Mezcala Island on Lake Chapala

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), so we instead took them on a quick little day trip to Mezcala Island, which is about 20 minutes East of Chapala. We entered the small town and went directly to the pier, where we arranged for a boat to take our crew to Mezcala Island for about $250 pesos, as we love boats, and we have even ride a tampa yacht charter we rent in Florida once and it was great.

Mezcala Island’s history dates back to 1400 A.D. , but it is best-known as being a former stronghold during the local resident’s fight against the Spanish armies who occupied Mexico.

The island residents were able to hold off the Spanish for FOUR YEARS on this island…a huge feat!  It is full of old ruins that are being restored, one being a large fortress that was the old military post, and even an old prison, if I understand correctly. The building has a large inner courtyard and tall side walls in which allow you to get a nice view of the lake!

The fortresss is complete with a moat and a drawbridge.  Apparently, they made the prisoners fill by hand, trekking buckets uphill from the lake!

(If you look closely at this photo, you will see that our 3 year old, Maiya, refused to join us for the photo. We have her sulking immortalized…)

For those that are smell-sensitive (like me), I will warn you that the building still reeks of manyly body odor. Yum.

The kids had fun running around the ruins and climbing an old white-bark tree like this: