Budget hotels in Puerto Vallarta
“7-Night Puerto Vallarta Vacation – roundtrip airfare and hotel - $275 per person”.
You won’t see this rate advertised in your Sunday paper, but this is exactly what my husband and I paid last...
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Masks and feather head dresses: Mexicans celebrate danzas
Mexicans love to wear masks, to dance and make music in a blazing display of fireworks, feasting and shooting off pistols. Appearances are deceptive; even the poorest pueblo collects money to celebrate...
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Guadalajara links
GUADALAJARA
Local websites reveal that Guadalajara
is a lot more than just tequila and mariachis.
Guadalajara has always been a popular destination thanks to its lively music, beau...
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Historic hacienda inns: hidden gems of Jalisco
These amazing, restored historical mansions dating as far back as 1622 have been turned into luxurious hotels.
I've lived in Jalisco, Mexico for more than 18 years, running a 300 acre ranch. I thought...
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The mystical and magical pleasures of Puerto Vallarta
The ship's embracing water is as still as the prevailing silence while I watch the sun rise from behind the Sierra Madre Mountains. Its glorious rays begin to rebound off red-tiled roofs of hillside bu...
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Tequila, more than just a margarita
Just about an hour from Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco, there's a little town (population 17,740) with a big reputation: Tequila.
Meaning "the rock that cuts" in the Nahuatl language, Tequila is...
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Idle ramblings of a homesick girl
After multiple trips to Puerto Vallarta I think I am becoming Mexican. I look Mexican, so when I jump into a cab, I have to politely say "No hablo Español” when the driver rattles off a breat...
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A House Far South in Mexico by Elaine Dandh
This is a reminiscence by Ms. Dandh about how she and her husband, Ken, retired and left their home in Massachusets and came and settled in Guadalajara. It's a month-by-month account of their first year of living in Mexico, getting to know the people and the place.
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Western Mexico: A Traveller's Treasury by Tony Burton
This useful volume is back in a new and updated edition and it’s still as essential as ever. Whether you’re making a brief visit as a tourist, or escaping the northern winter for a few months or checking out the area more extensively as a place to spend one’s retirement years, this is one item you should have in your survival kit. It’s a nice blend of guidebook, travelogue and history text with lots of local color and some ecological notes sprinkled throughout.
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Mexican Mornings: Essays South of the Border by Michael Hogan
Here's an interesting and entertaining collection of essays, mainly about Mexico, like "The Crawling Things of Paradise", a small tribute to all the crawling, flying, buzzing, poisonous, and non-poisonous insects to be found in the state of Jalisco. In the essay "Connections: Odysseus and the Gran Chingón" we find a quite learned investigation into the prevalence of machismo in Latin American society. On the more sober side there are copious references throughout - both critical and positive - to the Mexican natural environment, the economy and the Mexican character.
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Only Once in a Lifetime by Alejandro Grattan
Here's a story that takes in a complete life, from childhood well into adulthood, and from rags to riches. It's a story that is of interest to we residents in the Lake Chapala area as it starts out in Ajijic and covers a fair number of years there - or should I say here. On page one we encounter ten-year-old Francisco Obregón, a homeless barefoot orphan outside the Old Posada on the Ajijic waterfront. It's 1940 and Francisco is hustling for odd jobs and tips. It's the only way he can manage to survive.
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Agave Marias: Border Crossers, Boundary Breakers by the Lake Chapala Women Writers
Here's an unusual volume with ten individual authors, each of whom is independent of the other nine except for the fact they all reside - either full or part-time - in the Lake Chapala area of Mexico. Their book consists of some 45 or more pieces of fiction and non-fiction plus a poem or three. The non-fiction includes travel tales, accounts of significant events in the authors' past lives, recollections of interesting people and other offbeat memoirs and anecdotes.
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South of Yesterday: A True Story by Virginia Downs Miller
"South of Yesterday" is the story of my mother's life as a bride coming to a strange land. The book flows through the charmed life of an American living in Guadalajara in the early nineteen hundreds, into the violence of the Revolution, escape from and return to a much-beloved Mexico. I related never before publicized events of history."
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Moon Handbooks: Guadalajara by Bruce Whipperman
Here's a welcome addition to the growing library of Mexican guidebooks. It covers all the information you would expect, like motels, hotels, bed & breakfasts, restaurants, shopping, money exchange locations, tourist highlights and how to get from one place to another. In addition, there's an abundance of information on such items as bus fares, rental cars, walking and jogging routes, exercise gyms, language courses and even where to get rolls of film processed.
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House in the Sun by Dane Chandos
As the legend goes, Dane Chandos came to Ajijic and made his house into an Inn and, in the process, met a mixed bag of people who also visited the place, which the author describes as "nestling between the lake and the paws of the mountains." There's a full-blooded Mexican Army general and an interesting French countess who arrives alone, wearing a mink stole who makes extravagant demands on the establishment. And there's a pedantic German professor who feels compelled to explain everything he encounters in scientific terms….and many many others.
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A Mexican Odyssey: Escape to Paradise by William Reed with Sylvia Garces de Reed
William Reed tells us his own personal story and what a tale it is. Most of the action takes place in Puerto Vallarta where Reed has lived since his move to the beach in '72. He seems to have met everyone who ever went there - including some very well-known ones, such as actor Richard and Elizabeth Burton, Peter O'Toole, Xaviera Hollander and many, many others. Two people who figure most prominently in the story are movie director John Huston and Johnny Weissmueller (Tarzan himself). In the struggle for Huston's affections, William Reed was the loser. It all adds up to quite a story.
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Village in the Sun by Dane Chandos
I reviewed Chandos's other book, "House in the Sun", in Mexico Connect a couple of months ago and now I'm catching up on what was actually the author's first book, published four years earlier. We're given a good long loving look at the various events that mark a typical year in a Mexican village - like The Day of the Dead, the Day of the Cross, Navidad, birthdays and the other festivals that are customarily celebrated. It all adds up to an attractive narrative.
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Puerto Vallarta Squeeze by Robert James Waller
Here's a rather odd novel from the author of "The Bridges of Madison Country" and "Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend". I've always thought of Waller as a writer of romances, going only by the titles of his books. This one, however, is a quite suspenseful "chase" story - complete with a rather bloody ending - as well as being a travelogue of at least one area of Mexico. The two leading characters are rather unlikely people to be involved in such a tale.
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Driving from Guadalajara to Laredo and back
My wife and I have driven from the Lakeside area to Laredo a few times on what always seemed to us, looking at the map, to be the shortest route, taking Highway 23 to Zacatecas and highway 54 from there to Saltillo, finishing the trip on Highway 85 via Monterrey. Starting early in the morning, it was easy to make Saltillo by early afternoon. Laredo was an easy hop the next morning. However, a couple of experiences on that route made us reconsider.
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The Insider's Guide: Mexico's Lake Chapala and Ajijic by Teresa A. Kendrick
I'm filled with admiration and respect for The Insider's Guide. Its 368 pages are so complete and comprehensive and so well thought out and so well organized. Teresa Kendrick and her colleagues have done a wonderful job of providing and packaging a full authoritative range of information, not only for long and short-term residents of the Lake Chapala area but also for those many people who seem to be contemplating coming here either to live as permanent retiree-residents or as snowbirds.
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A Chance to See Egypt by Sandra Scofield
My spies tell me that author Scofield used to live in Ajijic and that Lago de Luz, the setting for her novel, is in fact Ajijic. If so, here’s her description of the village: "Lago de Luz, on the altiplano far from the sea, where it is neither hot nor cold, boasts no buildings higher than two stories, and no slick discos. It is rather a sleepy place, swollen on weekends when musicians and vendors make the plaza festive for the tourists in from the nearby city. Resident Americans and Canadians make their own social life in their suburban enclaves and trailer parks, their apartments and houses, halls and meeting rooms. The Lakeside Society is the hub of activity, the place where everyone crosses, but there are many diversions: Elk Clubs, Rotarians, Veterans Clubs, Red Cross and all the interest groups, for cards and dominoes and self-improvement. "
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Mexico Magic by Dru Pearson
.Dru Pearson begins her account of her first four seasons in Ajijic starting in the summer of 2000 when she loaded or, rather, overloaded her VW van with as many belongings as it would hold, and she and her dog, Bailey, drove (slowly, she emphasizes) to Laredo. However, before she even reached the U.S./ Mexico border, the vehicle broke down and she found herself by the roadside in 110 degree temperatures, unloading twelve boxes of belongings, plus a TV, a computer complete with monitor and printer and other sundry items. However, a mechanic answered her call and the car was repaired and she made it across the border at Laredo, starting the 750 mile stretch to Ajijic on the shores of Lake Chapala.
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December in Mazamitla by Ralph Rodriguez with Alan Cogan
December 12th is a very important Catholic holiday in Mexico. It's the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Mazamitla is a very small mountain town in Jalisco that celebrates the Virgin's feast day an annual nine-day festival. The final days, we were told, are the best.
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Puerto Vallarta: escape to paradise
From villas to mega-resort communities, high-rise oceanfront homes to marina locations, in the jungle, along the water or the more arid areas north of downtown, buyers found that Vallarta offers a wealth of residential lifestyles.
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