Guadalajara

Guadalajara, a city in Jalisco state, epitomises all that is the international image of Mexico. The costumes, Mariachi bands, tequila etc. All come from this fascinating area. Guadalajara, as many places in Mexico, have interesting stories attached to their foundation. This one involves a woman basically refusing to go any further. Thus the city was founded.

However, the story is a little more involved. Hernan Cortes, the conqueror of the Aztecs, had carved out a territory for himself with great wealth due to the Aztec gold. He had commenced his conquest from the island of Cuba. Later one of his followers in Cuba came to Cortes and basically demanded to be given a share of the profits. Cortes is reported to have told him to find his own lands, outside of Cortes territory. So said adventurer moved into other areas, further south but didn't find the wealth he was expecting. He tortured and killed a local Aztec king because they didn't have any gold.

Anyway, this said adventurer was from Guadalajara in Spain and had declared he would found a city in Mexico with the same name. So after 3 attempts of found a city in Mexico (he was chased out by the local tribes), they came to the place of modern day Guadalajara. One of his captains' wives refused to move any further so hence they stayed. There is a statue to her in one of the plazas, detailing the legend. Latitudinally, I understand it is in a similar line (south of Madrid) to the Guadalajara in Spain.


Guadalajara, approximately the same size population as Brisbane feels more like a large regional town than a city. It's altitude and climate make it a very comfortable places to be and we found it very safe and easy to navigate. However, we were staying in the old historic centre so it's fairly compact and we didn't have far to go to see most of the sights. Jan and I had an unexpected bonus when we decided to go visit the regional museum. Nothing prepared us for what we found there!   See below:

Guadalajara Regional Museum.

 Who would have thought we'd be confronted by a mammoth skeleton!! Very interesting museum, was free when we went due to the time of day and well worth the look. The history displayed here is from paleontological times to post revolution and had many surprises including the fertility rites once practiced by men. The photo below is courtesy of Jan, I couldn't bring myself to take a photo but it did provide an amusing topic of conversation with the ladies when we went to dinner that night!

Figure masturbating (fertility ritual)