We found it! Day 2 in Ajijic

For those of you who are only interested in the pictures, here is the link.

So, as I said, we were much closer to human on waking up Monday a.m. I went up to the breakfast terrace, just because the wireless connection was better there, interrupting the poor maid who was trying to get the tables cleaned. She brought me breakfast: a bowl of fruit, bacon and eggs, toast, and a gorgeous glass of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice, along with yummy coffee. I went back and woke David up in time for his breakfast. After grabbing a much-needed shower, I settled in to get my blog started and upload the photographs I had taken.

Elliott showed up sooner than expected. She had planned to take us to an exclusive luncheon where members of the Lake Chapala Society (about which more later), or possibly a separate club devoted to the culinary arts--hard to keep track of all the clubs and societies here--were competing in presenting various Italian dishes; unfortunately, she discovered she was not permitted to sign up guests after the closing date of last Friday. So, after profuse apologies, she proceeded to take David and me to a gal who had several rental listings. While Sarah was showing him a house in the Los Olivos development up the hill, Elliott and I went to her house, where I borrowed some ugly yellow rubber shoes known as crocs. Ugly is as ugly does, they are a lot more comfortable on the cobblestones than my "dress" flipflops. We then drove over to the second house Sarah was to show David. Unfortunately, Elliott parked in exactly the spot where the remotely activated gate opened, and before we could enter the courtyard the bright blue painted gate pretty much scraped off her right-side rearview mirror.

Again, because of bone-headed failure mentioned yesterday, have no pics as yet, but we all agreed this was the perfect house for David. It has a gigantic kitchen with both an island that has barstools on one side and another counter that lets you look straight into the living/dining area. Three bedrooms, one with a huge walk-in tiled shower, another with a bathtub you could practically swim in, as well as a half-bath of the third. There is a long room that I would call an indoor patio, which leads to a covered outdoor patio along the side of the house. The back patio is also covered and looks onto a walled yard with citrus and avocado trees, bird of paradise, a small lawn, etc. There is also a spiral wrought iron staircase leading up to the roof. Um, concrete patio/driveway sort of arrangement in the front of the house and a building that is used for storage and laundry. I'll definitely get photos later, but it seems perfect, and the price can't be beat, either. It is pretty well, if minimally, furnished, and there are some art pieces David is already worrying about in view of the proclivities of his cat, Jean-Claude.

I'm not sure exactly how David became aware of this retirees' paradise, but what attracts people are: the low cost of living (you can still buy a nice house here for 100k), the relatively mild climate (mild because of the tempering effect of the lake, as well as the altitude; mild is also relative, see below), and I suppose the presence of other ex-pats to ease the transition. One example of the cost of living improvement is that one can seemingly escape here the gap in the US between being poor enough to qualify for publicly funded medical care and rich enough to afford good coverage when you have a preexisting condition, such as diabetes. According to David according to Elliott, health care is generally better here than folks are used to in the States.

Our next stop was the hardware store, where Elliott acquired some duct tape to temporarily repair the mirror. She said one of the de-stressors here is that when something like that happens to your car or other important object in your life, you don't take it to the Ford dealer for a $2000 repair. You take it to Pepe who fixes it for $25.

After finding the house, we went to lunch on the main square in town, at the Restaurant Jardin (picture at link above, though actually snapped on Tuesday, yesterday). Elliott recommended we split a local dish, which is cheese melted in a stoneware pot so hot the edges of the cheese formed a crusty, brown layer, along with soft, small, flour tortillas, garnished with guacamole and a choice of fresh salsa or hottish sauce. I was stuffed to the gills after that and in the heat found it hard going on foot back to our B&B (well, it could be that the beer and the margarita were ill advised).

Perhaps this is the place to point out that Ajijic is not exactly handicapped accessible. Granted, I have something wrong with my knee and am both out of shape and overweight, but the combination of the 5000-foot altitude and the cobblestoned streets, alleviated occasionally by sidewalks of varying degrees of smoothness, height, and consistency, can make for slow and tough slogging. And did I mention the heat? If I were going to live here in my current health/fitness configuration, I think I would have to buy/rent a scooter of some sort. Among the handful of taxis we spotted in the main square, by the way, was a bright yellow City Car, and this is exactly the kind of place where that would make a lot of sense.

Having groaned and staggered our way back to the welcoming cool and tranquility (this being relative, too: more later), I for one has no plans to emerge again--I would rather starve. Not that that was an issue, with the huge lunch we had had. David did I believe go for a stroll once it was dark and after refreshing himself with a dip in the pool. I settled down with my Scotch and soda (feeling a bit decadent and furtive as I sipped it out of my coffee cup, the only drinking vessel provided in our room) and finished The Woods by Harlan Coben. The book I finished up the prior evening was Bitter at the Root, an Inspector Banks mystery by Peter Robinson. Elliott had brought me one of her books, so I had something in reserve.