Mexico - 8.22.2010

We ate breakfast (mexican cereal y cafe con tequila) and went home.


While waiting in the Mexico airport, we grabbed a sammich that had expired the day before (we hadn't noticed until after purchasing).
"Tres Queso" the label said. I took one bite of it and it was gross but Matt put it in his bag & it traveled with us to Houston where they frowned upon us having it and we had to go through the homeland security line to be searched and whatnot.
For a damn nasty ass mexican cheese sammich.

Lesson learned. If something's gross, throw it away before entering the next country.

When we got home, we grabbed our bag and our ride to the parking site we go to where I get discounts because of working for Large Software Corporation.
Since my office badge doesn't have both my name and the company name on it, they'd told me previously the badge wouldn't work to validate discounts.
Because I'm too lazy and don't care enough to order them, I have no business cards either.
But what I do have is a 7in tall glass award etched with both my name and the company's name, so I presented that to the parking site girl to get my discount.
She laughed and read it over and gave the discount and said that was the oddest thing she's received as proof of employment.
I now keep this glass award (which probably weighs about 5lbs atleast) in my car as a weapon in case I get carjacked.
But who the hell would steal a PT Cruiser?
They'd probably have to be 55+ and out scammin' before their early bird specials at Piccadilly cafeteria.
With "this economy", you never know.


Mexico - Fin.

Mexico - 8.21.2010

Saturday morning we were greeted with the lovely calming sound of Clint bangin' on our fuckin' door like he was a damn cop and saying, in his highpitched cackle voice, "WELCOME TO ATLANTIS!!"
Matt and I hopped outta bed like there was a robbery taking place and grabbed some robes.
Matt's didn't fit so he threw a towel on his lower half.
We stepped outside about to punch Clint in the throat for freakin' us out and saw what was causing such a ruckus.
Apparently, overnight there was a storm that both Matt & I slept through (no a/c, had the fan noise), that blew open the doors in Jess & Clint's room.....that ended up flooding out the sugarcane fields and the front yard of the hacienda.
It looked like this:
This might cause a problem with getting people OUT of the Hacienda and to the church so the bride & parents were working on a plan B.
The whole day, getting ready, looked a lot like this:

The girls getting ready.

The boys getting ready.

After a few hours, some sweating, and something called a paloma (which we just knew as "tequila & squirt"), everyone was ready to get to the church.
Inside, the church looked like this:

The ceremony was lovely and mostly in spanish and there were opera-like singers that blew the roof off the place. It also rained more.

After the ceremony, everyone moved from inside to the courtyard out front for pictures and hugs and twisted ankles (ahem, Tracy The Attention Getter). :)
Matt was then tricked into drinking grain alcohol which appeared from an unknown source. Matt blamed Clint for poisoning him and then everyone got in their respective rides...

except....
me, Chrystal & Chad, and the entire family of the groom.
LEFT BEHIND!!!
Dammit.
So we hung out against that wall and waited and I kept a look out for that pimped out white SUV.
About 30-45mins later we were rescued.
When we got back to the hacienda there was a magical 13pc mariachi band with epic pants on.
They looked like this:



After about an hour of appetizers and mariachis, they herded us into the tequila barn for the reception. Outside the main door was a table seating chart.
Instead of doing that, I went to look for Matt who was taking pictures of the bridal party at sunset.

Can't blame him for that.
We walked back to the barn and found our seats and the couple was announced and they danced and it was all happiness.


Then we ate some fantastic food & dessert.

Then there were fireworks:

Then we danced our asses off and drank pretty much everything that was handed to us and made duckfaces at whatever camera was pointed at us.

Here's our super model shoot:
Girls:

Boys:

For us, the night ended at about 1:30am and we drifted off to sleep to the sound of blown off leftover fireworks.*
----------------------------------
*And Tracy got to see Matt's naked butt when she peeked into our window and we were running across the room to jump into the shower to cool us off and rinse off the dance sweat.
w00t!

Mexico - 8.20.2010 (continued)

Previously on Brainure:

***Last time we saw our heroes, they were downing tequila concoctions at the Jose Cuervo distillery when the wedding party had to leave to get to the rehearsal.***

-The lovely bride & groom.-

-Matthew & oak aged cognac(I think?) that singed your nose hairs when you stuck your nose in the snifter.-

-Us and the groom.-

The following will be told in two parts:

Part 1 - Karen's Story.
So, the wedding party rolled out in a herded catlike manner.
At one point, Jacquie's mom said that it would be very hard to leave us.
I think it took about 20 mins for them to clear out and get to the bus.
The rest of us stayed at Cuervo's for a bit to drink & munch on guac.
After a bit, one of the tour guides, Gustavo, showed up on a break & we talked him into hangin' out with us and taking us to a good taco joint.
Tracy wanted to stop at Sauza first but when we walked over to the distillery, it was already closed for siesta.
Everything closes up and gets quiet from about 4 or 5pm until about 8pm.*
We walked back to the square & the taco place Gustavo suggested was a few blocks away so he left to see about getting a ride for the 6 of us.
While we waited, I told Sammy, "I hope we get a ride in the barrel!!"
Which looked like this and played loud mariachi music on a loud speaker:
Gustavo came back a few minutes later and said, "We ride in the barrel...".
Hell. Yeah.
Once we hopped in, we found it was equipped with a fitness pole.
The driver asked if we wanted music.
Duh.
So we were loud obnoxious gringos through the streets of Tequila lookin' for tacos in a friggin' mariachi stripper tequila barrel.
I swear I heard some boys with a fake soccer ball shout "callete!" at us as we passed.
We got to the taco place and it was still closed for another 30mins or so.*
Back to the square we went and Gustavo took us into this swanky lookin' bar/night club that had about 4 people in it, no windows, & an aquarium as you walk in.
We didn't wanna be Those people.....y'know the types that go to a nightclub when there's still daylight.
We just wanted a bar, really. Dark wood, maybe a couple gruff lookin' shady characters, and a wall full of pretty tequila bottles.
Instead, we stopped into a small tequila spot where an old fella sold us some home made coffee & almond flavored tequila. He kept giving us samples of each flavor but the coffee & almond ones were the best. Gustavo just kept grabbing samples when the old fella left to go fill our unlabled jugs with home brew. Another fella with one leg riding a burro stopped by to say hi to the old fella who was filling our jugs. I missed seeing him (only saw the ass part of the ass as he went by) & no one got pictures, so feel free to find this unbelievable.
The old fella called us girls, "bonitas", so of course we bought about 4 jugs - equaling about $6 usd.
We thought it was funny that his stock on the shelves, all the bottles and such, were all dusty and unmoved.
But his homebrew was awesome.
He told us he worked at Cuervo for 20yrs until he retired and I guess took some tricks of the trade with him.....to his back room.
Afterwards, we stopped into Cholula restaurant where I bought something the english menu called "patiently cooked with pork" that I thought would be just meat but turned out to be a soup.
Nowhere did it say soup.
Or even sopa.
But it was good.
While we were sitting there, a few others from our group trickled in and then it was time to pile back in the bus to make the journey back to the Hacienda.
I cracked open the jug'o'coffee tequila and passed it around on the bus, ready to go!! W00t!!
After about 1.5hrs on shitty roads listening to some lame ass disco music.....
We were all beat to hell and not as fired up when we reached the Hacienda.
*yawn*
We all showered and changed and a few of us wandered around (me with tequila jug in hand) and picked a cool corner on the patio to chill while the wedding party was in their rehearsal dinner.
When they got done with dinner, I decided Jacquie should have her garter that I made her since she'd dubbed me "Godmother of the Garter".
It looked like this:
In mexican wedding tradition, everyone participating in the wedding gets a specific role to be the godparent of.
She was happy with it and stuff and then Matt & I went back to swig on the tequila jug & hang with friends and listen to each other's stories from the day before calling it a night and headin' back to our nun beds.

Part 2. Matt's Story (as remembered from Matt's telling of events).
For some reason the ride to the church for the rehearsal, that was only supposed to take about 45mins, took about 2hrs and by the time they got there, a mass was starting, so they started doing a halfassed rehearsal outside until after mass was over.
From what I've heard, the rehearsal part went a little better but then the bus left Matt, Sean (the groom), Adan & Junior (the father & brother of the bride), and Clint behind....none of them really knowing why. (2)
They decided to find a bar close by and with 2 mexicans & 3 people able to speak spanish fluently, Matt said he felt pretty safe when they started walking through town.
Until....
Up the street they saw a pimped out white SUV crossing an intersection.....very slowly.
Junior in his awesome junior voice says, "That's probably the neighborhood drug lord."
They came up to another intersection and the same white SUV crossed their path and had a window down checking out the guys, again, driving very slow, then barking the tires and peeling off.
Junior then says to his dad, "we gotta go!" in spanish.
And they pick up their pace to find a taxi to get them back to the hacienda/rehearsal dinner.
Matt said Sean looked at him and said, "...This is cool, isn't it?"
And Matt just looked at him straight faced, and said, "...No." (3)
The taxis in mexico are small & I think someone back at the hacienda remembered them right around the time they'd found a taxi so they all made it back in one piece and got to the rehearsal dinner.
********************
*A couple of times throughout the trip, Mario, the other tour guide, would say "lazy mexicans".
(2) It was because the boys were playing soccer with some local kids outside the church.
(3) They laugh about it now and since we got back we've seen and have been sent a TON of articles about how crazy the drug cartels are getting in Mexico City. The town we were in is WAY west of Mexico City....get out a map.

Mexico - 8.20.2010

Even after going to bed so early, we slept until about 8:30.

I did wake up at about 6ish to pee and peeked outside the window and saw no magical mist.
Maybe Jacquie had some magical eye boogies that made her early morning vision blurry.
Or maybe I didn't step outside far enough.

The bus was picking everyone up for adventuring at about 10ish so we got ready.

Looking at my sweat soggy jeans from the day before, I started to pout, so Matt offered up a pair of his shorts and a belt since I had no other pants.

Such a sweetheart, that one.

Breakfast was another buffet with tortilla chips, red sauce, crumbled queso blanco (these 3 together are like mexican cereal), beans, fruit, y pan de dulce.

The coffee was excellent. So was the orange juice. Lime juice was surprisingly bland.
Maybe cuz the limes grew too big and diluted the flavor.

After breakfast, we loaded up in the bus and drove through the little town square of Teuchitlan.

The bus smelled like pee cuz of the jiffypot in the back and the a/c was broken so we were pretty cranky on the ride up to these ruins the locals discovered about 6yrs ago.

While looking at them, I was trying to figure out why the hell they were only discovered 6 years ago....but then we saw one that wasn't uncovered and it looked like this:

So, that made sense.

We got a quick lesson in mexican spiritualism and numerology which coincides with the calendar we use today. It was really interesting - a quick study on the #13.

The "ballcourt" story was cool and while our english speaking tour guide gave us the run down, I started listening to the spanish speaking tour guide cuz his group was laughing and he was so animated with hand gestures. He was describing what they wore and how they played and our english speaker was telling us about how it being called a "ballcourt", actually meant...like....court.
That's where the ancient folks settled disagreements - by playing ball.
And the loser got sacrificed.
At the same time we got that rundown, the spanish speaker was doing these hand motions like his guts were falling out of his belly.
Apparently, the ball was kinda smallish and really hard and went really fast and if it hit the dudes playing, it would sometimes puncture through whatever skin was unprotected and their guts would spill out.
La pelota for the win.

We walked around there a little more (and acquired giant mosquito bites) and piled back in the bus.
This time it had a/c.
THAT was truly magical.

So then, we drove about 20-30mins away to this place:

Where this dude (el himador):

Does this to a bunch of agave plants:

And then he puts them here to be cooked in that little house that smells like sugarcane:

And then they come out the other side lookin' like this:

Where they get juiced and the juice goes in these:

Then it gets barreled to age or bottled - depending on what taste they're after.
XO means its been aged over 3 yrs.
We tasted about 4 different bottles and found that the XO was the smoothest and didn't result in those weird tequila faces that usually happen after knockin' one back.

After about 4-9 shots, back on the bus we went to the actual town of Tequila.
The wedding party was supposed to leave on one of the buses at 5 to get to the rehearsal and when we got to the town square it was about 4:30.
So we ran through the square to the Cuervo distillery, skipping the tour (since we'd already seen the process), and found the bar where we tasted some other barrel aged liquid gold and got mango margaritas in souvenir barrel mugs.


That's Clint sayin' "damn...the wedding party has to go!!"
So they all left to catch the bus and off to the rehearsal they went....

-OR DID THEY?!?!-

.....to be continued.....

dun dun dun.

Mexico - 8.19.2010

Thursday morning.

Matt & I woke up at about our normal during the week time - 5a.m.

Finished packing and got ready to go, remembering to leave the door open and a note for our neighbor who was takin' care of the cats while we were gone.

(Unfortunately, later realizing that I'd forgotten my 2nd pair of jeans to wear & my phone.)

Got to the airport, got our bag full of Matt's suits checked and we were on our happy way to grab something for breakfast, a couple of Capn Morgan's, and on the plane we went.

Stopped in Houston with a layover, grabbed lunch & beers, were almost late getting to our connecting flight because we lost track of time and don't wear watches, & I thanked the nice lady for the "you're late" lecture we got on our way down the gangplank.

2hrs later, we landed in Guadalajara, Mexico where we went through customs, got my passport stamped (they ended up only stamping mine for some reason - not Matt's) and pushed a button for random searches. We got a green light. Red light meant they went through all your luggage.

At first I thought the button was to open the door out to the terminal.

There was a fellow, Mario, standing with a sign reading "Jacquie Villa Wedding, Bienvenidos!" and we waited for the rest of our crew that had just landed right after us.


When they all got there, we found an ATM & beverages for the ride to the Hacienda.

$1800 pesos sounds like a lot coming from an ATM...but it ended being about $125 usd.

Matt picked up a huge bottle of Sol, I grabbed an Estrella tallboy, & the girls were all squealing about their Kosako vodka/tonics in a can.



Apparently, there aren't any open container laws in Mexico.

So about an hour later, we were at the Hacienda & poured ourselves out of the van and were immediately greeted by Jacquie & her family and shots of tequila fresh from an oak barrel in the lobby of the place.


After a bathroom stops, checking in, & shot refills, we went walking around the grounds to check things out.

There was a horse barn out back where we found Sean & Junior who were about to go for a ride but came back in after seeing our vans pull up.

We saw peacocks, a turkey, the tequila barn, big ass lime trees, papaya trees, a parrot in a big ass cage, Tracy on a wooden rocking horse, tiny peppers that Matt was tricked into eating....

It was absolutely beautiful.

Later, we found out that the place was a 300 yr old nunnery that they eventually turned into a resort/spa.

After the van drinks and the welcome shots and wandering around, it was nap time.

We rested up before attending dinner that night which was a buffet of seabass, beef tongue, mole` sauce, veggies and of course, margaritas.

Jacquie stopped by our table to say hi and said that if we had the chance we should wake up at 6 in the morning and look outside to see the mist/fog and said she'd been up that morning at 7:30 and saw it and it was "magical".

Then we all tried to figure out why we were supposed to wake up at 6 if the magical mist was there at 7:30.

Matt started showing signs of being completely worn out, so we headed up to bed for the night.

I think it was like 9:30.

Both of us slept through the night....fairly comfortably on the very firm nun beds.