After getting set up to stay in Oaxaca for a while I decided last week to make a quick trip to Guadalajara and Ajijic to pick up some stuff I left there in storage and haul it down to Oaxaca. I had to drive, as I needed my truck to haul the stuff. I had planned to travel alone but at the last minute a young Mexican lady who lives in Mexico D.F. but had been spending Semana Santa in Oaxaca decided to ride with me as far as D.F.
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My wife and I have just returned from Ajijic. While there we toured real
estate with a very competent man. We are currently negotiating for a
property which is a walled lot with all utilities installed, a basic
foundation, cistern, etc. for a small home. What we are trying to
determine now is what the cost per square foot will be for average
construction. We realize that costs can very greatly due to luxury
ammenities. That's why I indicated average or middle of the road
construction costs. Any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
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I am planning on going to Mexico in the fall and I heard of this small village on the Bay of Tenacatita called La Manzanilla, in the state of Jalisco. I am looking for a place that is quiet and on the ocean. Can anyone give me some information on this place? Is it affordable to live there? Is the fishing good?
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Posted by Kim Martin on February 04, 1997:
Sorry about the long delay in responding to questions, but the university
server seems to be down more often than not. Here¥s some info about
rentals. M...
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As everyone who has been to Chapala lakeside knows, there is only one major roadway that encircles the fabulous lake. One of the small but essential journeys required of any lakeside residents on a regular basis is to go from one side of the carretera to the other as a pedestrian.
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We've thoroughly enjoyed reading this site recently and now have another question. With a lake the size of Lake Chapala there must be pleasure boating but haven't found much info. We're thinking about bringing a boat or buying there. Does anyone know about marinas, boats for sale, boating activities, living aboard, etc.? Any help is appreciated...
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I’d like to share a few thoughts having just returned from a brief visit to Pátzcuaro, made for the purpose of sizing it up as a possible retirement venue. Let me start by saying that Pátzcuaro is unquestionably one of the greatest places to visit that exist in Mexico. As a travel destination, it’s difficult to beat, with great hotels and restaurants, a lively upbeat zócalo, the lake, and more crafts than you could take in during a six month stay.
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Huichol art has come a long way since Carl Lumholtz first recorded it in the late 19th century It is moving from a strictly religious function to a commercialized folk art. Some items of Huichol art are definitely non-traditional, such as beaded eggs intended for Christmas decorations; others, such as masks of the sun and moon, are borderline traditional. Beaded Jaguar heads are an important symbol in Mesoamerican religion and by no means confined to the Huichol. The bead and yarn paintings are becoming more and more complex, with some risk of becoming more decorative than symbolic or religious.
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Her bold hands coax the thread through white cotton, relinquishing a fragment of the kaleidoscopic hues within her soul to cavort freely across the snowy landscape. The joints of her fingers moving wit...
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There's more to the Mexico seashore than skimboards, seafood and sun-bathing bronzed bodies: there is solitude. There are vast stretches of uninhabited or unfrequented beaches lounging serenely beside a roiling sea that stretches westward seemingly into infinity.
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Set on the shore of Lake Chapala, the town of Ajijic has become a center of art and culture. The Noches de Ajijic International Festival of Gastronomy and Music highlights some of the region's best.
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Jenny McGill
Jenny is a modest artist. She paints word pictures without fully realizing it.
Drama & Diplomacy in Sultry Puerto Vallarta is an insider view of a hot beach town in a less complicated time. Both are long lost, the simple village and the relative serenity.
The Jenny McGill story is even better than the book. She tells it like it is. If you ask enticing questions, you get exciting answers, about her 35 years in Mexico, about beauty and bandits, about Fourth of July parties and the fake gardener who fleeced her out of $35.
Even better is the tale of...
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In Talpa, we have tianguis or street markets. Every two weeks, venders come from Guadalajara with their trucks loaded with fresh vegetables and fruit, herbs, ornate plants, cell phones, hair dryers and CD players. We can buy a galvanized milk can or rubber boots to wear in the milking lot. There are clay bean pots, stone metates for grinding the spices for savory salsas and machetes to clear the path through the woods.
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Approximately twenty-five years ago I heard rumors of some curious geological formations hidden high in the hills above the town of Ahualulco de Mercado, which is located about 58 kilometers west of Guadalajara, Mexico's second-largest city. "There are giant stone balls up there," I was told, "perfectly round and lying in a great bed of volcanic ash." When I asked how these megaspherulites (as scientists call them today) came into being, I was told that they had been shot into the air from inside Tequila Volcano.
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I began to discover that certain vested interests involving the Huichol did not welcome outsiders. There was almost a political rivalry among various individuals and groups who regarded the Huichol as their own private preserve. This sense of proprietary rights by over the Huichol was confirmed later when I went to Mexico City. Back then there was intense rivalry among people working with the Huichol., too.
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Strange, but true. Charles Embree's
A dream of a throne, the story of a Mexican revolt, is based on the story of the Lake Chapala area during the 19th century.
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From July 16-18, Mazamitla hosts three days of music, art, gastronomy, film and more.
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Lake Chapala’s literary and artistic reputation was enhanced in the 1930s, '40s and '50s by a long string of visiting writers and artists. Here is a brief alphabetical listing of some of the stalwarts of the Lake Chapala art and literary scene in the 1960s and early 1970s.
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The
tecpan, or pre-Hispanic palace in Oconahua, Jalisco, dates from between 500 and 1100 A.D. The only tecpan bigger than this one may have been the Palace of Moctezuma, but this can't be verified because it's buried underneath the Zócalo in Mexico City. That makes El Palacio de Ocomo the largest
tecpan to be found anywhere.
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This is a story about my love affair with an old house in Mexico. One day I found myself standing in front of a beautiful three storey, art nouveau town house. It was shabby, obviously neglected, and unlived in, but it had certain magic about it, which captured both my imagination and my heart. I knew, in that moment and with great certainly, that one day I would buy it.
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Cradle of the mariachi, tequila, and the
Jarabe Tapatío, or Mexican hat dance, for many, the state of Jalisco is the essence of Mexico.
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In the early 1960s, Ajijic was gaining something of a reputation as a hang-out for ‘bohemians’ and later for hippies. Historian and MexConnect author Jim Tuck once described 1965 in Ajijic as "The ...
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Marsha Sorensen lived in Ajijic in the mid and late1960s, and made two extended visits in 1972 and 1973. Revisting Ajijic in 2008 for the first time in thirty-five years, she was struck by the “aston...
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Mexico's economic downturn may be worse than those of other nations, because so much of Mexico's economy depends on tourism.
Entrance to Mexico City
© Anthony Wright, 2009
Mexico City is desper...
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The Naked Stage, Ajijic's biting and sexy new minimalist theatre, had another successful reading in October — Moonlight and Magnolias. For those of you who missed it, it's a satirical swipe at the ma...
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