Jared received a phone call from a long-lost second cousin, who was visiting Mexico with her (Mexican) husband and their 7 children, for the very first time! Long story short, our little two bedroom home was dotted with air mattresses and cots donated by our friends for two nights as we hosted their family. Their family wasn’t interested in making big road trips with their 7 kids (they were already spending a lot of time on the road),...

We hiked up Tepala Canyon in Ajijic within our first few weeks of being in the Chapala area. However, it was such a painful experience, that is has taken a long time to blog about it!! The short hike to the “waterfall” is pretty nice, and the trail is well-traveled. Unfortunately, the waterfall was completely dry while we were there (the dry season). Since the trail continued up the mountain side, we decided to keep going...

Just after our arrival to Lake Chapala in early November, we were surprised and excited to learn that the new Walmart was nearly complete! Outside of the Walmart parking lot a huge crew was working hard to lay the cobblestone entrance. In this particular section, they were filling the cobblestone cracks with concrete rather than dirt (making it a bit easier to drive on), but it was amazing to us to see how long the still worked to...

Back in November we were exploring Chapala, and came across a seemingly deserted park called La Cristiania Park. We had to pay a small admission to get in, and we then found ourselves in a very large, quiet park. It is located right on the lakeside. The lake has risen to its highest level ever in the past year, and it has left destruction in its path. Here is an example of the walkways destroyed by the rising waters. I had to borrow...

We arrived in Ajijic on Friday afternoon, and had fun trying to locate our rental agency (oops! We forgot to look up the address before we left Tepic)! Eventually, with the help of some local businesses, we tracked them down. The rental agent that we had been in contact with, Jorge from Hernandez Realty (pronounced Hore-Hey), speaks Engish well, and quickly took us over to our rental house. We had seen a few photos of the house online, but...