The Last Stretch...

Sunday morning in Mazatlan dawned hot and humid and sticky. Behind us, our neighbour in the campground was out jogging and then puttering on his "Home Sweet Home". This type of abode is very common in Mexico. It may be only a winter abode or it may be a permanent one. The owner seemed retired, ordinary middle class...not at all like a gypsy (from what I imagine gypsies to look like since we don't have any on this continent that I know of)...I thought his choice of colour was perfect...

Shortly after dawn we saddled up and slowly worked our way past the big hotels out to the cuota and and our early start on the trek up the central plateau to El Nido (our Mexican home on Lake Chapala, just outside Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico). As you can see, the day was overcast and murky. Tropical storm Sonia was lurking just offshore, threatening the area with torrential rainfall. As with so many other environmental disasters on this trip (blizzards, tornados, dust storms) we missed it by a hair.

Now I have to offer everyone a caveat. Some of you were with us last year on our trek down and this section for you will be a sort of duplicate. So just be prepared if you see some of the same things. However, because we have several new family and friends reading the blog this year, I feel obliged to explain this part of the trip.

Here is what to expect. We leave Mazatlan and angle inland about 40 kms to Villa Union where we get the last gas available for a long distance. We gas up next at Tepic which is a little over halfway to Guadalajara. After Villa Union we cross the coastal plain which here is much different from the one we just came down as you will see, and not uniformly flat. After about 100 kms we will start to climb in an irregular manner up 3,000 feet (sorry about the mixed measurements but I cannot deal with metres in heights, although I am fine with kms for distance) at Tepic. From there we continue climbing up to about 5,000 feet which is the elevation of both Guadalajara and Lake Chapala, our ultimate destination. The lake is about 20 miles south of Guadalajara but we turn off and take a short cut before reaching the city to avoid the mass chaotic traffic. I should tell you that we really lucked out on this trip because this weekend was the Day of the Dead in Mexico and the traffic is exceptionally light.

That is the outline of the trip. I think those of you who are new to this will be surprised at how this trip lays to rest the image of a dirty, dusty Mexico, The extraordinary amount of rainfall late in the season also helps. Contrary to the seasonal pattern of rainfall on the west coast of Canada and the US, Mexico normally has its main rainfall during the summer months June to September which is also hurricane season. The rest of the year it can be virtually rainless and very dry and brown.

So here we go...

Well I warned you. It isn't always flat. Those are the Sierra Madre Mountains ahead of us, and up over them is the central plateau.

 

And then it is... Most of the crops on the coastal plans are tomatoes and avocado.

And then all of a sudden it's wet. This is salt water...covering huge portions of the inland plain.

And then it's not...

And then just before Tepic, it turns all jungley and tropical. We are now at 3,000 feet.

And it then looks like this.

And we spy our first Spathodea tree (African tulip tree) on this route. They are particularly early and lush this year.

 

So as we climb upward to the 5,000 foot level, what is this? Are we in California? Looks like

pine trees to me.....yup.

And it even LOOKS like California...

And now we have oaks and pines together...

And then we go back down again, and find sugar cane!!!

Next come the lava fields...

 And then this gorgeous panorama. That Road Trek Class B Van ahead is from Ontario Canada by the way...please notice the very cute cinder cone to the right of centre. This whole landscape is fundamentally volcanic.

At last we see a town. This is Ixtlan del Rio.

Soon after, we see the marker that notifies us that we are entering the state of Jalisco and
changing a time zone (now central). Somehow it feels weird to be sharing a time zone with Winnipeg.

And then we see our first real corn field. Corn is major on the central plateau.

 And the other main crop is the blue agave (Tequila!)...we pass the town of Tequila just an hour west of Guadalajara. All the official distilleries are there and open to the public. All the tequila in Mexico is made in Jalisco, under official designation and the growing of blue agave is also officially controlled.

And then we see this charming view...

Soon after, we take the shortcut around Guadalajara and find ourselves on the final stretch of highway 15, just minutes from home. This is the small ejido village of El Molino.

We are now traveling across a plain that was once the lake bottom of Lake Chapala many hundreds of years ago. The lake was once massive, but has been slowly drying up. Eventually it will become a dry salt lake like many others in this area of Mexico. But for now, Chapala is the biggest lake in Mexico, about 8 miles wide and 40 miles long.
The dried former lake bed, grows excellent crops, mostly corn and the new member of the crop family here, raspberries. These are grown all around the west end of the lake where we live, and they are shipped by Driscolls to every city in North America. The next time you have a Driscolls raspberry punet, you are having a little taste of my part of Mexico. Trust me, even the ones that say grown in California, aren't. They are grown here. The big season is November to February.
They grow the raspberries under plastic greenhouses to prevent sunscald. We look down on these from El Nido. Every year the fields are rotated and the plastic greenhouses go with them. They aren't the most beautiful thing to overlook, but they are better than high rises or factories or subdivisions...and, unlike dogs, church bells, roosters and Mexican rockets, they make no sound whatsoever.

But right here, 5 miles from the lake, the main crop is corn, corn and more corn.

As we approach Jocotepec ("Ho-ko-tuh-pek".....our nearest town) we come up behind a truck with a load of Jocotepec raspberries, headed maybe to your stores?

Here we are right at Jocotepec turn off, with Mount Garcia in the background. Our house is to the right of that mountain, on a different mountain side, not visible in this photo.

 Well, here we are. if you look up from the highway you will see an orange house on the
mountainside, overlooking the raspberry fields. That is El Nido. By the way, for you non-Spanish
speakers, El Nido means "The Aerie".

 Instead of going right up to the house, we are on the way to drop the camper off at the Roca
Azul RV Resort on the lake just below the house. It will stay in storage there until we return home. This is the road in...

And this is the entrance to Roca Azul.The resort is at the end of this road. And it is here that the camping part of our trip ends as we unhook, unload, and take the truck up our new driveway to El Nido.

Next I will give all of us a little tour of the orange house on the hill and its new driveway. Tomorrow folks!!