Guadalajara was a bustling city, busier than any other place I visited on this trip. With a population of 4,640,000 people and an elevation of 5,000 feet, the days were hot and the nights were cool. I took to wandering all day, as usual, with no destination, and despite the fact that I had all my belongings strapped, tied or buckled to me the whole time in the 85 degree weather.
After taking in some breakfast of tortas from a roadside restaurant, we decided to take a bus to downtown. Not knowing where we were or where we needed to go, my friend and I wandered a bit first and asked around for the proper bus number. While waiting at a corner to flag the bus down, a lot of people in cars were staring and honking their horns. So I decided to get a shot of the inquisitive rapidly oncoming traffic - and that's how for the sake of a photo, I almost killed a woman. With my camera to my eye, I realized that I could hang over the curb a bit for a better angle. So with a really sudden - and apparently powerful - step to the right, I crashed right into a woman passing by and sent her flying into the street landing on her rear with traffic speeding toward her. I ran to help her, but God bless her, she was quick on her feet and leaped back onto the sidewalk. I've injured myself many times for a better shot, but injuring someone else is not tolerable, so this incident shook me up a bit for the rest of the day.
I wonder what it all looked like to the people in the oncoming cars...
After an hour in the rickety bus seeing every back alley in town, we decided to get off. Needing to scratch my itch to get up high, we walked to an old church. I thought it would be a great view to climb the bell tower at the top of San Francisco de Asis chapel. Built in 1541, this grand old church was filled with statues, relics, paintings and flowers. However, all the doors to the elevated levels were locked. Since it never hurts to ask, we talked with the gracious Friar Sergio who agreed to take us up. Ask and indeed you shall receive: for forty-five minutes he gave us the grand tour including the roof and bell tower along with interesting facts and vivid explainations. The winding stone stairwell was very narrow and not lit from the inside. Standing on the roof and looking down, I had a great vantage point to watch people bustling about their business below. A few minutes of hanging over the edge (no rails or walls) for photos, and back up the stairs for to the bells. One giant 12 foot wide bell was in the center and two cracked 2-3 foot wide bells on the side. Although it looked as if there were about six or eight at of them once upon a time ago. One more time of leaning over a rusted rail which was no longer attached to the floor a balcony - against the will of the friar - and we were back down to the civilization level. When he was done, I wanted to give Friar Sergio a donation for the church (which was being renovated as it had gotten a bit deteriorated over the past 500 years). When he saw the money, he threw his hands up in refusal, with a look that was borderline terrified. Feeling like I just committed an act of sacrilege, I tried to explain that it was for the church, not him. But this humble man wanted nothing to do with it. Instead, I stuffed it in a donation box on the way out.
Then we wandered around in the streets and into markets. You could just stand still and close your eyes and feel the city. People shouting and running right into you, cars rumbling, dogs barking, children playing on corners, heat radiating from the sun, and an inescapable smell of unrine.
