Wal-Mart and Pirates

Tuesday:   We all had a really great night sleep last night and just hung out around the house until noon.  We had made plans with our friends Fred and Rita to head into town for lunch.  They came by the house and we visited for about a half hour and then got in or respective cars and headed into town.  We of course followed them and ended up parking right outside this beautiful blue stucco blue wall.  The most amazing thing so fare about the buildings here is that you can’t tell what is inside the walls.  As we walk down the narrow cobbled streets, the walls are all different colors, big gates and doors that obstruct your view, hiding what is behind them; it feels like I am back in Spain.  Every once in awhile you will get a peak and there will be a beautiful area with lush gardens, beautiful Mexican tile and outdoor furnishings.  We walk down to the blue building on the right as we head towards the lake.  The Hotel is called "La Nueva Posada" and is the oldest hotel in town.  We step inside the doors and enter he most beautiful entryway I have seen yet.  The staircase going up to the right is all marble, with Mexican art over the place.  Looking up to the ceiling, they are made of brick and arched “bóveda”.  The place is stunningly beautiful.  We walk out to the patio and there is a view of the lake, an enormous rubber tree that must be at least 15 feet around at the base.  We sit and order our food.  The kids of course have their standard meals.  Andrew has a Mexican style burrito, which is not what you would find in the US.  It is more like a quesadilla with beans inside, but he has gotten used to this being a  “Burrito”.  Zach has a burger and fries.  We order an amazing salad, fish and chips “English style” and Fred turns us on to “Limon con gas” (lime juice with bubbly water) and it is wonderfully refreshing.  One thing to note is that in Mexico they are not very familiar with lemons, but you can find them in a few of the stores as “Limon con America”.  The food is amazing and hanging out with Fred and Rita is a real treat.  They are a wealth of information and we are learning so much about our new home from them.   

After lunch, we say our goodbyes and head towards the town of Chapala.  It is an easy 10 minutes down the main road.  We stop at our Insurance office to pay for our Mexico Auto Policy.  It is less then $280 for 6 months.  The office is Parker Insurance and the people there are all super friendly and very professional.  We actually acquired the policy while back in Colorado by email.  They emailed a copy of the policy for the drive down and we paid on arrival.  Make sure to ask for Gretta and Abby, they are really great.  After asking care of little business, we headed into Chapala. It is the biggest of the towns on this end of the lake.  If you travel west, you will run into Jocotopec and it too is rather large.  It is only about 15 minutes to the west of us.  We turned around and headed back to do some more grocery shopping at Wal-Mart, yes Wal-Mart.  It is enormous and has everything you can imagine, electronics, clothes, and food and of course toys.   Everything is a bit less expensive then the US except for toys and imported foods from the US.  A jar of peanut small butter will run you about $4.50US.  If you eat fruit, veggies, and meat and stay away from American foods, you can eat like a king very cheap.  Example, the most amazing Mangos cost us about 10cents each.  Then we found the bakery and the kids went nuts.  You take a large silver platter and a pair of tongs and walk the isles picking out what you want.  The loafs of fresh bread cost around 6cents each, the donut that Andrew got was about 30cents and Zach’s cookie with sprinkles was the same.  After our Wal-Mart adventure, we headed back to the house for siesta.  Most, but not all of the people go home and close up shop from 2pm-4pm for their rest.  We took our rest and got ready for a night out.  After our little break, we headed to the local movie theatre to see ” Pirates del Caribe” or Pirates of the Caribbean.   

The theatre is freaking amazing.  It is as nice or nicer then anything I have been to in the US. Stadium seating, incredibly clean, 6 movies to choose from.  All of the movies from the US are in English with Spanish subtitles except for animated films, like the upcoming Cars 2.  The movie cost us 30 pesos for the kids plus a peso for the 3D glasses and 40 pesos for the adults and a 1 peso for the 3D glasses.  That breaks down to under $11US Dollars for all of us.  The really cool thing we found out was that on Wednesday nights it’s 2 for 1.  We totally have our family date night planned now.  After the movie was over we stepped outside and it was pouring rain.  We were told that we are moving into the rainy season and that it will rain every night from now through August.  It fell for about an hour and then stopped.  The rain of course cools things down from a scorching 85 degrees to about 65 degrees.  Oh, just kidding about the scorching part.  The climate here so far has been just incredible.  The mal that the theatre is in is all outdoors and looks like a mini version of the Denver airport, with the white tents covering the space in between the rows of shops.  The mall can’t be more then a few years old from the look of things.  So, after walking a bit, we headed to the car in the rain, and went back to the house.  What a great day it was today.  We are looking forward to more exploring tomorrow.

Boulder to Lake Chapala, day by day!

This post is for those that want painful detail on our trip to into Mexico.  Our adventure started June 2, 2011 from Boulder, CO and we arrived last night on Monday, June 6th

We have 2 kids, a dog and a cat, so we broke the trip into 6-7 hour days for the sake of our sanity.

We drove to Albuquerque, NM USA the first night then to Nogales, AZ the second day.


We left our hotel Motel 6 at around 9am, ate breakfast at the IHop.  After we finished, we jumped in the car and headed across the border.  We were waved through but the US Border Patrol.  The road we took circled around the west side of Nogales and we never really saw much of the city.  Then we passed through Inspection zone and were waived through by the Mexican Authorities, we were never stopped for any kind of inspection.  The animal documents were never asked for or any other kind.  When you get to the inspection station, you pull up over the first speed bump “tope” and position the car between what looks like a set of cameras in front and back of the car.  Then proceed to pull forward just a bit towards the gate arm that is in front of you.  What looks like miniature stop lights is in front of you and ours turned a beautiful shade of green (choices are red or green only) and we were allowed to just pass on through.  I assume the only time you are ever stopped is when you are given a red light.  The Inspection zone is before the “Immigracion” INM and car registration stop.  You will find IM, car registration, moneychangers, moneychangers, Insurance for cars and more just a few more minutes down the road. If you are in need of your FMM, or Car registration, this is the place to stop.  It will be on the right side of the road, with a good size parking lot.  You will see a number of small buildings.  To the left is the Insurance office, and then as you look right, you have the INM office with a sign that reads Tourist Permits on the right side of the door.  To the right and slightly back is the Copy Kiosk “Copias” and then back behind the INM is the money exchange kiosk.  Back behind all of these is the of that is the Banjercito where you will go to pay for your FMM Permit and register your vehicles, motorcycles, RV and trailers.

Items you must have:
Drivers License
Passport
Credit Card, not a Debit Card
Title of Vehicle or Valid Registration
FMM “Tourist Document” you will get it here at the INM
Copies of all the above.  You can make most of these before you leave home.
Pesos to pay (We got ours from our Bank back in Boulder, CO)

Before you cross the border, try and make copies of your Drivers license, vehicle/s title or registration, passport for driver only and Tourist Visa (can’t do this until you get one) if you already have one.  If you forget to make these before you cross the border, do not worry, there is a kiosk “Copias” that you can get copies made right there next to the INM office.  You can also change your money to pesos, but I hear the exchange rate is a bit worse then getting it from a bank.
When you pull into the Immigration area on your right.  Go ahead and just park in the lot, walk over to the IM building go to immigration office.  They will want your passport and then they will give you a receipt to pay at the Banjecito.  Take the papers they give you back to the Banjecito and pay for your FMM “Tourist Documents”.  The folks at the Banjecito will give you paid receipt of payment.  You need to take this back to the INM “Immegracion” office, get FMM and Passport stamped.  Once you have your Passport and FMM, step outside to copies kiosk.  IMPORTANT TIME SAVING TIP: Make copies of FMM, we paid 10 pesos for 2 copies (front and back).  “By this time, I had run back and forth a few times and was getting a bit annoyed, so make sure that you get totally fired up and annoyed, because this seems to not help at all.”  ☺   Then take all of your copies back (driver license, title or registration, FMM and passport) to the Banjercito (ANOTHER IMPORTANT TIME SAVING TIP: at this point you can go to the front of the line and wait to be called on again. This happened to us 2 times and we were told to cut back to the front of the line after our second attempt.  It is because we did not make copies of our FMM on the way back to the Banjercito.   Once you have paid they will give you a form with a sticker on it.  This will go in your car windshield to the left of your rearview mirror (inside).  There are picture instructions of how to do this on the form, next to your sticker.  Pull out of parking lot and drive through the "NOTHING TO DECLARE” lane. 

We headed out and didn’t stop for gas until we got to the south side of Ciudad Obregon.  The roads are a bit tight the first part of our trip and a bit of construction, but still good.  Once outside of Los Mochis, the roads turn very nice.  I am not saying they are dangerous; you just need to keep your wits about you, due to lots of trucks and people driving really fast. 

Stopped overnight and stayed at El Rancho.  It is just outside of Navojo on the north side of town on you right.  If you cross the bridge and enter the city, you have gone to far.  It is very easy to turn around in the city with a car if you overshoot it so don’t panic.  We had no problem with either the dog or cat.  We had a great room close to the pool, 2 queen beds and it only cost us 680 Pesos. 
Awesome pool for the kids, yard for the dog to do his business.  The Restaurant was only open for breakfast but it was amazing the next morning.  I recommend the "Divorciada" eggs, sopes, green and red salsa, retried beans, chicken and lettuce.  The juga de naranja (fresh squeezed orange juice) was wonderful and it all started with homemade carrot cake muffins.  The woman that makes them was actually delivering a tray of fresh ones as we waited for our food.  All of this for $40 (36pesos), the 4 of us ate very well.

Dinner the night before was in the city of Navojoa and we ate pizza at Carimalis Pizza.  Very cool play structure for the kids and a trampoline.  The Pizza was great, light and fluffy crust, Mexican cheese, ham and pineapple.  The kids loved it too!  It is located about a mile into the city on the left, across the street from a Pemex. The city of Navojoa is very clean and actually fun to cool drive through.

We left Navojoa at 9:30am and headed south.  Stop for gas before you get to Los Mochis, not much on the outskirts of the city.  We met a really nice kid at the Pemex there that spoke excellent English. He had lived in the San Gabriel valley for a few years.  He asked where we were going and we told him Guadalajara and he couldn’t understand why we wanted to move there.  We then explained that it was really the Lake Chapala area and then he understood.  He told our kids to make sure they learn Spanish, because it will help them go very far in the world.

There are plenty of places to stop and get gas on the way. We never almost ran out of gas, the Pemex stations are everywhere. 

No one really spoke any English until we got to the gas station in Los Mochis.

We arrived in Mazatlan that night and stayed at Captain Moe’s B&B in the Golden Zone. Once again they had no problems with the dog, cat or kids.  Captain Moe and Dorothy are so incredibly kind and amazing host and hostess.  We fond them on the Gringo Dog website.  They typically like for you to reserve your room ahead of time, but we had lost Internet service once we crossed the border and couldn’t pay.  So, we just showed up and knocked on the door and we got lucky that no one else had taken our spot.  So, please call and pay ahead of time. 

We took one of the open air taxis down to Plaza Machado for dinner.  The ride cost us 60 pesos.  It’s a rally slow time of year and the cruise ships won’t be back until the fall.  Dinner was fantastic. I had the coconut shrimp and shared a salad with my wife.  The boys had burritos and quesadillas.  Headed back to the B&B, stopped at Dairy Queen for the boys and then walked the 2 blocks back the room.

We left the next morning around 10:30, much later then expected.  The drive through town was easy, with just a little construction and a short detour, that was easy to follow and well marked.  Once back on the 15 Mex, we made really good time.  Got to Tepic, and stopped for gas at the Pemex, bathroom breaks and then kept going.  Oh, we had heard that the gas stations don’t have tissue paper at times, but we always found that they did.  We had brought with us a few rolls just in case but never had to break them out.  Tepic is really cool; it sits at the top of this mountain range.  We drove a few more hours until we got to Guadalajara and that is where we got a bit lost.  We missed the turn off for Chapala/Airport.  We should have stayed to the right and we never would have missed the exit.  We got so lost, but thank goodness I had my iPad with Google Maps (I only had written directions, so do yourself a favor and get a map of the area or GPS), it wasn’t detailed, but we could at least see where we needed to go. A few wrong ways on one ways, dead ends, dirt roads, narrow roads and we were back on the the 15 towards the airport. This was the only stressful part of our journey other then getting all the paper work at the INM office, which would have been easier if I would have known what was needed in the area of copies before hand. 

We arrived in Ajijic around 6:30pm, we forgot that you lose one more hour when moving into Central Time Zone.  So, a bit tired and hungry, we unpacked and then headed into the town of Ajijic.  Cobble stone roads, narrow European streets, brightly colored buildings, the smell of food everywhere, and people all around, we were in our new home.  Our first stop was the waterfront.  We parked and walked the boardwalk.  There was a futbol game, basketball game, volleyball game, kids riding bikes, skateboards, play structures and of course the beautiful lake and the incredible breeze.  It was about 80 degrees on the car temp gauge outside and it was a slice of heaven.  We drove up to the Plaza “Jardin” and had a very nice dinner, all of $4 each.  Then headed back to the house, stopped at the grocery store for a few breakfast items and went home.  I laid next to my wife and we both looked at each other and said “Wow, we are really here” The trip was long, but so much easier then we could ever have imagined.  All the sleepless nights preparing for the trip mentally and logistically, were not really necessary. The logistical part was important, but the sleeplessness was absolutely unnecessary! 

If you would like any more details on our trip, lease contact me. I can be reached on my US phone at 303-351-3912.  Happy trails and hope to see you down here soon.  Buen Viaje! 


Brian and Tracy Johnson

Waiting in Line at the Banjercito

Banjercito

The INM office, to the right is the Copies Kiosk and then the right of that and further back is the Banjercito Office.

We have arrived!

We are here!  So, we left Mazatlan a bit later then we anticipated (10:30am) and headed south towards Tepic.  The drive was absolutely awesome and more beautiful then we ever expected.  It took us almost 7 hours to get to lake Chapala, but that's because we got soooo lost in Guadalajara.  We missed the turn off for Chapala/Airport and found ourselves lost in the heart of the second largest city in all of Mexico. This was actually a city street in the heart of downtown.  I am so grateful for having our iPad with us.  You can actually get the Google Maps App to show you a detailed map.  You can't zoom in, but at least it helped guide us out of the city. 

We arrived at the house around 6:30pm, unpacked and then drove into the town of Ajijic.  The roads are all cobble stone and a bit bumpy.  It feels like Santa Barbara, CA with the water on one side and the mountains on the other.  We found the Jardin (town plaza) and the pier on the lake.  The weather is just incredible and the breeze feels just like the ocean, but a bit warmer then California.  There is a big park, soccer games, basketball, volleyball and kids all over the place.  It was now closing in on 9pm and we all had not eaten since 9am.  We did lose one more hour when we crossed into Central time zone, so it was a bit later then we anticipated.  Then we drove to the Plaza and parked, walked a block to the Jardin (plaza) and found a restaurant just closing down that let us in.  We all had burgers except for Tracy, she had a Steak sandwich and I of course had to sample the draft beer of the night, Modelo.  We met the nicest waiter, Daniel and he is also a chef that works in Cabo during the tourist season.  He was a super nice and helpful guy.  We are now getting the kids down and heading to bed to sleep for at least 10 hours.  I will post more soon.

Almost there

Wow, 4 days of driving from Denver. Stopped in New Mexico the first night, Nogales, AZ second night, Navojoa, MX. The third and Mazatlan tonight. Very easy drive so far. The Cuota (toll roads) are great and the Pemex gas stations are plentiful. Gas seems as much or even slightly less then back in parts tof the US. Hotels (very nice ones) have cost us less then $50 per night including dog and cat. The best breakfast (about $6 each)so far was in Navojoa at the El Rancho hotel restaurant just before the city on the right side of the 15D Mex highway. It finally sunk in today that we are deep in the heart of Mexico. We didn't run into anyone that spoke English until today in Los Mochis at a Pemex of all places. Nice young man who had lived in the San Gabriel valley for a few years, his English was perfect. It's amazing how easy it is to communicate with others using the very little Spanish we do know and a lot of body language. It has been a pretty fun trip down and our stay tonight in Mazatlan has been incredible. Many of you already know this, but if not, we have a time share in Mazatlan that we frequent every other year, so it felt a bit like coming home. We ate at the Plaze Mechado and took an open air taxi downtown, Zach was in heaven. Between seeing the ocean and "palm trees", and 80's rock and roll blaring on the stereo, he was all smiles. We returned to our digs for the night and sat outside visiting with our host and hostess. If your ever think of making a trip to Mazatlan, you gotta check in to Captain Moes B&B in the Golden Zone. It is beautiful and the Captain and Dorthy are wonderful. Well off to bed and up early to make it to Lake Chapala by 4:30pm tomorrow.