Arrival in Mexico

So we're here! We made it! We basically started traveling at 6 am on Wednesday morning and arrived Wednesday afternoon around 5 pm in Guadalajara. Afraid to take taxis straight off the plane due to the words of caution from friends/Frommer's concerning pirate cabs that kidnap tourists, force them to go to an ATM and empty their entire bank accounts, then leave them stranded and naked in the Mexican wilderness (don't worry, padres! mostly fictional!...that's Mexico City), we opted for the more expensive (about $250 MXN, still only around $18 USD) airport-sanctioned shuttles. We bought our ticket at the booth inside and then waited in line with our things at the curb. As a side-note, I'd like to add that as soon as we got to Mexico, men started helping me with my luggage everywhere. Danny had the same amount of luggage as I did (2 very large suitcases holding four months worth of clothing and necessities), but he was left to his own devices. Not sure if it's just an airport thing, but I would assume not since it happened again at the hostel later. Sexism? I'll take it! Anywho, the shuttle was a nice ride and we got to see much of the outskirts of Guadalajara which are extremely poverty-stricken. They consisted of tiny thrown together shanties on top of one another and, though I know it sounds American, naive, and slightly stuck up, I was a little worried that all of Guadalajara would look like that. Please forgive my ignorance. 

Anyway, after some confused driving around (our driver kept having to consult a book with maps in order to find our hostel, no GPS), we arrived at Hostel Galeria, which is right in the city center. We rang the bell twice and a man opened the little window to look out and then unlocked the big heavy door to let us in. He introduced himself as Abraham (prounounced Ah-brah-am in Spanish, natch) and asked us about ourselves, showed us our room, gave us a tour, and directed us to the closest bank so we could get some pesos in our pockets. Here's some pics of the hostel which are not mine, I stole them from the website:

Lobby with fountain

Lobby, again

 We ventured out to check our our neighborhood which seemed active, but fairly safe (again, no worries, padres!) with lots of trees and people walking their dogs (which for some reason I've adopted as an indicator of a decent area, probably completely misguided). We returned from our walk with strange snacks in hand (crackers and a snack mix which included little "cracker peanuts", which are peanuts with a crunchy coating. We'd never had them before, but they also refer to them as "Japanese peanuts" here as well) and decided to take a "short little nap" before dinner since we had been traveling all day and were exhausted. We laid down at 7:30 and didn't wake up again til...midnight, so much for dinner. Oops. I'll write about our apartment hunting adventures in a later post, since this one turned out to be so long. Hopefully, Danny will get on the blogging wagon soon and you can hear from the Ginger Man himself.

Hasta la proxima!!