Guadalajara 3

(This part is a bit redundant from our last post but oh well)
Leaving Paul and Alexa's house took basically all morning as we woke up to find ourselves in a rain puddle on the tile floor of the roof.  Luckily there was a couple hours of good sunshine to help dry the tents before setting out.  We finally said our goodbyes to everyone early afternoon and made our way towards lunch since we had only been snacking all morning.  We ate at this wonderful cafe, ordered spiced coffee, meals and dessert.  Bryan, Maggie and Justin were our company and ended up being a lovely final meal before parting ways..Bryan and Maggie are off to Mexico City to stay with friends and Justin is spending some time in Guadalajara learning spanish.

From lunch we went over to Torry's (who has a place to himself for a little while) and met up with Peter, Paul, Sara and Pedro.  Pedro was in the middle of making a delicious Portugese soup with cheese, potatos, eggs, and a new kind of leafy green similiar to spinach.  Thanks Pedro! While we were there we used the internet to try and find a place to stay that night.  None of our couch requests were answered within good time so we ended up going to a the cheapest hotel we could find.  But as usual we made many wrong turns before finding the place.  Pedro and Sara came later that night as well and stayed in the room next to us (on the second floor too).  The room was in the middle of the hotel so it was nice and warm which dried out my bags from riding in the rain.

The next day we had to pick up our package at ups about 5km away and then we had arranged to stay on a couch that night.  Gres's house was about 7km away from where we picked up the package.  Normally thats a reasonable distance to bike but the sky had decided to start dumping on us and never really stopped.  The streets and sewers could not handle the amount of water so roads became rivers and lakes and we were biking through it. We left the hotel around 1 and spent a couple hours making wrong turns in the vague direction of ups.  We kept bringing our tablet out to show us where we were on the map but that became hard to do with all the rain.  Finally making it to ups, we were fronted with a wonderful extra charge of 1788 pesos to get our package that the ups guy said were mostly Mexican fees for importing goods.  Our package was only worth $215 too....just brutal.  Nonetheless we coughed up the money and received our Christmas presents.

The ride to our hosts's house was the absolute worst.  We made a major wrong turn taking us south instead of west.  The reason we were making so many wrong turns was because there are crazy complicated roundabouts, poor signage, it was pouring rain and anytime we stopped at an intersection some vehicle would drench us by driving through a puddle err..lake.  Normally we don't make that many wrong turns.  The highway we took south was super busy with barely any shoulder and because of this I nearly got hit by a semi, he came within 6 inches of me. All I could think of as I saw how close his wheels were was 'stay in a straight line.'  After that we stopped at a much needed fast food chicken restaurant for a bite before rerouting ourselves.

Flooded streets...this wasn't even the worst

Rigel looking dashing in his poncho :P

By that time it was starting to get dark and we realized we would be riding in the dark soon.  Instead of taking the more major roads we decided on a few secondary simpliar roads.  Our adventure for this leg of the ride (still raining I might add) didn't lie in wrong turns but in traversing an intersection.  Rigel stopped short seeing what was ahead but it was too late for me.  I didn't understand why Rigel stopped until I passed him hearing 'Just Keep Going!' The whole intersection was an ocean.  As I pedalled through it, it just kept getting deeper and deeper until I was pedalling through a foot and a half of water surrounded by cars doing the same.  The feeling of the water entering my shoes won't leave my mind.  The bottom of my rear panniers got soaked as well.  Rigel having stopped went off the road to the 'sidewalk' which was mostly old train tracks and crossed without too much trouble.  Until that point I was worried about getting wet but after that I didn't really care because all I could think about was 'I'll be in a warm house soon and I can change into dry clothes and everything will be better'.

Drinking a crazy delicious drink at a mariachi restaurant

 An hour or so later around 7:30 we finally arrived at the house.  We were greeted by a wonderful family that helped us dry off and warm up with a cup of hot chocolate, dinner and a hot shower.  They sure took care of us.  They gave us our own room and we spread out all our wet things to dry and went to sleep.  We stayed with them for two nights until the rain slowed down and our shoes dried (with the help of an infrared heater).  On Sunday we were ready to bike to Lake Chapala with Dave and Uschi.