Lately

Sorry for not keeping up with this, but I just have forgotten about it.  Anyways two weekend ago we went to a suburb of Guadalajara known as Tlaquepaque.  We went to their main square where there was a cathedral and like Guadalajara they had a entire street dedicated to pedestrians.  Here is where a lot of the shops were.  There was an area with a bunch of art.  The art ranged from all pweter to clay statues of mayan gods and pots to hand made dinnerware.  It was really fun to see all of the different artwork I definitly would have bought something, but money is not in surplus these days.  Along this street there were locals making these beaded bracelets, necklaces, earrings, rings, bead glued onto wooden animals (turtles, tigers, donkeys, etc.).  It was really fun to see.  Also along the street were a large number of restaurants..  One had a huge chair outside of it that was fun to sit on.  We came across a mariachi band playing for some tables dressed in native clothing.  All in all our trip was fun and successful especially when we got on the wrong bus to take us back home we ended up clear in norther Zapopan instead of at the south end, where we live. We took a taxi and loved the driver he was a fun guy to talk too.  Matt and him chatted about sports the entire way home. 

I would put pictures up, but the pictures we got were on the actual camara and not taken with the memory card and we don't have the attachments with us.  It was good times though.

Guachimontones

Okay so I have been bad about updating this. 

So when Matt and I found out that there were ruins not to far from Guadalajara we were real excited.  They are not Mayan or Aztec ruins.  Archeologists don't really know who the peole were so they named the ruins after the tribe that was prominant in the area. 

So our journey getting there was fun.  We went to the bus station and bought a round-trip ticket to a small little town called Teuchitlan. This town is in rural Mexico for sure.  On our way there were sugar cain fields all around us so cool (they look a little like corn fields).  So all of the sudden the bus pulled off into this small little town and I didn't see the sign so I had no idea where we were, we didn't get off.  Pulling out of the town we realized that we were supposed to get off, that was our stop.  Luckily there were some people that got off like a mile down the road, yes we walked that mile back (lucky it was not that far). 

When we got back to the town we had no idea where to go so we started walking and about two blocks we saw a sign pointing the direction of the ruins.  Before going we decided to eat some food at a little taco stand (my first time doing that since we have been here, I am not big fan of mexican food, it was good though).  So we started following the signs through the town.  There were a lot of water parks on the way we should've taken pictures. 

This is a picture of the streets we walked through town (aprox. 1 mile in town)

The street going up to the ruins it was uphill like this for about a three-forths of  a mile

We made it to the top of the hill, oh wait no we didn't (We should've taken pictures of the last uphill stretch to the ruins)

Okay after the tough walk up the hill we were a little exhausted and what we first saw we did not think was very impressive, but then we went closer to the ruins. They were bigger than at a distant.  Look they are circular though and not like the Mayan or Aztec ruins.

We then started to walk around, this place was huge.  This was a smaller pyramid.  Something we noticed (we didn't have a guide) was that around these circular pyramids was a circle walkway with platforms evenly space around the center pyramid.  We kept on walking around and found about four similar set-ups within this area (later we looked at an information sign they had and there were five we missed one of them).  Anyways there was one that looked like they didn't uncover all the way, but we could hike to the top (we were not allowed to get on the other ones).  Up there you could hear peole really well from wherever you stood in the area.  Really cool.  The next picture is from the top of the hill thing looking out at the most impressive pyramids.

This is a picture of one of the ruins that was on the other side of the hill thing.

These ruins were discovered back in the early 1980's when some archeologists were visiting the area and sitting in a nearby hot spring when they found an artifact made out of obsidian.  They were curious as to where it came from so they hiked the hills above the hot spring and climbed up a hill and told themselves "this hill is not natural" it was from then that these archelogists decided to dedicate their lives to uncover these ruins.  They found that they were nothing like the mayans or aztec so they named them after the local tribe.  This people controlled a large area.  They owned one of the largest obsidian mines in the area. When we were there we didn't get to see any artifacts because the visitor center is not open yet.  These ruins became open to the public 2005.  The following picture is of the area that they are still uncovering for anything else.

This is the view from the Ruins.  You can see the little town and the lake all the way across the valley.  What a great location these people had.

This is the view on our walk down from the ruins.  You can see the town a little better.

All and all this was really interesting and fun to see.  I reccommend if any goes to this area to see these ruins.  They are an hour (hour and half by bus) west out of Guadalajara and probaby about two and half hours east of Puerta Vallarta.