Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
I'm Connor with polyglossa.com, and you're listening to Episode 6 of the Listening Time Podcast.
For those of you who are listening for the first time, welcome.
I'm happy to have you here.
This podcast is for English learners who want to improve their listening comprehension.
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So welcome.
In this podcast, I talk about different topics each time.
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So I'm not reading anything as I speak.
I'm just saying the words as they come to my mind.
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And I, of course, speak a little bit more slowly and a little bit more clearly than normal.
English speakers normally do, but I'm using all the normal phrases and words and expressions that I normally use when I'm talking normally.
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So in today's episode, I'm going to talk about my road trip through Mexico.
A road trip is a trip that you take by car.
Instead of flying, you drive, and it takes a lot longer to reach the final destination.
So I just recently got back from a road trip, and so I thought I would talk about that for today's podcast.
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Alright, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay, so let me tell you a little bit of backstory behind the road trip that I just got back from.
When I say backstory, I mean the information that is behind some story, the context, or just extra helpful information that will help you understand the main idea.
So the backstory is, I'm in Mexico now.
I live here.
But I don't have a car.
I've never had a car during the time that I've lived in Mexico.
And this year, I decided that I need a car.
So conveniently, I already have a car, but it's in the U.S.
Or it was in the U.S.
It was in San Diego, which is where I'm from.
So what I wanted to do is I wanted to bring my car from San Diego down to Guadalajara, which is where I currently live.
So in order to do this, I first flew up to San Diego.
And I obviously spent some time with my family there and hung out with them.
And then after that, on the last day, my wife and my sister-in-law flew from Guadalajara to Tijuana.
Tijuana is the city which is right on the border with the United States and San Diego.
If you're not aware of the geography of the US or Mexico, in the southwest corner of the United States is the city of San Diego.
And this city is right on the border with Tijuana.
So they're connected, but they're just divided by the border.
So my wife and my sister-in-law flew to Tijuana, And then I drove my car from San Diego across the border.
And then I picked them up from the airport.
And then we drove together to Guadalajara.
So one extra piece of background information is that I had to do the process of importing my car from the US to Mexico.
So I had to pay a deposit and I had to pay another fee and I had to bring copies of my different documents, like my passport, my driver's license, etc.
And I had to wait in line at the government office in Tijuana.
And then I finally got my permit to import my car into Mexico.
So I had to do that first, because if you're planning on staying for a long time with your car in Mexico, you have to import it.
So I did that, and then I picked up my wife and my sister-in-law from the Tijuana airport, and then we started the drive down to Guadalajara.
However, it wasn't the route that you would probably imagine if you were to look at a map of Mexico and just imagine my road trip.
Because if you look at the map of Mexico, we have the mainland, the main part of Mexico, and then there is a peninsula on the west side of the country.
This is called Baja California.
There are two states, Baja Norte and Baja Sur, right?
The north part and the south part of the peninsula.
So we didn't drive from Tijuana down the main part of the country to Guadalajara.
We actually drove down the peninsula and then, at the bottom of the peninsula, we took a ferry, a ferry boat, with our car, across the sea to the main part of Mexico, the mainland.
So it was quite an interesting adventure.
We crossed land and we crossed sea.
Pretty cool, huh?
Well, let me tell you a little bit about the places we went to.
So from Tijuana we drove south, of course, and we went through some cities on the coast of the peninsula.
For example, Ensenada, that's a pretty big port city in Mexico.
A port city is just a city on the coast where boats and ships come and go.
So we went through some places like that.
And then we also went through the interior of the peninsula, through very beautiful terrain actually.
Terrain where they grow grapes to make wine and other products like that.
And so we drove through these valleys and saw some really beautiful scenery, actually in not the very middle of the peninsula, but not on the very coast either.
So a little more inland than the coast.
So we went through some really beautiful, beautiful countryside scenery in Baja Norte.
And then we stayed our first night there in uh small, tiny little town.
But actually we didn't stay in the town, we stayed a little bit outside the town, right off the coast, at an Airbnb, which was very funky.
So when we say the word funky in English, we're referring to something that is weird in a positive way.
It's strange, weird, but not in a negative way.
And it's kind of cool.
So we stayed at a funky little Airbnb right outside a really small town on the coast of Baja Norte.
So this Airbnb was very funky because it was on a small ranch there with farm animals chickens roosters pigs horses sheep, everything.
It was really cool actually, but it didn't have the normal amenities that a normal hotel or Airbnb has.
Amenities refers to things like Wi-Fi and electricity and running water and things like that.
We didn't have much of that.
It was a very interesting experience.
I loved it.
I really enjoyed it.
But for people who are not used to being outside of civilization, it might be a difficult challenge to stay in a place like that.
So if you're up for the challenge, I would recommend it.
If not, definitely not then.
But yeah.
So the second day we drove down from that ranch and drove all the way until the midpoint in the middle of the peninsula.
And we stayed in a small city in the middle of the peninsula next to the coast as well near the sea.
And then from there we drove down towards the bottom, not all the way to the bottom, but closer to the bottom of the peninsula.
And we stayed in a town that is classified as a magic town.
In Mexico, we have classifications of towns.
We have a certain classification that is referred to as magic towns.
So when a town is considered a magic town...
That means that it has some important touristic value, right?
It has a cool architecture or history or nature or something that makes it a good tourist destination.
And so they maintain it and preserve it much better than other towns in the country.
So they're all very nice to visit, all of these magic towns.
So we stayed in one.
And then, the day after that, we drove down to La Paz, which is a city close to the bottom of the peninsula.
Not at the very bottom, but pretty close.
And then from there, we took the ferry and made our way to the mainland.
So I had to pay the money to drive my car onto the ferry and take it with us on the boat across the sea to the mainland of Mexico.
It costs a couple hundred dollars to do that and you have to pay extra for each passenger that you have.
So it's not that cheap, but it's a cool adventure.
And it's a great way to transport your vehicle from the peninsula to the mainland.
So we had a 13-hour boat ride from La Paz to Mazatlán, which is the city on the other side, on the mainland, where the boats end up.
So we went overnight and traveled by ferry and ended up in Mazatlan the next morning.
After that, we got our car off the boat and we stayed for two nights at my wife's cousin's house.
So he has a house in Mazatlán and so we stayed there with him for two nights and just kind of relaxed and ate good food and explored the city a little bit.
So it was more relaxing than the other days of the trip because I didn't need to drive that many hours.
And then lastly, we drove down from Mazatlan to Guadalajara, which is where I am now.
So in total, the amount of driving was about 25 hours.
So I had to drive for 25 hours.
Plus the 13-hour ferry ride.
So it was a long trip.
It definitely was.
But it didn't feel too long.
It didn't feel like we had to... really hurry every day to reach our next destination.
I feel like we were able to plan well and it wasn't too hard.
It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.
So I was happy about that.
So yeah, it was a long trip.
It was fun.
We passed through many cool landscapes and we got to see a big change from north to south, right?
We got to see a change in the land, a change in the weather, a change in the culture between the different cities.
So it was cool to see that diversity of land and culture and people in such a short period of time.
So I highly recommend taking a road trip down the Baja Peninsula.
It's really cool, it's fairly easy, and it's very safe.
So you don't have to worry about dangerous areas, because the peninsula is the safest part of the country.
So it's very nice.
So I want to take advantage of this episode to teach you a few words related to road trips.
So these are kind of general words that you might hear when someone talks about taking road trips in the US or anywhere else.
So, first of all, the thing that you're driving on could be called a highway, or it could be called a freeway.
So we use these words interchangeably.
Some people say highway, some people say freeway, and some people might say interstate.
An interstate is also a highway, but it's a certain classification of a highway in the U.S.
But when we're talking in general, in any country, we use the words highway or freeway.
And on each highway or freeway, you have lanes, right?
A lane is one space of the road where you're driving on.
So the highway or the road might have just one lane going in each direction, or it might have two lanes going in each direction, or it might have more than that.
If you go to big cities in the U.S., like Los Angeles, for example...
There are some parts of the highway that have eight lanes going in one direction, right?
So that probably seems crazy to some of you, but that's fairly normal in places like Los Angeles.
But when you're taking a road trip and you're on the highway, usually you have two lanes or one lane depending on where you are.
So most of the trip that I took through the Baja Peninsula... was on a one-lane highway.
There was one lane going in both directions.
So that is the word lane.
Another word I want to teach you is the word stretch.
So we often say phrases like a stretch of highway, a stretch of road.
What we mean by that is just a certain part, a certain distance, a certain area of highway or road.
For example, I could say this is a dangerous stretch of highway because the road has a lot of holes and is not well maintained.
So that could be referred to as a dangerous stretch.
So a stretch just refers to a certain distance, a certain part of the highway.
A couple other words, speed limit.
The word speed limit or the phrase speed limit refers to the maximum speed speed that you can drive on a given stretch of road.
So if the sign says 70 miles per hour, that means that the speed limit is 70 miles per hour.
Or if it says 45, that means the speed limit is 45 miles per hour.
So this is the speed limit.
Another word that's important for road trips is diner.
A diner is an American-style restaurant that sells breakfast food and comfort food, like food that makes you feel good.
Hamburgers and pancakes and grilled cheese sandwiches and things like that.
So these traditional American restaurants are called diners.
And the reason why I'm including that word here is because when you take road trips in the US, you see many diners on the side of the highway.
These are very common throughout the country, especially when you're taking road trips.
You see many diners.
This is one of my favorite parts of taking road trips is stopping at these diners and eating good food.
Lastly, we have the phrases truck stop and rest stop.
A truck stop is a designated place where big trucks can stop and rest and the drivers can eat a meal and just relax.
So we have many truck stops along highways in the US where anyone really can stop and eat a meal, but specifically we have designated stops for trucks.
And then the other phrase is rest stop.
A rest stop is a place along an American highway where anyone can stop their car and rest, stretch their legs, take a break and just stop driving for a while.
I always stop at many rest stops when I'm taking road trips in the US, because these rest stops are often located in beautiful places.
They often have a nice view or they have a nice park there.
There's oftentimes beautiful nature where these rest stops are.
So I like to stop there, relax, enjoy the view, and then continue on with the road trip.
Okay, so we're about done for today.
I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode and hearing about my recent road trip.
Hopefully this inspires you to take a road trip soon, and then you'll be able to practice with these vocabulary words that I just taught you, especially if you're taking a road trip in the US.
So also remember to sign up for our 1 listening practice seminars at polyglossacom.
And remember to rate and review this podcast if you can.
And share it with as many people as you can. help them practice their listening as well.
So thank you for tuning in to this episode.
And I hope you'll come back for episode seven of the Listening Time podcast.
