So what's the most important thing that happened for DJ once we moved to Mexico? Trying Mexican Coke, of course. We're both Dr Pepper fans at heart - like all the cool people. At home, we never drank Coke, going with Sprite or Orange or even Root Beer if Dr Pepper wasn't available. But I told DJ Mexican Coke is way better than U.S. coke, so first oppt'y we had, we each got a bottle with lunch and he agreed it's way better - and we've each had a few since we've been here (partly out of fear of ordering water).
He also had his first experience using a bottle opener - as they use more glass here. Altho it took a little doing, he was enormously pleased with himself after getting his bottle open and insisted on doing mine.
Arriving in Chapala was a bit of an adventure. We got a taxi at the airport in Guadalajara, and while dude was confident in his ablity to get down here (Chapala is about 40 miles south of Guadalajara - Mexico's 2nd largest city), he wasn't quite that familiar with the town itself and we wandered for quite awhile around town, before I could finally get him to understand our rental place was at the top of the hill - so then LOTS of wandering around there, trying to find the short street we're on (Calle 4 Milpas). Locals were very friendly and helpful, and after much back and forth we arrived.
We both really like the place. Very good size. Click HERE to see it - and it's even nicer than than the pics. Only weird thing is bathroom is only accessible through my/main bedroom. But it's good size, on top of the hill which is good in the sense we get nice breezes, but bad in the sense it's a pretty serious hill so while walks down to town are okay, the trudge back up is a bear - but it's only about 5 (down) to 10 (up) minutes so we get some good exercise.
The population of the Chapala metro area is around 50K - which includes neighboring Ajijic - and is the largest of the little towns that dot the shoreline of Lake Chapala (Mexico's largest freshwater later, but let's put fresh in quotes since too much crap is dumped in the lake to make it potable or swimmable, alas). My geography was off and I thought Guadalajara/Chapala were south of Mexico City and more central. It is not. Lol
One down side to our digs is the barking dogs. I'm sure I'll be talking about this more as I'm blown away by how many fucking dogs bark their fucking heads off here all the fucking time. Lol Apparently this is kind of a "thing" in Latin America and is definitely a big CON for moving here unless I'm able to land a place with no neighboring dogs. But good luck with that as there are a lot of dogs here. On the plus side, the roamers are all friendly and not aggressive - a welcome change from the mean Balkan dogs in Montenegro.
Along with dogs, though, there's a fair number of horses in our neighborhood, which tickles DJ (and me, honestly). Probably will take the little monster for his first horeseback ride at some point while we're here as there's a place in Ajijic that rents tame ones.
Final interesting thing about the place we're staying. Until about 20 years ago, there were very few, mostly hovels, up here on the hill. But the influx of gringos and moneyed folks vacationing at the Lake opened up this hill to development and lots of new/nicer places are being built (like ours). Bonus: they found the hill sits on volcanic springs which means more/fresher water, and they also built more modern plumbing so none of that 3rd world scourge of not being able to flush your toilet paper (yay!). So we CAN drink the water up here - but we don't due to all the volcanic minerals in it. But it's definitely fine for washing, brushing your teeth, cooking, etc.
But you can tell when the reservoir in the hill gets low and refills from the volcanic spring as sometimes the water will come out hot if the reservoir has just recently re-filled.
While it's ear;y days, I still can't imagine ending up here permanently. Our first three stops on my retirement scouting tour are being done in reverse order of my initial thinking on preference. I figure I'll like Oaxaca more because of it being more urban/more stuff to do, and I'll like Quito even more due to weather. We'll see!
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