SWITCHBACKS, WATER AND FUN

We heard conflicting reports about road conditions between Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta.  So we headed back towards Colima and Guadalajara.  I’m sure we made the right choice.  Even if the reports of bad roads were wrong, we were still in the middle of Semana Santa and Puerto Vallarta would have been crowded with vacationers.

As it was, we returned to the Chimulco Water Park about 20 miles from Guadalajara.  The trailer park there is beautiful and comfortable.  It is full of bougainvillea and other flowering plants. The Jacaranda trees were in full bloom, their lavender colored flower petals covered the ground underneath their branches. 

 The park is located on the shores of a shallow lake.  So shallow that we watched a four wheeler doing doughnuts in the water!

  There was plenty of room at the trailer park, but the water park was crowded with 1000s of holiday travelers every day.  They arrived by the carload and busload.  The picnic areas were filled with people, laughter and the squeals of happy children. 

 Charcoal smoke carried the aroma of roasting meat.  The swimming pools brimmed with bathers who waited impatiently for the big bucket of water to fill and splash down on them.  The streets in town were filled with vendors of pollo asado and fruits and water toys.

We took one day to go to Tonalá, a Guadalajara neighborhood known for its arts and crafts.  Tonalá is crowned with a beautiful hillside park.  At the summit of the hill is the Piedra del Sol (stone of the sun).  Native Mexican lore says that it marks the spot from which the sun rises.  Tonalá is the modern word for the Indian name “Tonatiuh” Land of the Sun. 

Beneath and around the hillside, Guadalajara spreads out, filling the plains between mountains.  Since people were still celebrating Easter Week, the streets were filled with stalls which displayed everything from pants to flip flops to toys to ceramic skulls (that Mexican obsession with death!).

The fascination with death is carried over to the graveyard.  Mexican cemeteries, "panteons" (buildings where the illustrious dead are buried or buildings dedicated to all the gods) are fabulous places.  Often, the deceased occupy spaces more luxurious than they did when alive!

So far, the Mexico we’ve seen consists of broad plains and valleys surrounded by rugged mountains.  We would soon learn how rugged!  We were advised to visit Tapalpa, a small community perched high in the Sierra Madre.  We drove about 35 miles on a decent blacktop road.  Then we turned onto a narrow blacktop filled with potholes.  We continued on that for about 18 miles to Chiquilistitlan, a small rural town.  We saw the name of the town spelled several different ways in the town itself.  The streets here, like in most small towns (and some big ones), are paved with cobblestones.  They are so rough that it is impossible to go more than 10 MPH.  You have to wonder why they even bother to put topes (speed bumps) across the road.

The cobblestones gave way to dirt as we continued our climb into the mountains.  We negotiated a series of switchbacks that allowed us to look down on the road that we had covered just moments before.  The steeper climbs were paved with cobblestones.  The road was narrow, so we approached each turn with trepidation.  We met a surprising amount of traffic headed the opposite direction.  Tapalpa is evidently a weekend destination for folks from Guadalajara. This week being Semana Santa, the crowds were impressive—especially when you consider how remote this place is. 

 The big attraction is the piles of huge boulders in the fields before you get into town.  Each boulder easily dwarfs the people who climb on them. What piled these boulders on top of each other in the middle of these fields?  The town of Tapalpa is a tourist town that attracts tourists who stay in the cabañas and bungalows that cling to the side of the mountain.  Its remote and difficult to reach location make it an unlikely location for such a tourist center.

We’ve been asked by many people, “Why on earth would you want to visit Mexico?”  “Isn’t it dangerous?”  I can only say that we love to travel.  We love to see places where people live life differently.  We’ve been privileged to travel to many places in the world.  We’d never been to Mexico.  The more that Kathleen and I learned about it, the more we wanted to visit.  We are not sorry that we did.  The country is filled with friendly people who are eager to help and who are proud that we have chosen to visit their country. 

The countryside is awesomely beautiful and the beaches are fantastic.  There are beautiful churches.  The streets are a riot of colors.  Everywhere you go there is laughter.

Yes, there are places where it might be dangerous.  You simply avoid them just as you’d avoid dangerous places in the US.  The population of Mexico is a bit more than 122 million.  The vast majority of those people enjoy life, they love their families,

They spoil their children, they go to work, they shop at local markets, WalMart (and, for what it's worth, the WalMart supermarket in Mexico is far better than the WalMart supermarket in the US), and Costco, they are honest, and they value friends and are proud of their heritage, including their Native Mexican heritage.  Very few of them ever experience the crime that Americans love to attribute to Mexico.