A Trip around Lake Chapala

In May Kelly and I spent part of a day with a friend, exploring some of the towns on the southwestern part of Lake Chapala. We learned that a few foreigners live in that area, but not a lot. Here's an old house with a lot of character:
And here is a close-up from that house. We asked a neighbor, and it's a private home.


This truck selling produce is a common sight, and the yellow car is a taxi.

I liked the textures here, with the bootleg DVDs for sale hanging in front of a cement block and adobe home.

Back Home in Mexico: Good and Bad News

We got home last night, from a terrific two-month road trip: family in Idaho, friends in Arizona and Colorado, and about a week exploring the Ozarks.

We haven't driven around Mexico in the rainy season before, and the countryside is beautiful, so green everywhere, with red-tile-roofed villages in the distance looking much more romantic than they generally are when you get to them! Once the rains begin in central Mexico, temperatures drop and we greatly enjoyed cooler weather than we had had in the US.

Still, part of the driving was on crowded highways, with a couple of memorable bits of more or less an hour on hilly two-lane roads where huge semis think nothing of passing continuously. It seems to be a perpetual game of chicken. I kept my eyes shut (I wasn't driving!) as much as I could, and announced at one point that I was *never* going on another long Mexican road trip. We'll see! It won't be anytime soon, anyway... Nearing home, I still don't know how the car in the lane next to us managed to avoid the befuddled-looking large dog right in front of it.

It was great to pull in our driveway about 9 PM, still in daylight. Our dear friend Roberto was there to greet us, along with his daughters who have been living in our house and caring for our dog and two cats. LarryDog was running joyously around the yard, coming back to us every few moments. The cats were in the window, waiting for us to come inside.

What a joy and a relief to be here!

There were a couple of men we didn't know there too, working on our water system. Roberto and Kelly went over to join them, and I didn't get the whole story till later.

We'd been stolen from, a week ago.

One or more young guys had broken our gate, used bolt cutters to remove the lock on our patio de servicio where tools are kept, and taken our two propane tanks. From here and there around the yard, they had stolen the copper tubing that brings water into the house, the electrical wiring necessary to pump water up to our big black water storage tank, and miscellaneous small fittings.

So we had neither running water nor propane. No hot showers for us.

The young women living in our house had been taking buckets of water from our pool into the bathroom to bathe and flush the toilet so we did too. The repairs the men were wrapping up restored water, and Roberto lent us a propane tank and a fitting, so this morning we got the basics reinstalled.

Evidently five houses in our neighborhood were hit, including the ones on both sides of us. This was during the day, when the women were at work and our dog was in the house. The items taken were all things that can easily be sold to get money for drugs, and that is what Roberto thinks happened. He's already contacted local police and made a report.

Does this sound familiar? See my blog entry from January about Kelly's tools being stolen. (This time, the tools were safe under the kitchen table.)

Our friends left about ten, and we went back and forth from our car at the bottom of our long, narrow lot to house at the top, bringing in our luggage and the various things we'd bought in the US. The family next door was out from Guadalajara and their grandchildren were playing in their yard. A couple of blocks away, a small band was practicing a tune we've heard them do before. The bright moonlight made our yard look even more romantic than usual. The two datura plants by the car scented the air.

It was all very Mexican, and we were home.

For inexpensive retirement, Arkansas or Mexico?

We are currently on vacation in the Ozarks, and as ever, we've picked up some real estate brochures. We have been quite surprised that you can get a nice (or a terrible) mobile home or even a house for under $50,000 here in Arkansas. For retirees on very tight budgets who want to stay in close touch with relatives and friends in the US -- that is, lots of visits -- I think it might actually work out to be cheaper here. Luckily we aren't in exactly that category, but it's interesting to ponder, specially since Medicare doesn't work in Mexico.

It's been in the 90s every day and way more humid than we are used to. I've laughed several times when chatting with people. I often mention that we live in Mexico and the response is often : "Oh, isn't it terribly hot there?" Nothing like this!

I'm enjoying my very curly hair from the humidity, though.

Platicar: a very Mexican verb!

I thought that platicar meant to chat, and that is the first entry in my dictionary.

But as I've heard the word used over the months that my Spanish comprehension has been gradually getting better, I've realized that it's much more than that, at least in Mexico. In English "chatting" is a word most commonly meaning light talk... chitchat if you will.

Platicar here is to converse, and I've come to love this verb. It can be light talk, as when a doctor and nurse were platicando while giving me the treatment at the Ajijic Clinic.

It can be a far-ranging conversation, like the kind I have frequently with my maid Rosa, where we discuss getting older, the history of this town, food, why there were fireworks in the middle of the night, and many other topics. I call her mi profesora and say that platicando conmigo is part of her job at my house, so that I can better understand her culture. And frankly that's a lot more interesting to me than exactly how clean my floor is.

Once, Kelly and I were just going out when our friend Roberto, who does some gardening and pool care for us, walked over from his house. He's the assistant to the recently elected Delegado (kind of like a City Manager), and since the election Roberto is much busier. He explained that he was late arriving because people had been stopping him in the street to platicar about various civic matters.

Mexicans are communicative, Mexicans are lively, and they love platicando! Me too!

Mayan Calendar article

You may have heard something about the prophecies for 2012, coming from the Mayan and other calendars. According to what you read, it will be the end of the world or a transformation. I just read a fascinating article by a Guatemalan anthropologist at

http://www.trans4mind.com/counterpoint/barrios.shtml

in which he explains the authentic Mayan point of view, which is that it can be a time of transformation. I found it fascinating. Considering that the calendar predicted Cortes' coming to the day, I do pay some attention! I found the comments at the end of the article, about how to live in a more harmonious way, to be a good reminder. Mastering the breath is mentioned and coincidentally I have been working a lot with my breath lately, ever since a cardiologist in Ajijic told me my heart is great but my breath is not!

Thoughts in the US

We'll be heading, very gradually, back towards our Mexican home in a few days. It's been a very enjoyable time in the US, so much so that we are thinking about spending time in both countries in the future. Nothing is clear yet, and since my internet time is limited and I have dates with old friends piled up till we leave Crestone, I will save long thoughtful discourses till later.

One factor that is increasingly on our minds is the ecological impact of whatever we do. We are not keen on setting up a situation where we spend, say, half the year in Mexico and half in Colorado. Aside from the challenges of gardening and having dogs and cats with such a scenario, the global consequences are on our minds in a way that they weren't just a few years ago.

So our future is uncertain. Of course, it is anyway!

Mexican Corn Husk Dolls

Mexican handicrafts are so incredibly diverse and rich. They also provide much-needed income to many people, often being made by women in their homes. These corn husk dolls, and the baskets behind them, were being sold in a coop of such women in a nearby town, near Lake Chapala. This lower one is of a woman rowing on the lake