CHAPALA

After our lockdown in Mexico city, we missed a lot to spend time in the big space.
Chapala was our new chapter on our adventure in Mexico

CHAPALA

Chapala is a town and municipality in the central Mexican state of Jalisco, located on the north shore of Lake Chapala, Mexico's largest freshwater lake.

From Mexico city to Chapala, we took 7 hours driving. We arrived at the beautiful and huge Grandma's house of Salvador.

The Grandma of Salvador is a Beautiful woman that welcomes us to her house. The first day, a few members of the family were there, I was in the middle of a lot of new faces, all were speaking in Spanish.

Salvador was trying to translating everything. That was funny and complicated, but also at this time I realized I missed spending time with my own family.

We spend 4 months spent in this little town. Our big activity was Walmart a big market to make the grocery.

At this time everything was still closed and the only thing open 7 days by 7, was this place. Even the center of the town was limited to walk, the police were everywhere, and the place at night was not really safe to go out.

The second activity we could do, one or two months later, was riding horses in all the town, near to the lake.

We just spend our time in the house, with a pool that we couldn’t use, a huge golf park hunted on the night, most of these days were sunny.

I was cooking every day. We ate a lot and I discovered the typical food of Mexico like tostadas, chilaquiles, tacos, Elote, enchiladas, guacamole, tamales

And drinking a lot of Mojitos.

We tried a maximum to make different activities every day and stayed busy: making drawings, photographies, some « sport », eating, looking at the sunset, exploring the town, taking the sun, reading books, listening to music, observing the beautiful nature and landscape, thinking about our past, our present and our future.

With time, we could do more activities in Ajijic and Chapala like :

My first favorite spot :

Monte Coxala .

Monte Coxala Spa is located in San Juan Cosala, just 5 minutes from Ajijic and 10 from Chapala. It offers lodging, thermal waters, breakfasts, aromatherapy, Swedish massage, wine therapy, honey massage, facial cleansing, fang therapy, holistic massage, and incredible views of Lake Chapala.

Monte Coxala is an incredible relaxing paradise, it's a hidden spiritual place where you can enjoy spa lodging, temazcalli, exfoliations, massages, facial and body treatments, yoga, and international cuisine. 

https://www.montecoxala.com 

We could eat good and drink cocktails just in front of the lake of Ajijic.

Isla de los Alacranes

A ticket booth (9am to 7pm) at the pier’s entrance sells boat tickets to Isla de Los Alacranes (Scorpion Island), 6km from Chapala, which has some restaurants and souvenir.

A round-trip, with 30 minutes on the island, costs M$450 per boatload; for one hour on the island it’s M$550.

Others places I recommend to go on my Instagram in the travel guide
https://www.instagram.com/johannaghem/guide/chapala-ajijic/18123310249242695/?utm_medium=copy_link 

Living in Chapala

Unfortunately, the granma of Salvador get sick we needed to take care of her and at this time we needed to travel to the hospital where the granma was. The hospital was located in a bigger city called Guadalajara.

Guadalajara

We spend some days in Guadalajara, going out of our little town.

Exploring how was life during the Pandemic in the big city.

We found out that it was freer there, and more space that was open, And I wanted to know more about this place.

At the beginning of June, we visited the family of Salvador in Guadalajara.

One of his uncles proposed to us to take care of his hostel called Casa Mariachi.

Hostal Mariachi

During this pandemic, the house was getting empty, and there were still people living in the Hostel.

He gives us the responsibility to take care of almost everything and we had the mission of managing the place.

We were so excited about this opportunity. At first to save money for the rent, to meet new people, a new professional experience.

 We were not expected of what was going to happen.

This was our next chapter in Mexico.

GUADALAJARA.

We visited the hostel where we were supposed to live, the place was huge, the first day we visited we meet people from different nationalities: French, Spanish, Mexican.

We were so excited to meet, moved to a new house, and have a new social life after spending 4 months lockdown in a house.

We decided to move there one week later the big new Opportunity.

Thank you.

Video of Chapala on my Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tv/COYGt76jy9P/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link