Day 16 - Hotel Colonial, Tequila
The hotel room was less than ideal. It was hot and the room didn’t have any AC, and whilst there was a roof fan, of course, it didn’t work. So, we had to sleep with the window open and the noise from the street was ridiculous during the night. People were driving up and down with music blaring, horns going and just generally making a racket. Even the church bells started going off at stupid o’clock in the morning. I was woken at about 05:30 and could tell that Jorik had also had a pretty bad night. As his bed was positioned closest to the window, he had also taken the brunt of the mosquitoes during the night so was a little grouchy. However, it was the day for the tequila tour, and we were going to head to the oldest tequila manufacturer in the world, Jose Cuervo. We grabbed some breakfast and a very tasty mango smoothy in the main square, and then had a little wonder around town until 10:00, which was when we could purchase the tickets for the tour. Whilst we had been to the tequila museum the day before, which wasn’t particularly interesting, we were excited to learn more. Jose Cuervo was the tequila that both Jorik and I pretty much drank when we met back in Cape Town in the early 90’s, so has been part of our lives for a very long time. Anyone that knows us, will know that we are big tequila fans so being able to tour the factory was going to be a treat. The facilities are awesome, a beautiful building with cobbled streets out the front complete with bunting and planting. Very cool set up. We didn’t pay for the full tour. We knew we would be riding and the more you paid, the more tequila you got to drink. So, we got the classic tour for about MXN$350 each, which would include some tequila tasting, but not the follow up session in the Jose Cuervo bar at the end of the tour. There were about 10 people on the tour, mainly Americans, and a Romania lady that was married to 1 of the Americans. Everyone was very interested and whilst I tried to do some filming on the GoPro mini, which has been playing up terribly, the bloody thing ran out of battery about quarter of the way into the tour. Still, it was interesting, and we learned a lot more about how long it takes for the blue agave cactus to mature, how they harvest the “heart” of the plant, which looks a lot like a pineapple once it is cleared of the leaves, and then how they steam and process the plant to make the actual tequila. Whilst tequila can only be called tequila if it is manufactured in the region of Tequila, there are 2 different processes. 100% Agave tequila is the pure stuff, which is made with just the blue agave with no added sugars. Normal tequila, like Jose Cuervo Especial, is only good for cocktails and mixers as it contains other sugars that are added to the process, making it less than ideal as a sipping tequila. So, we have been doing that wrong for about 30 years and from now on, all tequila that I drink will be 100% agave tequila, and we will leave the cheap stuff for the margaritas.
Having finished the very interesting tour at a little after 12:00, we headed back to the Hotel to get packed up and hit the road.
We were aiming to get at least 2 hours further along, which would take us past Guadalajara to a massive lake called Lago de Chapala, where we figured we would be able to find a guest house on the shore. It was still ridiculously hot and instead of skirting Guadalajara, the sat nav took us right into the heart of the city, which is massive and a real hive of activity. We saw an AutoZone (parts shop) and pulled in to grab some brake fluid and to see if we could replace the inner tube that had blown on Jules when arriving at La Paz some time before. We found the Dot 4 brake fluid easy enough, but whilst trying to explain to the guy in the shop in very broken English and with the assistance of google translate, a very friendly customer came over to us to ask if he could help. He rides a Harley and mentioned that his friend, a Harley mechanic, was due to be at his house in like 5 minutes time and that he would ask him if he could help us. He didn’t have to do that and to be honest, we still had a spare tube, the one that we had pinched had been repaired, but we politely agreed to wait outside the AutoZone for his friend to turn up. Sure enough, about 10 minutes later a Harly came busting into the car park and young chap called Orlando (his name was on his shirt) arrived to see if he could help us out. He got on the phone to a mate of his and within a few minutes had ensured us that there was a spare tube waiting for us at a motorcycle spares shop nearby. However, it was around 20 minutes ride back into the heart of Guadalajara and as we now know that it is easy enough to get a spare tube, particularly as our bikes have pretty standard sized tires, there was no real need, and we certainly didn’t have the desire to spend another hour or so in traffic, we decided to push on for Lago de Chapala to the south.
We arrived at what is clearly a relatively affluent area as there were some pretty impressive ‘casas’ dotted along the shoreline. There was still the standard crap and run down feel to a lot of the buildings, but parts of it were really quite surprising. We pulled in for a drink and some food at what turned out to be a very nice little roadside restaurant and checked the map for a suitable location for the night. It looked to us like Jocotepec would be a good call and we found a hotel called Posada del Pescador that appeared to have a few good reviews, so we headed for it following a bit of food and a cool down from the riding. The hotel looked pretty good from first appearances. There was a pool, although when I looked at it, it was a touch too green for my liking and didn’t look that inviting. It must have been a very nice hotel at some point, but that might have been a long time ago as again, it looked pretty run down. Still, at MXN$1,300, it was in our ballpark for cost, and we were too knackered to mission around to find another hotel. We eventually got settled into a nice big room with a kitchenette and big shower, Jorik had a swim, I was still not going in the water, and we got ourselves cleaned up and ready for a trip to the lakeside before we lost the sunlight.
The lakeside had a bunch of little shacks and restaurants dotted along the promenade, so we grabbed a beer, did a little video chat, and took in the sights for an hour or so. Jorik did some googling and found that Jocotepec was settled by the Mayans a long time ago and that they had even practiced human sacrifices there. There were starting to be signs of Mayan influence in the sculptures and some of the features along the waterfront area, so we must be getting closer to seeing some of the more historical areas that we are keen to see along this trip. So far there haven’t been many opportunities to see temples or other historical things, but hopefully this picks up now as we near Guatemala.
As we lost the light and following a few pictures with the bikes and the lake as a backdrop, we headed back to the hotel. There wasn’t much going on in Jocotepec, so we managed a good session of catching up with video and photo editing, and I smashed out a few more days of the blog. The time taken to write this shit up is much longer than I had anticipated, and you need clear headspace to focus on it. I think it is even more work for Jorik with all the video editing and we have so much footage, that this might take some time to pull together everything into a format that really shows what we are doing. But that can wait for another time.