At times like these we have to laugh to keep from crying! I’ve seen lots of great stuff on Leslie’s Facebook account, and on a variety of websites I frequent. Since we’re here in México, this is probably the best, and most accurate:
I heard this week from the CEO of US Global Mail, the Houston company that handles what little snail mail we get in the States. I’ve done a few commercials for them here in the past because their service is great. Now they’re helping in the current situation, even for people in the States.
“Earlier this week we made an announcement that we would be offering our virtual mailbox for free, to all seniors and people with underlying health conditions for two months,” Daniel Spyralatos wrote in an email. “This will ensure that people with weaker immune systems avoid crowded post offices but still access mail, critical medications and goods without leaving their home.”
UPDATE: The move to our new home is coming, but not soon enough! We’ve sold or given away some of the excess furniture and we’re hoping to be gone from the rental house by mid-May. More to come!
Sorry it’s been so long since the last post. There hasn’t been much to write about lately and Leslie and I have both been down with head colds. Now we’ve recovered and there is big news to write about.
We have bought a house! It’s going to be a difficult move — the new house is two streets down the hill. Yes, our new home is right here in Riviera Alta, the Ajijic neighborhood we have come to love. It’s a two-bedroom, two-bath house with a great view and a “bonus” room with full bath on the lower level. We’ll probably use it for storage at first, but now we’ll have extra room for multiple visitors.
After looking at several homes for sale, here in Riviera Alta and in other areas, Leslie and I decided this place could be our long-term Mexican home. It’s fully furnished, so we’ll need to decide how to blend our furniture in with what our friends Donna and Jim already have. For example, our dining room furniture, which Leslie had long before she met me, will go to some lucky person. The table in our new digs is a huge round table that was made for the space it’s in. It seats eight. Leslie says the chairs need to be recovered, though, because the fabric is not really our style.
The house needs a small renovation: moving the washer and dryer out of the kitchen and adding more counter and cabinet space in the kitchen, as well as a new stove and a new dishwasher. We hope to get that done before we move in. Donna and Jim are moving out April 13, and our lease runs through the end of May. We should be able to make it work.
This will be our new home by the end of May! There’s a nice courtyard behind those gates, and we would like the whole front to be more open. That’s a future renovation.
In other news, we’ve managed to survive the depths of winter here in the Lake Chapala area. It lasted nearly three weeks. For a few days, the daytime high struggled to get up to 60° F. Overnight lows were in the upper 40s. I actually wore a sweater a few times when we went out for dinner or to a concert. Our friends in the Chicago area are saying terrible things about us right now — I understand that. Sorry. But climate is one of the big reasons we’re here.
We were delighted with a visit from Leslie’s sister Laura. Leslie and I were both still coughing and sneezing, and our energy levels prevented us from taking Laura everywhere we wanted to. But we hope she’ll be back. We think she was impressed with the array of flowers in this area — especially here in Riviera Alta where the bougainvillea covers retaining walls with a riot of color. She enjoyed walking on the málecon and shopping in the village.
The bougainvillea in Riviera Alta is like this nearly year-round. This is what we see when we walk out our front door.
We did trick Laura just a bit, though. We all had dinner at one of our favorite local spots, Teocintle Maiz, the top-rated restaurant in Ajijic according to Trip Advisor. Laura thought she would pay for dinner, to thank us for hosting her in our home. But many Lakeside restaurants are cash-only. And they don’t take dollars, either. So I whipped out the pesos and paid the bill. Even better, I told her what the bill was in U.S. dollars — a little over $50 for three people, including wine. Another reason we live here.
That’s all for now. Watch this space, though, for details on the big move!
Hasta luego!
We’ll have this view of Lake Chapala after we move:
Leslie and I have arrived in our new Ajijic home and we’ve had multiple challenges. But after a day of dealing with one problem after another, we can have a glass of wine on our patio and watch an amazing sunset. And since we moved in, we’ve eaten nearly every meal outside. Every day is a good day in Ajijic!
Our furniture and household goods arrived safely – a little late, but without any serious issues. Just a few scratches and scrapes here and there. We haven’t unwrapped all the artwork yet but it appears everything is intact. No broken frames or broken glass that we know of. We have a little less storage space than expected, and in the unpacking process we have (several times) said, “why did we bring this?”
But here’s the main thing: Since we began this vagabond journey at the beginning of October 2016, Leslie and I have slept in nearly 50 different beds — some good, some not so good. (Leslie says she gets credit for one extra bed because she was in the hospital in San Diego!) Now we have our king-sized memory foam mattress, the one from our home in Westmont, and we’re both very happy.
Every box we open reveals some item we haven’t seen in three years. It’s like Christmas in May! I’ll share inside photos next post. If you were ever in our Westmont home, things will look familiar!
The rear of the house with our Mexican style dining set, which is right in front of a sliding glass door into the living-dining area. The glass door to the left is the master bedroom.
There are frustrating things about the house, some of which are typical of Mexican building practices and some of which are simply due to the owner’s builder cutting corners and going with the cheapest stuff possible. We’ve been promised some upgrades over the next few months. Stay tuned for updates. Then there are other issues, like going a full week without wifi! That’s a long story, but it has a happy ending because we finally got a much better wifi than I originally thought was available.
Our home is in Ajijic’s Riviera Alta development. It’s a three-bedroom, three-bath home but relatively small and a bit more open than most traditional Mexican casas. We are at roughly 5,000 feet elevation. From the patio we have a view of Lake Chapala and the mountains on its southern shore. The house faces north, with a great view of the San Juan Cosalá Mountains. But this is fire season in the Lake Chapala area, and our views this week have been impaired by smoke. One day the smoke was so bad we could not see the other side of the lake.
Smoke rises from a fire on the southern side of Lake Chapala. The white rectangles you see are berry farms.
This time of year, local farmers traditionally prepare for new planting by burning off last year’s crops from the fields. It hasn’t rained here since the end of January, and that was less than one-half inch. So it’s very dry, and sometimes the fire gets away from the farmer so we see smoke billowing up from just on the other side of the mountain, or on the other side of the lake. We’ve also heard that people camp up in the mountains and burn their trash rather than packing it out. That’s a problem too. Driving home one night, I saw flames on our side of the mountain — very high up. Apparently that’s the first time it’s happened in decades.
We watched this helicopter make multiple runs to gather lake water for use on the fires.
For several days we saw a helicopter with a huge bucket hanging about 30 or 40 feet below the skids. The chopper flies from the north over our house to Lake Chapala, dips down (too low for us to see), then comes back up with a bucket full of water and heads back north, which is where most of the fires are.
The fires began April 27. As of May 12, most are either out or controlled. Rainy season begins roughly in mid-June, and the mountains will become a gorgeous green. Right now, Leslie and I are learning that May is the hottest month in this area. Most gringos go back to Canada or the U.S. for several weeks to escape the heat. We may do some European travel next year, if only to avoid smoke from the fires.
Actually, the heat is not that bad. It gets into the upper 80s to near-90° F. during the day, but the humidity is low — sometimes as low as 10 to 20 percent. And there’s usually a nice breeze off the lake. At night, that breeze sometimes intensifies and the temperature drops to the upper 50s F. Right now, at 7 p.m. on a Sunday evening, it’s 83° F. with 17 percent humidity. Perfect for dining alfresco and watching the hummingbirds and swallows.
Next time, a wrap-up on the move and more photos!
Hasta luego!
Tonight’s sunset was just okay. Really great ones coming soon!
This is a tabachin tree, another reason this area is so colorful, especially this time of year.
I just realized it’s been a month since the last post, but there hasn’t been that much to write about lately. I also realized that we’ve been in our home at Independencia 22 for six months. That’s the longest Leslie and I have lived anywhere since we sold our Westmont home three years ago.
But now we are packed up and ready to move to our new rental in the Riviera Alta neighborhood on the mountain side of the carreterra (main road). The lease is for one year and is renewable. More on the house, including photos, once we move in.
Leslie flew to Chicago at the beginning of this month to supervise a moving crew that loaded our furniture and household goods for transport to Ajijic. It’s been in a storage locker in Lisle, Ill., since the end of September 2016. Last we heard, everything was in Laredo, Texas, waiting for U.S. customs to give the go-ahead. The original plan was for the shipment to arrive at the house May 1. Looks like it may be a day or two later but we were prepared for that.
I’m sure you remember that a warm climate was one of the key factors in our decision to relocate to Mexico. We’re heading now into the warmest part of the year: May and June. This afternoon it’s 86° F. with 22 percent humidity. We think it’s pretty comfortable, especially since it still gets cool at night. But many of our Canadian friends have already gone NOB (north of the border) because, “It’s so hot!” That’s okay, and we will miss you, but there are fewer gringos dining out now so we don’t need reservations at many of our favorite restaurants!
More to come — soon!
Hasta luego!
I think this yellow-blossomed tree is called a primavera tree. Gorgeous flowers.
The Ajijic sign on the malecon, overlooking Lake Chapala. The “C” has a musical motif, and there’s a lot of music to be heard here, especially in February.
Leslie and I are officially no longer vagabonds. We recently signed a one-year lease on a new home in the Riviera Alta neighborhood of Ajijic. We’re in the process of moving all our furniture and household goods from a storage locker in Lisle, Ill., for a May 1 move-in. And we bought a car! A 2013 Honda CR-V, black with beige leather interior. Photos next post.
February has been a busy month, as you can see. But we’ve also been busy having lots of fun. We attended four concerts in the Northern Lights series, also known as Festival de Febrero. Most of the concerts in the two-week series are classical, but there is some jazz also. Proceeds from ticket sales go primarily to support aspiring young Mexican musicians. Here’s a brief video of pianist David Fung performing with the festival chamber orchestra:
Fung has performed with a variety of outstanding orchestras in the U.S., Europe and Asia, including the Cleveland Orchestra. He’s on the faculty at the University of Georgia. There were several other soloists, most of whom have been appearing annually at the festival and are crowd favorites.
This string quartet did a nice job kicking off the Northern Lights festival.
One concert, called “Rising Stars,” featured a string quartet of young Mexican musicians, some of whom were part of the inaugural Festival del Lago Academy of Music in August 2018. We learned that the two-week academy was a big success, with 37 international students learning from 10 faculty members. Twelve of the students were from right here in the state of Jalisco, while another dozen were from other parts of Mexico. Thirteen came from places like South Korea, Iceland and Holland. Faculty members were from Canada and the U.S., as well as European nations.
We also attended (on my birthday) Show Stoppers, a twice-yearly effort by Los Cantantes del Lago, a choral group led by Tim Welch, who we know as the excellent choir director at St. Andrew’s Anglican Church. Performers entertained a sold-out crowd with tunes from “Cabaret,” “Hello Dolly” and “Call Me Madam,” as well as other pop songs. This was the 18th edition of this popular event.
Here’s a brief video of Wanda White, Jacqueline Collin and Donna Houghton singing “All I Have To Do Is Dream,” which some of you may remember as a hit by the Everly Brothers. Wanda (left) sings in the St. Andrew’s choir:
Alfredo teaches us the different ways to say “hot” in Spanish.
And there was non-musical fun and learning. Leslie and I attended a class at The Lake Chapala Society on “Mexican Manners.” It was taught by Leslie’s Spanish teacher, Alfredo, who is director of education at LCS. He explained how to greet our Mexican neighbors at different times of the day, what to do in a variety of situations interacting with them, and some tips on using the right words in Spanish.
We plan on taking more classes at The Lake Chapala Society. There‘s onecomingup on local fermented beverages. We just might try that one!
More to come soon, as we get the ball rolling for the move to Andalusia 3 in Riviera Alta.
Hasta Luego!
One of the acts at Show Stoppers was this trio of mariachi-style musicians. They did several beautiful songs in Spanish. Tim Welch, director of Los Cantantes del Lago, is seated at the piano.
Ex-pats in Mexico 