeah, if you're coming here
thinking "oh, I'm gonna be able to get really cheap massages and haircuts" Nah. Might not happen. Yeah.
Another thing is lavanderias. We checked out, I don't know, a dozen throughout the
city because for one reason or another they are too expensive, not good,
stole my shirt, something like that. Yeah, we noticed lavanderias here for getting our laundry done we're
about 50% more expensive than other cities we've been. And those are just a
few examples. Worth noting as well, not everything is more expensive. We think
food is comparably priced, drinks are cheaper here than in other cities, and so
there's a lot of things that are equal as the small towns sometimes even less.
Meow.
Señor.
Señora
Meow.
I think I gato some cats on film!
[Laughter] Just said film, like we're using
film. This is a digital device! [Laughter]
Next thing on our dirty list
Ugly list?
Our dirty list?
[Laughter] What kind of video is this?
Not that kind of video. Is that during the rainy season, there are parts of the. There
I go, tripping on sidewalks. There are parts of the city that flood! So
depending on where you are, that could be a serious issue because it is literal
flash flood status. Like flood an entire mall! And these are, these are no joke! This is
cars getting taken away by water. So again, we didn't have to deal with that
while we were here, but that is certainly a word of caution depending on where you
are in the city during the rainy season. Again, I enjoyed the rain! It rains at
night, it rains a lot, and I've never experienced that in my life growing up
in Phoenix, Arizona. Where there's only one time of the year where it rains a
smidge. By the way, rainy season are the summer months and it typically rains in the
evening or at night. Next thing is, although there is a ton of
nature, here lots of trees, and flowers, and it's really nice! One thing that
we really loved about the city. There aren't a whole lot of parks and I
wouldn't really say that you're living with nature in Guadalajara. It's more
buildings, and concrete, cars, so it's mixed in there, but it's not quite the
same. Don't trust looking on Google Maps looking for the green spots, [Laughter] because one
time we booked an Airbnb and we're like "Oh great, this is, we have Laska and we're
right next to a big ol' green spot." Huge! Huge park! "We're next to a huge park!"
Turns out, we were next to a huge cemetery. [Laughter]
In my defense, there was a park right next to it. So on the map, it looks like it's
naming the park. But yes it's a cemetery.
So some person actually did tell us in the
comments as well that Via Recreactiva, which is every Sunday, you can bike,
skateboard, walk, run.
The close down major roads. Yeah, all over the city. They said that they do
that because there aren't a lot of, there aren't enough parks per capita
legally or by some standard. Although we loved it here in Guadalajara, there's
certain parts of the city that we know we wouldn't have been happy in if we we're
living here. In fact, there was one part of the city where we stayed in for a
week and it was a little bit on the sketchy side which, yeah we wanted to get
out of there. That's the case in any city at all so
while this is a very safe city and we mentioned that multiple times, we felt
comfortable walking around at night. We didn't feel like someone was out to
steal our stuff. There's just some parts of the city that you might want to look
out for. Yeah, if you're considering moving here or coming to stay here
longer term, then come here, book an Airbnb in several parts of the city and
be sure to check out various parts because you don't want to end up in the
ugly side of Guadalajara. [Laughter]
So I hope you guys can please keep in mind that we've
made dozens, and dozens, and dozens of videos about Guadalajara and the
surrounding areas. And you're probably not gonna find a whole lot of negative
stuff in there or complaints from us. Why? Because we really like it here and we
would happily live here again! When we came here, we were traveling from city to
city, checking out every city, trying to find a place that we would
love to live in! We came to Guadalajara, we had another Airbnb booked in Guanajuato,
And then we came back to Guadalajara after that because we really liked it here!
Yeah, so honestly, this video is intended to be just educational for anyone
considering coming here. Perhaps one of these things might be the straw that
breaks the camel's back and would make it a place that you might not like. So
anyway, let us know your guys thoughts. Do you think we're right about this? Wrong?
Did we get anything spot-on? Or do you disagree with all of it? Let us know in
the comments! Of you liked this video, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to our
Channel to see more videos that we are currently actually putting out in Ajijic
but traveling through Mexico. And one last thing!
GONG THAT BELL!
[Laughter] So you get notified the next time we put it out.
[Word vomit from Maddie] Put out a new video. See you there!