1,200 Tequilas, more taco stands, and a Mexican wedding!

I arrived at the airport in Guadalajara Wednesday evening. I was invited to hang out with the one and only Oscar Torres in his home town. Now, I've been to Mexico several times before, but this is the real deal. Oscar and I never made specific plans about meeting at the airport, he was flying in from his home in Austin, Texas. My travels over the years have accustomed me to finding people in airports. But it didn't occur to me until standing on the airport curb in a city I've never been, where they speak a language I am desperately trying to learn (Donde esta el terminal internacional?) that it may suck not having a phone. Faith in my friend prevailed over panic, and forty-five minutes later Oscar finds me. People, before phones, we just sat on the curb and waited.

Straight to the neighborhood taco stand.

The Torres-Ramirez family opened their home to me and treated me like a long lost prima! Oscar is one of eight children and he has sixty-four cousins on his mother's side alone. Most of them are bilingual, but they only speak in English when the gringa starts to get a glazed over look in her eyes. What I quickly came to realize is that first, the nice employees at the hotels in Cabo speak spanish slowly for the tourists that are trying their hardest to order a pina colada and charge it to their room in terrible spanish. In the Torres casa, I used "que?" and "despacio!" a lot. The second thing that became immediately apparent is that learning everyone's name may take me days.

Thursday morning, taco stand.

Thursday we toured Guadalajara on a bus. Cathedrals, statues, government buildings, and my personal favorite of the day.... a four room display of 1,200 tequilas. "What do you mean we can't take pictures in here?"

Thursday afternoon, lunch at Sandra's. Yeah, it was home cooked. Thursday night dinner and dancing with some of the family. The beauty of Mexico is that you just order entire bottles of tequila and if you don't drink it all (which we did) you can just take it home with you. They will even give you a to go cup if you need one!

Friday morning, taco stand. Then off to ride the Tequila Express! This, mi amigos, is an hour and a half train ride where you are served beer and tequila. The train travels to the Casa Herradura to tour the Herradura Tequila distillery, eat (noticing a theme here?), enjoy a Mariachi band, dance, and of course drink tequila (also a theme). The train ride back continues the fiesta.

Friday night, taco stand at the Torres house and MORE familia!

Saturday morning, taco stand. I'm not even kidding here folks. Hiking La Barranca with Papi (this is my personal nickname for Oscar's dad, he's a stud), Oscar, and Aldo. Then off to the hacienda to get ready for the wedding! We were about fifteen minutes late for the ceremony, but I should note here that this was a Catholic wedding, so there was still another hour left in the ceremony. This is only the second time I've even been in a Catholic church, so to watch the mass was interesting enough, but add that the whole thing was obviously in spanish put my cultural curiousity was on overload. And then there was the reception at the beautiful Hacienda La Magdalena. A fantastic dinner, more tequila, a live band - which I would like to note started the wedding off with Madonna's "Like a virgin", I'm telling you I can't make this stuff up! - do wop dancers, fire show, a drum line, and carnival stilt walkers! I was told by Oscar, that the only thing typically Mexican about this wedding was the latin music and dancing. And of course the tequila!

I was sad to leave on Sunday. I truly felt like one of the family. The Torres family has left an open invitation for me to come back anytime. One day they may get tired of my showing up at their doorstep like you all know I tend to do.

For more information on the Tequila Express train visit www.tequilaexpress.com.mx
And please check out Hacienda La Magdalena! www.haciendalamagdalena.com