Guadalajara: The New Medellin?

My wife and I spent five days in Guadalajara for a wedding in April. The groom was old Expat Chronicles friend, Chuck.

Guadalajara has a long way to go before it’s the new Medellin, the hidden treasure coming out of hiding and attracting larger waves of expats every year. But I kept hearing about GDL from old friends. There is a real buzz among the LatAm expats.

The party animal scene may be why the gringos are gushing over Guadalajara. The energy on the dancefloor of the wedding was unlike anything I’d ever seen in Brazil, Colombia, Argentina or Peru. It was bursting at the seams, no room for you unless you squeezed in. The next day I sent this to the bachelor party group text:

It was fun, gents. I believe it was Ian who said that what makes GDL unique, and which Chuck has been telling me about for two years, was the energy. I saw it last night. I’ve partied all across Latin America, but that vibe was something above. I now understand why so many gringos are coming here, a real party animal vibe. It’s too late for me, but I want you expats to keep us domesticated dork dads in your thoughts and prayers for the next bender.

And I emailed this to Chuck:

I couldn’t get it out of my head that you had a wifeswapper contingent in that crowd. The passion on the dancefloor, the energy level, it’s just hard to see guys in their 30s and 40s going out like that to go home with the same woman later. Maybe it’s the GDL spirit. Or maybe they’re wifeswapping afterwards. 

Wifeswappers or not, they are party animals.

Party aside, Guadalajara reminded me of bits of Arequipa and Medellin. It’s more like Medellin in not being the country’s biggest city, but a truer “heart and soul of the country.” Most of what Mexico is known for is from Guadalajara and the Jalisco region, home to no less than tequila and mariachis. And Mexican drug cartels too.

It’s like Arequipa in being a hot, dry, dusty city in the mountains. Not the lush mountains on all sides and even in the city like Medellin, but a flat industrial sprawl in the desert surrounded by mountains. But at 5,000 feet, it’s closer to Medellin in altitude than the mile-and-a-half-high Arequipa.

Also like Medellin, they have the cowboy thing going on. We saw a man riding a horse on the sidewalk of Avenida Juarez in the heart of the city.

Downtown Guadalajara was like neither in being surprisingly uncrowded. We stayed near Parque Rojo. World-class churches, like any large Latin American city. This was cool, an order of nuns dancing at the Cathedral after Mass (video below).

The food wasn’t as good as in Mexico City. Maybe I was in a honeymoon phase, but there wasn’t the diversity of option. It was tacos, enchiladas and chilaquiles, and not much else. When we visited Mexico City we came from Lima, which has almost no Mexican restaurants, so we enjoyed tacos more than we did when we came from the States.

That doesn’t mean there wasn’t great food. Torta ahogada is the signature dish, and you’d never hear of it because it’s easily forgettable. I discovered something new in chamarro, or pork shank, but that seems to be from Mexico City.

Below is Tlaquepaque, the top tourist district. We didn’t stay there. We stayed next to Parque Rojo downtown.

One of the things to do in Guadalajara is leave for a day trip to Tequila, the town where tequila was invented. Surrounded by agave fields, it is home to the Jose Cuervo tour.

In fact, the town of Tequila is the setting of a story to be told soon, stay tuned…