In late November we took a 14 hour overnight busride from Mazatlán to Manzanillo and then an afternoon cab ride to Barra de Navidad to spend 5 nights at the Isla Navidad resort where the Panama Posse kickoff meetings were being held. Rather than choosing one of the various bus options back to Mazatlán (including a faster option that would involve changing busses in Guadalajara), we opted to take the ETN bus from Barra to Guadalajara and spend four nights in Guadalajara and then take a Viva Aerobus flight back to Mazatlán with a quick connection at the Monterrey airport.

First, a note on transportation in Mexico. Flights from one major city to another are rarely possible without connecting through the Mexico City airport. We didn’t want to do that so decided to take the bus instead. We found a bus option that involved changing busses to another line in Guadalajara on our way to the meetings but we were unsure about whether it involved the same major bus station and what would happen if our first bus was late. So since it was our first experience we opted for the longer time but less complexity option. Our bus on the Elite line was to leave Mazatlán around 11 PM but ended up being an hour delayed. As we awaited it, I researched the route and found it actually originated at Nogales and then had a stop in Hermosillo and Guaymas before Mazatlán. When the bus did arrive late to Mazatlán, all passengers got off for a cleaning. We were a bit confused by that but someone who sensed this came up and assured us that it would be okay, the bus would return in about thirty minutes. The bus was pretty full even though lots of seats were available the prior week when we booked our tickets online. The seats were designed for long travel – on the back of the seat in front of you was a panel that folded down to act as a leg rest while you reclined and slept. The bus was comfortable but smelled strongly of cleanser and I wore my KN95 mask just to ease my breathing of that smell. Our first stop was Guadalajara around sunrise and the bus stopped at two or three stations there. After Guadlajara the bus stopped at about six towns in the state of Colima. My impression was this was a bus that helped people from Colima get to major cities in states to the north and then take connections to where they needed to be. The bus was pretty messy once everyone got off – drink and snack bottles on all the seats and aisles.

The bus we took from Barra de Navidad to Guadalajara was great – this was on ETN and a double decker bus. It was very new and had no odors. The bus went along the same highway in Colima (wonderful scenery of lush hillsides and agriculture after passing through tropical lowlands near Manzanillo) but did not stop at as many towns as the Elite bus had – it did stop at all three stations in Guadalajara including the airport – a lot of people got off at the airport. I would hightly recommend this bus as an airport transfer to Barra de Navidad – it runs twelve times a day and you can book tickets online easily with the english option on the website: https://etn.com.mx/english/

We were also quite impressed by the Viva Aerobus flights we took from Guadalajara to Monterrey and Monterrey to Mazatlán. They are a discount airline where you can buy differnet classes of tickets that include various things or you can pick and choose your extras when you buy your ticket or at the airport. We ended up buying a few extras piecemeal like extra legroom and checked bag rather than paying for both of us to have the level of ticket that included those and a few other things we didn’t need. Much cheaper than similar Aeromexico flights. Nice planes, it seemed.

So, this post is supposed to be about Guadalajara so I’ll move along from my internal-to-mexico city-to-city transportation advice with a quick summary: the busses are great. They might be late if it’s a longer route. ETN busses are super great.

We arrived in Guadalajara on December 5th and left on December 9th. We chose to stay just south of all the major attractions in the Centro Historico at a hotel that seemed equivalent to the nearby Holiday Inn but had room rates that were half the price. It was not a bad choice as I doubt the Holiday Inn would have been much more comfortable than what we experienced at Hotel Real Maestranza. The neighborhood was not as fancy (or gentrified) as some areas on the west end of town but it was fairly quiet at night – reminiscent of older downtown areas of many US cities but at least near us not late night bar patrons making lots of noise.

Highlights of sightseeing

The city was starting to decorate for Christmas and there was a giant Natividad scene in one of the big plazas of the Centro. In Mexico, they leave the baby Jesus out of the scene until some special day that I would know more about if I were Catholic, I suppose. The scene in Guadalajara included an elephant.

One of our first stop was the Palacio de Gobierno de Jalisco which features many Orozco murals on its walls. The government of Mexico sponsored many muralists such as Orozco to decorate municipal buildings even though the messages of the muralists were often counter to the messaging of the government. We did a muralism tour in Mexico city which was helpful to draw on for understanding the amazing Orozco murals here. For entry simply approach the guards and tell them you want to see the murals – we said it in my limited spanish but they’d probably understand in English, too. The guards just keep a perimeter around the building in case of protests so that government business will not be impacted too badly.

The Plaza Armas in front of the Palacio de Gobierno was decked out with evergreen garlands and tons of potted poinsettias surrounding the central gazebo structure where dances and concerts are sometimes held. And there were a few more murals to be seen just across the square at the Palacio Municipal de Guadalajara (city government building). Here there was no security perimiter and we only needed say hi politely in Spanish on our way in. There was some sort of manicurist school exposition or something going on in the plaza next to it that involved music, dancing, and manicurist stuff… or so it seemed.

Perhaps the most famous building in the Centro area of Guadalajara is the yellow-spired Guadalajara Cathedral. It is very large and covered with many shining yellow tiles. The areas surrounding Guadalajara are known for creation of ceramic tiles and this cathedral is adorned in many areas with these tiles. The famous spires of this cathedral are seen all over the country on the logo of the drugstore chain Farmacias Guadalajara.

The second most famous building would be that of the expansive Mercado Libertad, a giant public market with food, restaurants, clothing, and most anything you can think of. It reportedly used to have a lot more locally-made artisanal wares but it is still quite amazing to walk through its many levels cascading down the terraced side of the hill on the east end of the Centro district. Between Mercado Libertad and the historic buildings of Centro are several long pedestrian plazas flanked by shops and offices. One plaza immediately west of Libertad was the Joyeria (jewelry) district.

Right next to the Libertad is the amazing Hospicio Cabañas – a former orphanage and hospital that has an amazing set of Orozco murals in its central building and has tons of art on display. This museum has a small entry fee but it is well worth it. While we were there portions of the building were closed off for an event but the wealth of Mexican art we saw was plenty.

We got turned on to AirBnB experience tours by our friend when visiting Mexico city and chose to do two tours we found through that platform. The first one was a tour of Barrio Analco followed by a tasting at a small brewery located behind a pizza restaurant. Barrio Analco was an area of town where indigenous people lived and constructed their own church ( Templo de San Sebastian de Analco ) that ended up outshining the neighborhood parish ( San Jose de Analco ) that was supposed to be higher in the hierarchy of churches for the area. It is also home to the corn market ( Mercado de Elotes ) where you can buy fresh corn, corn products, ground corn, etc as well as a former governor’s palace that was repurposed as a famous wrestling arena. It was also home to a series of terrible gas explosions in 1992. It was great to see Analco with a guide as this is an area of town that is not really touristy so it is important to have a local to help you navigate it and stay out of questionable areas. Our guide was extremely knowledgeable about so many things in the area and we enjoyed talking to him as he opened up to our questions about Mexico while we talked over the craft beer tasting at the end of the tour.

The other AirBnB tour we did was a walking tour of the architecture of the nice residential area of Colonia Americana that is becoming quite hip with cute cafes and restaurants. After the walking tour, the second part was we prepared traditional mexican foods with our host (guacamole; tortilla soup; salad of nopales; local style pico de gallo with jicama, orange and cucumber; chicken in mole amarillo). If you were to stay in Guadalajara for an extended time and wanted to be able to walk to a different cafe every morning, this is the neighborhood I’d recommend. Not as super-swanky as it gets even further west, but very safe and quiet and cute. Yet it still has a small traditional public market and a mix of things that are affordable by Mexican standards in terms of shops and such.

Highlights of eating

With only four days we knew we couldn’t eat all the top foods of Guadalajara but we did hit two famous dishes of the area: pozole and tortas ahogadas. Both were great. We had white pozole at La Chata de Guadalajara which was very close to our hotel in Centro. It was great and everything at this traditional Mexican restaurant that was popular for late desayunos looked delicious going by on platters with the very attentive servers. We had tortas ahogadas at one of the many places offering the famous dish along the long pedestrian plaza of the centro area – it is a torta with meat inside but the whole thing is soaked in and served in a nice mild red sauce. There was a toppings bar for adding more sauce, cabbage, onions, radishes, limes, etc.

We had so much good coffee in Guadalajara at so many unique cafes including the cafe inside Hospicio Cabañas for a nice comfortable break sitting next to a lovely painting during our visit to that museum – wonderful quality coffee and Noj enjoyed his hot chocolate in water (common to offer both water and milk bases in Mexico). On our first morning it was Cafe Galeano : a tiny little shop with almost no seating that we visited after dropping some laundry off nearby – their coffee was painstakingly prepared and amazing. Morning two we visited Fauna Coffee Co. whose neon sign and custom cups brazenly proclaimed “Muerte al Descafeinado” – they had seating but their pastry selection was slim so we got our drinks to go. When we visited Colonia Americana we first had breakfast at a hip brunch place (La Cafeteria) where service was a little lacking and food wasn’t quite worth the gentrified price but it was clearly a place to go and have a leisurely european-style brunch experience. Since my coffee wasn’t enough for me there I got another one at one of many small cafes we saw, MODO cafe. The coffee was very good there and expertly prepared – I also noted they had lots of artisanal mexican chocolate bars for sale and still regret not buying any. Friday we had to hurry to the airport early so that’s it for my coffee report. I think I got coffee from one other place that wasn’t at all notable, too.

We ate at a restaurant (El Pilón de Los Arrieros) that was a sister restaurant of the famous Birriería las 9 Esquinas and were disappointed with both the food and service. That was our first night in town and it was close to our hotel. But the real highlight of dinners in Guadalajara was the night we reserved a table for the tasting menu at the amazing Alcalde. We learned about the list of 50 best restaurants in Latin America from a friend when we were in Mexico City and it occured to us that some such restaurants should be in Guadalajara and that it would be less busy than CDMX. Sure enough we were able to get a reservation at Alcalde and we considered the price of our food and drinks to be a well-earned holiday feast. More than one course included insects such as escamoles (ant larvae), maguey (agave worm), and xamues (a sort of stink-bug like insect). And at least four the ten courses were essentially postres (desserts). It was so amazing. We even splurged on an expensive (for our tastes) bottle of white wine after we finished our craft beers.

The verdict

Should you visit Guadalajara? Yes, if you’re coming through the area and have time you should go there. Yes, if you need to be somewhere in Mexico for some reason and want to be in a city but not CDMX you should go there. I probably wouldn’t recommend it as a destination for its own value given how many other places in Mexico you could go instead. But worth a trip if you’re in Jalisco or Colima and want some city time and all the wonderful food and culture that can offer as an alternative to beach life. Also you can go to Lake Chacala and Tequila as nice side trips from Guadalajara.

Would I visit Guadalajara again? Yes. I am in Barra de Navidad right now and every time I walk past the ETN bus station I think about it – it’s so much cooler up there in the mountains than it is down here and the drive through the agricultural areas and amazing hill and river valleys of Colima and Jalisco is so picturesque.