Chapter 7 - Crazy Fireworks, Murals, and More New Friends

Hi again…

On March 2, we left Mismaloya and travelled about 3 hours south to the San Patricio, Barra de Navidad, and Melaque area.

Along the way, we crossed the Punta Los Horcones River.

Beautiful setting. Not much moving water there now, but I bet it's
quite impressive at the end of the rainy season.

Before we reached our final destination, we were told to stop at Playa Punta Perula.

It was a small little beach town with a super long wide beach.

We even saw a red Audi racing down the beach.

We were so surprised when we saw him, we couldn't get our phones out fast enough to get a video. This video shows him driving much slower back down the beach.

Barra De Navidad, San Patricio, and Melaque are three towns that are within walking distance of each other by beach. We quickly discovered beach walking here was not easy. It was very angled to the water and your feet would sink in several inches when walking on the sand above the angle.

We did very little beach walking during our stay here, which was a bummer.

We stayed in San Patricio at Anabel’s Place for two weeks.

😀 The pros of Anabel's Place:

American style design/living
nice patio in unit and great rooftop patio
5 minute walk to the beach
well appointed kitchen
laundry on-site
quiet area

😀 The cons of Anabel's Place:

1 bedroom, 1 bath
3rd floor (we learned 1st floor units are the best when lugging around so many bags)
no green space
on-street parking

We discovered this area was home to huge banana fields. It took us awhile to figure out what was growing on these short trees. I always thought bananas would grow on tall trees.

Not sure why the banana clusters were covered with blue bags.
Maybe to protect them from bugs or the sun?

We also discovered a new fruit while here….starfruit. It’s a cross between an orange and lemon.

It was delicious as a garnish and in drinks.

Before we left home, we bought this door lock on Amazon. We like the added security when in Airbnb's and hotels. It worked on about 2/3rds of the locks.

Two locks were only $13.99.

On March 4, a truck backed into the scooter during the night in its parking spot.

Happy there was no damage.

On March 5, we visited the Malecon in Melaque. Many Mexican beach towns have malecons. Basically they are boardwalks along the water. The one in Melaque was very weird.

It was a beautiful boardwalk in a super weird place at the edge of town.
Usually they are located in the town center along the water's edge.

We were intrigued by the white building on the right with the spiral staircase.

It was a great place to walk Charlie...he could even go off leash.

Corp was excited to buy three Hawaiian shirts for $15 at a small shop in San Patricio. What a deal!

We are now Hawaiian shirt snobs because our new friend Mark told us how to
pick out the high-end shirts….patterns on front buttons and pockets line up.

On March 6, we rode the scooter to Barra de Navidad.

Charlie enjoying his backpack scooter ride.

We took a water taxi over to Isla El Jabato. It was a very cool little island where we enjoyed drinks.

We were amazed at how much stuff the locals brought with them to the island: coolers, food, water toys, grills, just to name a few things.

There was a huge resort across the lagoon.

Rumor has it that Michael Jackson would stay there with his chimpanzee Bubbles.
He would rent the whole resort for privacy.
Not sure it that’s and urban legend.

On March 6, we also discovered the Aroyo Bar in San Patricio. It was a big beach bar that was constructed entirely of driftwood during the first year of Covid. It was the coolest beach bar I have ever seen and we took a ton of pictures and videos of the place.

I loved the heart on the beach and the woman’s bathroom.
I know it's weird, but the bathroom was so cool!

Corp couldn't resist taking a video of a four wheeler on the beach.

Easy and fast way to go between Barra and San Patricio.

On March 8, we visited a really small beach in the town next to Melaque called Cuastomes. It only had a one way road through town.

On March 10, we visited Playa Tenacatita with our new friends Mark and Robin from Vancouver Island, BC and Dave and Chris from Kelowna, BC.

The history of this beach was interesting.
It was a fully developed beach back in the 1980s.
A Mexican guy came in and said the land was his and bulldozed almost everything down.
There are 3 relict huge house structures left.

We had a full 4Runner with 6 people, so Charlie and I got to hang out in the very back.

In the San Patricio town square, they have 10 nights of festivities in advance of St. Patty’s Day on March 17.

Every night there were more and more people in the square.

It was fun riding on the ferris wheel at night.

I loved the fresh made churros (deep fried dough rolled in cinnamon and sugar)
and gorditas (sweet style English muffin with sweetened condensed milk in the center).

So delicious!

The 10 nights of nightly fireworks were AMAZING and super dangerous. Mexicans definitely love fireworks. We enjoyed the chaos several nights. The last night Corp was in the thick of it taking all the following videos. I included them all because I just couldn't narrow down the number. They are all nuts!

Our new friends Mark and Robyn from Vancouver Island, BC
enjoying a drink after the fireworks.

Ladies dancing a festive dance.

An incredibly talented musician playing his guitar backwards!

Drinking in public...Mexican style...
tequila, ice, pop, and red solo cups...no cooler needed.

A group protesting violence against women.

We were told there is a lot of domestic violence in Mexico

because of long standing macho beliefs.

We also bought some cookies at the weekly market right by our place. It took a while to find them because they were not out in the open. They had different a funny taste and different strengths...wink, wink.

On March 14, we went to the City of Manzanillo; a big industrial port city about 1 hour north of San Patricio. We didn't care for it.

We have never seen many cargo containers in the port.

Huge fish sculpture on the Malecon.

Huge fruit/vegetable mercantile.

Love these painted stairs!

Now we know how flour tortillas are made.

We visited the Santiago neighborhood in Manzanillo, which was a neighborhood of U.S. and Canadian expats. Of course, that neighborhood was full of McDonalds, Burger Kings, and all American fast food chains, which we try to stay away from as much as possible. About every three weeks, we have an “American Day” where we enjoy a meal at an American fast food chain. You can only eat so many tacos.

On March 15, we visited LaManzanilla Beach with our friends from British Columbia; Mark, Robyn, Dave, and Chris. It was an awesome walking beach with lots of interesting things to see.

The beach has a cemetery. We have never seen a beachfront cemetery.

Corp found the crazy anchors interesting. Excellent reuse of garbage.

It has a big beachfront RV park.
We were surprised there were so few RVs there.
Seems like a beautiful place to park an RV.

There were a few storage container tiny houses on the beach.
Not sure I want to stay in one, but interesting to see.

We also saw this crazy weird fish dead on the beach.

We also try an avocado bucanero.
It was delicious and yummy.
I will definitely be making those in the future.

Mark, Robyn, Chris, Dave, and Corp chilling at the beach.

On March 16, we left San Patricio and drove 5 hours northeast through Colima to the Lake Chapala area.

We had planned to stay in Colima for a few days, but were advised against it. Violent crime and gang activity are widespread in the area and U.S. citizens have been victims of recent kidnapping in the area. That was the only place we decided to skip because of safety concerns.

You may be asking yourself how we chose where to visit. We did some research, but mostly decisions were made based on other people’s recommendations.

Along the way we saw the Colima volcano (Nevado de Colima).

It is a huge stratovolcano and the most active volcano in Mexico.
It last erupted in January 2017.
It was pretty impressive from the road.

We also saw some big sand devils on the way to the Lake Chapala area.

We describe the landscape as a hellscape.
The dried up lakebed was very barren and quite depressing.
We kept asking each other where is the tropical climate we are looking for?

The Lake Chapala area consists of three small towns connected by road; Chapala, San Antonio Tlayacapan, and Ajijic, which are all located on the shores of Lake Chapala. Lake Chapala is the largest freshwater lake in Mexico. This location is not located on the beach.

We stayed in Ajijic at Mercede’s Place for two weeks.

😀 The pros of Mercede's Place:

3 bedroom, 1 bath
one level
great patio
fenced in yard for Charlie
green lawn
secured parking
next door kitty became our new Mexican furry friend

😀 The cons of Mercede's Place:

needed updating
no tv
2 cockroaches in the bathroom (fyi...they may not be dead when they are on their back. Corp thought one was dead and went to pick it up with a paper towel. It scurried up the paper towel and then it wouldn't flush down the toilet.
toilet stopped working the last day
wifi was out for 2 days

It took about a week and a half, but Charlie became best buds with the next door kitty.

This pic is so stinking cute!

Kitty interrupting my morning yoga session. She loved my orange yoga mat.

There were so many cool doors in the neighborhood that I had to start taking pics.

This area has the most beautiful flowers and blooming trees. I really wish I could grow some of these in Minnesota.

On March 17, St. Patty’s Day, we celebrated at Mel’s Bar. '

We enjoyed green margarita’s and Jamison and beer.
We were both recovering from norovirus so our tummies were
not feeling the best to partake in our normal St. Patty’s Day festivities.
Charlie was having some digestive issues too because we forgot to give
him his hard dog food for a day or two.

On March 19, we went to Chapala.

They had a very impressive Malecon with lots of shops and vendors selling treats.

Corp enjoyed a yummy strawberry ice cream treat.

I love picking out candy from the candy cart.
The blueberry penguins were my favorite.

Love locks at the end of the fishing pier. There were hundreds of them.

We realized in Mexico that you can’t ever have high expectations when trying to find a restaurant. Half the time Google info is incorrect. It was pretty frustrating at times...especially when the hangries were happening.

On March 20, we came across the Bikini Car Fest in the park in Chapala. No bikinis, but the cars were pretty neat.

I loved the Hello Kitty car!

The stereo systems and speakers were crazy loud.

Lowriders....here they come!

There were a ton of completely restored VW bugs at the car fest.

On March 20, we decided to take a road trip around Lake Chapala. It took about 4 hours. Lots of agriculture in this area.

We went to Sahnayo.

There were tons of scooters parked everywhere.

They had a beautiful town square and cathedral in their Centro
and so many benches to sit on.

On our road trip, we saw lots of white tents in fields and learned they are for O’Driscolls Farms. Lots of tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries grown in this area.
They grow the same strawberries that we eat at home.

Mexicans love to start random grass fires along the road.
We saw them all throughout Mexico, not just here.

We drove thru a super small town called Petatan. This is where the white pelicans winter in Lake Chapala.

There were tons of pelicans in this little town on the lake.

Our last road trip stop was Jocotepec at the east end of Lake Chapala.

On March 20, we stopped at the Iron Horse Bar. It was walking distance from our place so we stopped by several times while we were there. We listened to a great band....can't remember their name. The harmonica player was awesome.

On March 24, we went hiking on the El Tepalo Trail near Ajicic. It had lots of loose gravel and slippery spots, so it was hard to enjoy the surroundings at times.

We took the scooter to Ajijic to check out Centro and a few residential neighborhoods.

We were surprised to see they had lots of great murals.

On March 25, Corp took the truck in to get the car tire fixed for $7.50, which included tip.

There was a coat hanger type wire in the tire. Fixed in no time.

A lot of the towns we visited had cobblestone streets.

It looks great in photos, but walking, biking, and riding scooter on cobblestone is not fun.
We miss concrete and pavement!

On March 28, we took a water taxi to Scorpion Island (Isla de los Alacranes). We paid $30 for the water taxi. Island was a disappointment, but the boat ride was great. It felt so good to be on the water again. We did not see any scorpions...thankfully!