Walk Guadalajara and take the fog off it
FOG hides the whole world map and only clears it where you have physically walked. Guadalajara rewards that: a huge, flat, mile after mile grid that you can genuinely chew through on foot.
A grid at 1,500 metres
Guadalajara sits on a high plain at around 1,500 metres, which mostly means the air is thin enough to notice on a long day and the nights cool off fast. The ground itself is kind. The city is broadly flat, laid out on a colonial grid that the twentieth century extended outward for kilometre after kilometre, so once you learn one intersection you have effectively learned a thousand of them.
The Centro Historico is where the grid is tightest and most walkable. Plaza de Armas, the cathedral, Teatro Degollado and the long open run of Plaza Tapatia connect into each other without a single car crossing, ending at the Hospicio Cabanas. A few blocks east is Mercado San Juan de Dios. West of the Centro the character changes: Avenida Chapultepec runs with a wide planted median down the middle that functions as a linear park, and the streets either side of it, Colonia Americana and Lafayette, are shaded, low rise and full of doorways worth slowing down for.
The corridor worth doing first
If you only get one long afternoon, walk the Centro to Chapultepec corridor. Start at Plaza de Armas, cross the whole Plaza Tapatia to Hospicio Cabanas, then double back west along Avenida Juarez or Avenida Hidalgo. Keep going through Colonia Americana until you hit the Chapultepec median, then walk the median itself north to south. It is maybe five or six kilometres end to end, all flat, and it strings together the densest part of the city with the most pleasant part.
On Sundays the Via RecreActiva closes long stretches of the main avenues to traffic and hands them to people on foot and on bikes. That is the single best day to fill in the big avenues, because you can walk down the middle of roads that are otherwise six lanes of moving metal.
Why the percentage moves slowly here
Be honest about the scale. The Guadalajara metropolitan area is enormous, and it absorbed Zapopan, Tlaquepaque and Tonala as it grew, each of which still has its own old centre with its own plaza and church. Your city percent will climb quickly for the first few walks around the Centro and then slow to a crawl, because the denominator is the whole sprawling thing. This is not Halifax. You are not finishing Guadalajara.
What you can do is finish neighbourhoods. Americana, Lafayette, Santa Teresita and the old core of Tlaquepaque are each small enough to clear block by block, and clearing a whole colonia is more satisfying than nibbling at the edges of the metro area. Weather cooperates most of the year. The rainy season from about June to September delivers hard, short evening storms, and the rest of the year is dry and warm, which is close to ideal walking weather.
How FOG records it
Everything happens on the phone. No account, no sign up, no cloud, no analytics, no ads, no tracking. The map you build never leaves the device, and you can export your data whenever you want. Background exploring keeps revealing the map with the app closed and the screen off, so a long walk down Chapultepec costs you nothing in attention.
Ranks go up as your covered area grows, from Wanderer through Scout, Pathfinder, Explorer and Voyager. The collection counts 241 countries, 3,390 regions and 7,342 named places, and you only get one by standing in it. FOG is free to explore, and one purchase of USD 5.99 unlocks unlimited ranks, every character and history import from Google Timeline exports or GPX files. There is no subscription.
Questions people actually ask
Can I get a high city percent in Guadalajara?
Not easily. The metro area is very large, so the percentage climbs slowly. Clearing individual colonias like Americana or the Centro is the more realistic goal.
Does the altitude affect anything?
Only you, not the app. At around 1,500 metres a long walk feels slightly harder, but the terrain itself is flat and easy.
Is Sunday really better for walking here?
For covering the big avenues, yes. The Via RecreActiva closes major roads to cars, so you can walk stretches that are otherwise unpleasant on foot.
Does FOG need mobile data to record my walk?
There is no account and no cloud. The map is built and stored on your phone, and nothing about it is uploaded anywhere.
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