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Published: February 13th 2014
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Dragonfly
In the garden at the Lake Chapala Society Center...library, lecture hall, yoga.... An hour taxi ride took us over the mountains and down to Lake Chapala, and into another world...
We saw very few non-Mexicans in Guadalajara (maybe 8 at the most) and here it seems like there only non-Mexicans! This is one of the larger ex-pat areas of Mexico....
We are staying at a beautiful hotel...an exquisite tropical paradise complete with swimming pool, elegant resident dog, and flowers everywhere...It's not quite twice what we paid for our hotel in Guadalajara....and is an expanded version of the lovely house we rented... there are only 4 rooms, and not all are occupied, so it's very peaceful.
We had lunch on the lake front, at a place that advertised an all-you-can-eat buffet (which we resisted and had veggie quesadillas instead). The only other customers were groups of straw-hatted gringos, well past Medicare age...enjoying the buffet. The history of this restaurant was printed on the menu and included incarnations as a tequila hacienda, coffee mill, gold processing plant, hotel... the owners ranged from Mexicans to Canadian "alcoholics" who ran the place into the ground to an American guy who claimed there were health benefits from the water and was jailed by the Mexican
government for lying....
We walked around town and discovered the Lake Chapala Center, where good deeds are done and the mind is engaged...We saw yoga, an end-of-life planning class, and a lecture on Darwinism, that Bill attended for awhile.
After a bit of shopping, we lounged by the pool til dinner....
Dinner was eaten in a restaurant on the plaza, in the company of more older people and a group of missionaries from the south (USA), and a group that may have been here on a tour to familiarize them with the ex-pat life.
Today (Wednesday, I think...) we breakfasted at a small café frequented by only Americans/Canadians, after I finished my run along the lake. We asked for information on renting bikes from the owner of the café, and the other diners chimed in with info....one woman said she had friends who rented golf carts...when we explained we were looking for exercise, she laughed derisively and said exercise only leads to joint replacement when you're older....
There were no rental bikes, but another diner suggested a hike up to the mountainside chapel, so that's what we did....
The late afternoon was spent by
the pool, arranging the next two hotel stays...one here (we have to move since they are almost tripling the rates here in paradise for Valentine weekend...) for Friday and Saturday, and then on to Mazamitla for 3 nights...
We are surprised at how beautiful this town is.... Yes, it's full of English speakers and most of the Mexicans speak English, and the signs are often in English, but the beauty of the streets and homes makes up for the Americanization...There is some aspect of the Disneyland version of Mexico here, but life appears to be more authentic than I had expected.
On a sad note, there was a murder here last weekend....we overheard some of the details at breakfast. The deceased were a Canadian couple, killed in their home. Rumor has it that the woman was very nasty and had complained about construction near their house, and had gotten 3 workers fired, so that the murders may have been retribution. There has not been a violent crime against ex-pats here in recent history, so this is a big deal for Mexicans and ex-pats both... (Note: Canadian TV just announced that the authorities have caught one of the killers,
but his brother is still at large. One brother was a construction worker on the property next door to the deceased... It appears that it was a robbery gone bad: the woman awoke and recognized one of the men.)
We had dinner at a very popular local restaurant tonight, the Tango (a 90 minute wait for a table) and spoke with our young waiter about his life. He is from Ajijic, but has lived in Spain and London. He recently returned and is now enrolled in college in Guadalajara and works at the family restaurant when he has time off from classes. He loves the town and told us how beautiful the mountains are in the rainy season, brilliant green against the sky....
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