After two relaxing and peaceful days in Talpa de Allende, Steve and I headed east to visit two more shrines dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The first, in the northwestern section of the sprawling city of Guadalajara is called La Virgin de Zapopan. Neither Steve nor I felt attracted to stay the night in Zapopan. There were a number of reasons for this decision. Situated as it is in the midst of a dirty, noisy city, the place lacked the peaceful feeling of our previous site, Talpa. There was also little of the presence or field of human energy that I have come to enjoy so much at bustling pilgrimage sites. While the church of Zapopan is at certain times of the year the focus of enormous gatherings of pilgrims, when we arrived there were only a handful of local parishioners. Lastly, there were none of the quaint little pilgrims’ hotels that are usually found clustered around highly visited shrines. We would have had to sleep in the van, on a noisy street. So, we elected to drive onward to the next sacred site, San Juan de Los Lagos. The road shown on my maps looked good and we hoped to arrive within two hours.
Getting to this large town, some 130 kilometers northeast of Guadalajara, took much longer than expected. Exiting from Guadalajara and locating the highway to San Juan was like fumbling around in a maze with a blindfold covering your eyes. Wrong turns, dead-ends, and incorrect directions led us on a hour-long tour through the bumpy streets of Guadalajara’s poorest neighborhoods. Along the way a careening truck side-swiped our van, destroying the left mirror with an explosive force that sent glass shards everywhere inside the van. Minutes later, my heart still racing from the intensity of the near accident, a police car pulled me over. I had been driving without my seat belt, a traffic offense in Guadalajara. From the beginning of the discussion with the two police men, I felt the touch of extortion, of corruption. With smiling faces, quite good English, and the most pleasant of demeanor, I was informed that I could pay only half the ticket without the bother of going to the local station. No receipt was available for this "ticket", nor could I have a carbon copy, but was I not "lucky to only pay half?"
Pilgrimage church of San Juan de los Lagos, Mexico
It was well past dark when we finally reached San Juan de Los Lagos. The town was closing for the night but next to the great basilica we found a cheap hotel and a simple meal. After dinner, strolling around the church, I was amazed at the many hundreds of pilgrims sleeping on the ground. They were not only poor rural peasants but educated and affluent urban dwellers also. And circling the church square were hundreds of small stalls and make-shift stores, closed-up for the night and wrapped in large plastic tarps and woven mats. This temporary market would supply the great number of pilgrims that were flowing into San Juan for the biggest pilgrimage fair of the year. That grand festival, on February 2, was only a few days away. I had not known this prior to arriving and was elated to have come at the most high-energy time of the religious year. Falling asleep to church bells, exploding fire-works, and drunken pilgrims shouting boisterously throughout the night, I keenly anticipated the arrival of the next morning.
