Lake Chapala is Mexico’s largest natural lake, but more importantly, it was the location of the condo we had rented for a few days over New Year’s Eve. Daydreams of elaborate meals, prepared in a fully operational kitchen, served on a real table (“Maybe they will have some candles we could light!”), daily hot showers without the need for flip flops, laundry churning away in the washing machine and a full sized bed filled my head as we drove to the lake.
We had an AirBnb condo reserved for December 30th at Lake Chapala. We’d paid for the campsite in San Miguel until the 28th….should we pay for another couple of days? Should we hit the road? If so, where would we go? We had seen most of the places we had wanted to see and many more, but we were getting itchy feet…..we needed a plan.
We had made reservations for Christmas at a campground in the town of San Miguel de Allende, so we said our goodbyes to our excellent hosts in Guanajuato and drove about an hour to San Miguel.
Our plan had been to visit Uruapan, the “Avocado Capital of the World”, and we did drive through miles of lush avocado plantations to the town. When we got to our intended camping spot, the owner told us there was a private fiesta happening that evening. We were welcome to stay but it would be muy ruidoso (very noisy). He told us there was a campsite in Patzcuaro, which is where we had planned on going next anyway, and that it was only 20 minutes away, so we headed for Patzcuaro with the idea of returning the following morning to walk around Uruapan .
We woke up on the side of Tequila Volcano, having slept really well in the cool mountain air. We took our time getting packed up for the day, knowing we had only a short drive into town. The morning in Tequila was spent looking after a few chores; we filled up our water tank with agua purificada, we spent an hour in the laundromat (clean clothes!!!!), and looked for a place to park the truck and camper for the evening. We were planning on sampling some tequila, actually a lot of tequila, and we didn’t want to have to move the truck later. We asked at one hotel with courtyard parking if we could camp there, but they were going to be full for the night and didn’t have room for us. We asked about the safety of camping on the streets, and were assured that it was perfectly safe. We ended up parking the truck on a dead end street surrounded by nice homes, and headed out for the day.
We drove south from Mazatlan to an ocean front campground near the town of Teacapan called Color Marino RV Park. We took the libre (free) road, instead of the toll road, travelling through several small towns. Peoples’ reaction to us varied from enthusiastic smiles and waves, to slight frowns (damn tourists!), to indifference. Many of the small towns we drove through looked very poor, and we later learned that many farms in the area were badly damaged by hurricanes and have not recovered.
(Nov 15 – 16, 2017)
Prior to coming to Creel we had booked an overnight tour with Eco AlterNATIVE Tours. We were not sure what to expect from the tour, we just knew that we would be visiting a village of the Raramuri people.
Well, we are now officially homeless! We handed over the keys to our house to our tenants yesterday, convoyed in the truck and my car for some last errands around Calgary, then drove out to our tiny cabin in British Columbia. We will be back and forth between the cabin and Calgary for about the next month while we wait for hurricane season in Mexico to end, then we will start our drive south.