The Ultimate Guide to Living and Exploring Lake Chapala, Mexico

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Transcript

0:37

Welcome to Entrepreneur Expat. This is Justin. I'm Amanda, and on this channel we talk all about how to make money online so you can go anywhere in the world. We talk about living in other countries as American expats. We're currently in Lake Chip, Paul, Mexico, and it's a Thursday and we're out here pretty much. Uh, we talk about how to do international investments, so you're gonna be seeing a lot more real estate videos. Uh, in this area coming up. So if that's something that you're interested in, make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell so you don't miss a single video that we have coming out on this channel. And for those of you who are interested in relocating to Mexico, cause we know things are a little special in the United States and Canada and Europe and we hear it from all over the world, really a lot of you're interested in moving to Mexico, then we can help you. Uh, just go to entrepreneur expat.com/consult. And we can chat about your specific situation and your needs, and we can tell you all about our white glove relocation services that cover everything from immigration to tax planning, which is something that a lot of people forget about when they move to other countries. And quick announcement about that. For those of you who are interested in Meida specifically, which is a very popular spot in Mexico, it's known as one of the safest cities in the Americas. We now have a network over there. Who can help you. So once again, that's entrepreneur expat.com/consult. And if you're a new subscriber to this channel, welcome, make sure to like this video. It helps us out a lot, and you'll also be able to see a lot more related content when you do that. And if you've been watching us, uh, for a while and you haven't subscribed, please do. It'll make sure that you don't miss a single video. And, uh, of course, the more people that we can reach, the closer we get to our goal of. Helping a million entrepreneur, expats and aspiring entrepreneur expats. Now, before we jump into what specifically there is to do around Lake Jamal, I wanna first just say that the vibe here is absolutely amazing. So if you like being around water now, I, I always consider myself to be like a beach kind of person. Same. I, I grew up, I mean, Amanda grew up in Miami. I grew up in, in California, a 40 minute drive from the ocean. But I'm actually quite surprised at how. Familiar. This feels like how similar this lake feels to being in, in a little beach town. Um, but not like a, not like a crazy Mexican beach town where there's a lot of drunk gringos. You, you know who I'm talking about. Um, it's, it's a much less frenetic vibe, much more chill energy. So just in general, being around the water just kind of gives you this really amazing feeling of peace. And, uh, we'll show you guys a little bit more around, uh, where the area, specifically where we live, which is by, but where we're, we're at in our condo, we can actually just put our feet right in the grass, right outside of our, our, uh, back patio door. And, um, yeah, put our feet in the grass, just breathe, do a little Qigong, whatever, and, and have a lake view in front of us. So it just brings a lot of, a lot of peace, a lot of, uh, tran uh, tranquility. Tranquility, tranquility, tranquility. I'm, I'm losing my English. The more I learn Spanish that I'm ly dad anyway. Um, it just, it's just a, a totally different vibe here at the lake. So before we even get into the activities specifically, it's, it's cool to note that. It's a totally different lifestyle Yeah. Than being in a big city. And in fairness, and we'll have to put some B-roll here, if you've never been to the Lake Chapala area, we are looking out that way. We're at some thermal spas right now. We're, we're gonna check out all the thermal spas in the area. We're at a new one. Today. And if we look out that way, it's so massive. It just looks like an ocean. It's crazy. Yeah. And when it's a little overcast, uh, you, it almost feels as if you're in like, uh, Sausalito or, or uh, or somewhere, you know, north of San Francisco and you can kind of see like the bay or something or, or going out into the ocean because you almost can't even see the end of it on a clear day where we're at. You can kind of see the other side, uh, of the lake. Just like the short side. Yeah. But looking down long ways, it goes all the way to, you can't see the end all the way to meet. From, from Jalisco. So the other thing I really like about this area, speaking of the nature, is the mountains. So it's rainy season right now here in Jalisco and in the Lake Al area and the mountains. Uh, which we'll have to put some B-roll of those as well. It's like lake behind us. I know. If they all know what B-roll means. Oh, B-roll is uh, scenes where we show you the, it was marketing lingo, sorry, and videographer lingo. It's the scenes. Uh, that we'll put in for you guys, but we're looking at mountains right now and they are bright green. So a lot of people, we were seeing this, of another YouTuber in the area. Uh, a lot of people are saying that between the rain and the mountains and the water, uh, the Lake Chapala area this year is giving Hawaii vibes. Mm-hmm. In terms of what it looks like. Yeah. It does feel a little tropical rainforesty. Yeah. So, um, that in and of itself, it's not something to do, but it'll kind of give you like the vibe. Here. Now let's get into the different things to do. One of which is related to what we just said, which is you could do a lot of nature things here. There's hikes, there's bike trails. Mm-hmm. There's a bike trail that goes actually all around the lake, which is really cool. Like it connects Sahi and Al and Kota. I don't know if it goes all the way around the entire lake, but at least like this, this area of Lakeside, it connects all the major towns. Do be careful though, because Mexican drivers can be a little crazy, so you wanna look both ways whenever you're kind of looking. You're about to cross, uh, like an entrance to a big condominium or, or houses or something. You wanna make sure you check both ways because they don't always give you the right of way. Um, but it's very cool'cause it's a bike path. We haven't gone on there yet. Our bikes actually just, just got here yesterday, uh, from the other house. But it's, it's really neat because it goes, connects all these cities and you're basically like hiking or uh, hiking. If you want, you can hike or walk along the path or bike. Pretty much through like a forest. It's very cool. You've got, for the most part, trees on either side. Um, it's, it's a really cool nature trail and, um, most places in Mexico don't have that kind of infrastructure in terms of like, aside from like maybe Mexico City and I. Guadalajara has bike trails, but they're more like a bike lane, typically on the side of the road or like, or they just shut down the streets on Sundays. Yeah, they downs down the streets on Sundays biking. But this is like a whole dedicated bike trail. And I haven't actually personally seen that really anywhere else in Mexico. I'm sure they have it in some other towns, but it's not super common. Um, it's, it's very similar to how they'll have, uh, they'll have like bike trails. In the US through, through nature areas and things like that. Yeah. So you can also go on, uh, boats out to the lake. Now, this year, from what we're told, there hasn't been a whole lot of that because the water levels on the lake were too low, but, so we haven't seen a whole lot of that going on, just seeing like fish. Yeah. But you can get little launches at the, at the, the, yeah. The boardwalk, uh, in different, different towns. So you'll find Thelan shot and four. Maybe 30 or 40 pesos depending on the area or a little bit more per person. So like a few dollars per person. Uh, you can go out and, and take a little tour on a boat of the, of the lake area, which is neat. All of that to say there's lots of outdoorsy things, uh, to do in the Lake Chapala area, which is definitely very different from what we were living before in Guadalajara, which was a lot more of a concrete jungle. Um, what else is there to do? Well, obviously we've talked about this a million times, the thermal spas. Uh, and all the hotels we're big spa junk junkies. Yeah, we are spot junkies. There is a town in the Lake Chapala area called San Juan Sala. And in San Juan Sala, they're very well known for their thermal spa. Uh, now normally we go to one called DeMarco Sala. Uh, it's very kind of like boutique hotel and they don't allow kids in. Uh, so it's very quiet. And then they have all these different kinds of jacuzzis with like different herbs and, uh, minerals and things in them. So we, we would come out here on weekends whenever we needed a break from the city and go to the thermal spas. And now this is the second time we're at a spa since we moved, uh, in the last month, partially because our mussel really need the hot water after all the moving. And there's, there's lots of different hotels and spas with thermal waters. In case you don't know, uh, lake Chappal is kind of like on a volcanic crater. So you can see part of it behind us. That way over there, that's actually a dormant volcano. Um, over there we can actually see it from our house. And so if that thing ever erupts, I mean we're get front row seats. Yeah, we're gonna get front row seats if the thing ever wakes up again. Um, so what happens is this is actually on like a volcanic crater. So when it's San Juan, for some reason in this town specifically, uh, all the water that comes out is actually thermal water. So there's lots of spas that have been built around the thermal waters, and they're said to have lots of healing properties. And the spas are like different strokes for different folks. So like the one that we normally go to is very like boutique, uh, high-end day spa. No kids, very quiet. They don't allow boom boxes and things like that. Today we're at another one, which is, it's much, much bigger too. We're at another one that's extremely popular. Mm-hmm. Called, uh, or something like that. Did I say it right? Hotel? Yeah. Very well known, uh, in this area. And it's massive. It's basically like a water park. Yeah, it's, it's a's a water park on there. There aren't too many kids here.'cause it's the, it's a Thursday. It's a Thursday. So we figured, you know, if we want it to be quiet, we'll come during the week when we can. Plus we have. More contractors and things coming tomorrow at, to the house that we have to deal with. So we figured, you know what, this is a really good, really good day to, to get kind of a, a nice reprieve from all that. Yeah. All the moving stuff. Relax our muscles. Yeah. Um, but it's still cool. In fact, they have much better views of the lake here because there's like these wraparound, um, things like you, you see over here behind us where you could just kind of stare at the water and now there's, there's some waves there. It really feels. It really feels beachy. Yeah, it's crazy little beachy. It feels almost like a little beach club. Almost feels like a little beach club. And anyway, this particular one has reminds me of these, those, uh, some of the, the Black Sea clubs that I went to when I was in, uh, Odessa, Ukraine. That sounds like fun. Um, that was, yeah. I'll have to take you someday after that. Sounds like a lot of fun after they settle their shit. Um, but yeah. Uh, that, that was kind of the vibe. It's almost like a, it's, it's almost less of a lake and more of a sea. Or an ocean. Yeah. Um, so this particular hotel has a bunch of different pools and restaurants and bars, and they have like four jacuzzis and they even have water slides. So it's obvious why it's so popular with kids. Now the secret to the thermal spas in this area is to come on a weekday because that's when you're actually going to be able to enjoy them. And relax. And relax. If you come on a weekend, everybody from the city's here. What else is there to do? I think, I think we talked about this a little bit in some of our other videos or posts, but there's a lot of local markets here. Um, the thing that we love a lot about the AL area is that the farms are so close by. One example is, uh, all the berries. So they actually make the berries right there, right, right across the lake at the base of that volcano. Yep. Um, a lot, a lot of the, the, the, uh, I think they were mostly the raspberries and raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and things. Blackberries, maybe blueberries. Yeah. Yeah. Uh,'cause the, the land there is so fertile because of all the, all the, uh, all the volcanic, I guess ash or whatever it is from the volcano. If you guys know, let us know in the comments that, uh, it's, that's a little above my pay grade, basically. The, the valleys that volcanoes are in, uh, tends to be extremely fertile. So they have a lot of berries and a lot of, yeah, a lot of fresh fruit, a lot of fresh vegetables from farms either right here or around the area. You can also get some fish that's fresh in the lake. Now there's some contamination, so you want to probably not get the fish and things that are at the bottom. Um, but there definitely is some good fish you can pull outta the lake as well, and that's gonna come fresh. Yeah, there's actually a lot of fish places along the lake, and because it's a town too. You don't have to go through the same level of infrastructure to get to the people as, let's say a city, because there's a lot of distribution stops in a city when you, like, let's say you buy it at the Chira or the Walmart or whatever, and in Guadalajara typically it comes from the farms, which is like out here or in the surrounding areas outside of the city. And then it's stored in a warehouse, and then it goes into another truck, and then, you know, then it's, it's on the shelves and there, there tend to be more preservatives and things like that. That you need in the food. But here it's, it's a lot natural. You have to eat the avocados straight from the farms sooner for sure. Because they're not really like anything that's produce. You have to eat it within like two or three days. But it is very, very straight from the farms. Yeah. But it is very, very fresh. Yeah. One of our neighbors actually, um, owns one of the farms, so she's gonna take us out to, to do a tour. She owns it. Oh. That'll be a fun video. That'll be a fun video. She's gonna take this out. Make sure you like and subscribe so that you can see the video of us touring a berry farm in Lake Alah. Yeah. Um, so we're really excited for that. And, uh, you can go to the markets, like the, the different towns have different DGI is that they're called here in Mexico, which is like part flea market, part treasure hunt, part farmer's market. Uh, so like in, in hoko in Hoko effect, they do it on Thursdays and now he gets on Wednesdays. So going to the local markets and things like that is something that people do a lot, uh, in this area. And then in addition to that, there's also like artisanals and things. So a lot of people will go, um. Shopping for Artisanals, uh, as well. And there's a bunch of different kinds of markets. And again, like depending which town you're in, you'll know, uh, which day they have their big market. Yeah. So that's one of the big things. Oh, de on here. De that was super cool. And in fact, they even have one part of the degi. Where, uh, they'll, they'll buy like container loads of stuff from the, the stores in the us like Ross or Marshalls or whatever, whether they couldn't sell. And like you got a pair of Lululemon pants for$5,$5, it would've been probably like, like an$80 brand new, like an$80 brand new pair of leggings, yoga pants or leggings or whatever. Uh, for five bucks. Yeah. So I mean, you could find a lot of, a lot of goods from America that are actually cheaper than they are up there, which was pretty neat. The next thing to do in the Lake Chapala area, which I think is just Mexico in general, is eat. So there's lots of really good food. Uh, each town is kind of known for its own thing. So for example, in which is where we're closest to, um, they're famous for their ria and they're famous for their Neve. Uh, RIA is like shredded meat. Meat, yeah. Basically shredded meat and you eat it with tortillas really, really good. And then Nevis is like ice cream. Uh, that's what they're known for. Natural. Yeah. Yeah. Like natural. They make it, it's like hand churned natural ice cream. So that's what they're known for. And then in Aah and al, you're gonna have a lot more international restaurants. I mean, we found a Mongolian restaurant in Aah. So for those of you who are like, I like international cuisine. Well aah has gotchu because we've seen restaurants from all over the world. Yeah. Because there's so many foreigners there now. A lot of the other areas are like, like Coco are still. Developing. But if you go to chip, or especially because there are so many foreigners, yes. The prices are, you know, of rent and things are maybe double higher what you would pay. Yeah. In somewhere like HoCo or at least at least 25, 30% more. Uh, but you do have access to a lot more international cuisine. For us in particular, we kind of like a little bit less, you know, on the beaten path because we're more, uh, what was the term that chat? GBT helped us come up with elegant adventure, elegant adventures. Yeah. So we like to. We like to go off the beaten path a little bit, and we also speak Spanish pretty fluently. Uh, and I think that for, you know, what we're doing, which we're getting into real estate and things like that, here, there's a lot more opportunity. Versus in places like aki, he, it's a little bit more, uh, more saturated. It's, it's more of a mature market versus here it's still a little bit more developing market locally speaking. Speaking of markets and farms and ranches and all that kind of stuff, you can actually go tour some of them. Mm-hmm. Uh, in the area. So there are ranches that you can go tour, uh, around the Lake Choppa area for those of you who are interested in that, or if you want your own ranch, and I, I, I would count this as a fun thing to do for sure. I mean, you can raise horses here, you can raise cattle. You, you can have livestock like you can buy. A few acres of property if you want, and have your own farm. Um, you're not really limited as you would be, let's say in the city by different codes. And obviously price restrictions is a lot, it's a lot cheaper out here to get land, especially if you're like us and you don't mind getting a little off the beaten path. Maybe getting a star link and some solar panels, which we talk a little bit about in another video. When, when we were looking at the power grid, uh, reliability in the, in the neighborhood that we were in. Called Chopta, which sometimes did go down. So we set up our panels and all that in preparation for, hey, maybe someday we'll have a, we'll have a little W ranch out here. We'll see. Right now we got the condo, uh, semi country condo. Um, but yeah, you can have your own ranch, own livestock. Um, all stuff you can go to the TGI and buy livestock. Oh yeah, they, they were selling, uh, was it chickens? Um, chickens, I think maybe goats. There were ducks there. Goats, all kinds of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. You can go to the flea market and, and. Rabbits walk, go home with a rabbit or a, or a pig or a whatever. So, yeah. And actually when we're driving into town from our condo, we're going to HoCo. I joke that our neighbors are horses and cows as we are going, uh, into HoCo itself. So, um, and then final thing that you can do for fun out here is, um, there's a lot of healthy activities out here. So I don't know if you guys know this, but Ahi, he specifically basically started as like a hippie town. Mm-hmm. Like. I think it was like 50, 60 years ago. It was basically, so first it was like a, a very well known area for like Mexican politicians and movie stars, uh, like back in the day. And then Aah in particular basically started tur turning into a hippie town, uh, for like American and Canadian hippies basically like, uh, after that era. Um, so because of that, I would think you can still find a lot of like natural holistic healing stuff. Um. You can find yoga studios, you can find all types of events. Although I would argue it's probably a little bit more hipster than hippie now. Oh, guess we're gonna have to see. Yeah. Uh, but that's also quite typical of Mexico. To find like a holistic healing things is not, it's not a difficult thing to do in Mexico. It's very common. It's one of the reasons why we like Mexico. It's one of the reasons you guys say you like Mexico. Like a lot of that natural healing stuff is very easy to find. Yeah. Uh, in Mexico, no matter where you are. In Mexico and this area is absolutely no exception. So for those of you who like those things, and then also, and this is the final thing, there's lots of like community groups in the area. Like gardening. Like gardening. There's also the preppers, there's a prepper group there. There's a lot of little, yeah, little little groups like that. Um,'cause it's such a close knit community. Yeah. Particularly in Ahi and Al, there's lots of activities. There's lots of like community group activities, uh, that you can sign up for and you can go do. We got invited to a gardening party, for example. Um, I can barely keep our plants alive, so I don't know how we're gonna do that. Yeah. Although my Jada plants and my succulents have survived the last two years. Everything else, it's not saying much, but everything else I couldn't keep alive. But I don't know. We'll see what happens here. You've been doing a good job with the dog and the cat, though. I have. I commend you for that. Yeah. Um, so there's garden parties, there's a prepper club, uh, for those of you who are into that kind of stuff. There's all these different types of groups and things like that. And then finally there's Lake Al Society. Uh, they do a whole bunch of different kinds of things, but, um, and then even just with your neighbors, I guess, because here, uh, you actually see your neighbors a little bit more. I mean, in Mexico you see your neighbors more than you would in the United States or Canada, like period. But in Guadalajara, people lived, um, in the big cities, people live more like behind gates and things like that. It's like a privacy thing, a security thing. And that was also the neighborhood we were living in. Yeah, because it was a, a more ritzy. Private neighborhood. Depends where you're at for sure. In the city. Well, that neighborhood used to be,'cause our neighbors now grew up in that neighborhood in Guadalajara, and they told us that Chota used to just be like, uh, Rios. What do you, how do you say that in English? Yeah. That like big, big, uh, rod Rancho farm, they were farms. They were big, big ranches when they were, these guys were in their sixties mm-hmm. And seventies now. And they were saying at the time, were. We're like estates. Yeah. That's what they were in agriculture and all that kind of stuff. And now it's like a major suburb of a major city. Yeah. One thing on the neighbors though, like, like where we live, and obviously it's not gonna be like this everywhere, but we're in this little, this little gated community way up on the mountain and we pretty much know half of our neighbors there, at least the ones that are, that are uh, that are regularly there, a lot of'em will just come for the weekends'cause they're more vacation homes, which is cool. We get to vacation where, or we get to live where people vacation. Um, but we know all of our neighbors and. And I think to even meet, granted in Mexico, you meet your neighbors a lot more than in the US anyway. Like in, in our last house, we, we definitely knew, you know, 10 or 15 different people like around the, in the blocks around our house. But here we know like near everybody, over 50% of our neighbors on this little street that we live in. And, and they, you know, will invite us for a coffee or dinners, coffees, playing dos. And we've only been here for a couple weeks. Really? Yeah. With all the time we were going back and forth too. Yeah. Playing dominoes. We'll go to the markets together. Um, and we've already made connections for our business as well. Yeah. We've made real estate connections. Yeah. We've made, uh, immigration connections. So once again, if you guys need help, uh, relocating or investing in Mexico to link is entrepreneur expat.com/console. And I think that's basically it in terms of, uh, things to do Absolutely. In the Topala area. We're sure there's more if you guys live in the area. Let us know in the comments below. We just got here basically in the last few weeks and we've been moving most of that time, so we haven't had too much time to go out and explore, but that's basically what we're getting so far. Yeah, let us know in the comments. Uh, if, if you have been here or you live here, what some of the things that you do for fun are in the AL area. Don't forget to book that consultation. If you're serious about getting help moving to Mexico, and if you're less serious but still interested, you can also download our Moving to Mexico Guide. Below this video as well. As always, thanks so much for watching. Uh, stay tuned for some amazing content coming up soon where we help you even more along the journey of getting your ass over here to Mexico and living the Mexican dream. Because right now I feel like. The American dream is starting to turn into the, the Mexican dream. What was it that they said for expats in Mexico on Jimmy Kimmel the other day? Like, it's time to go south of the border because the US is going south. Oh, yeah. They said, they said, well, the US is going south, so it's your time to go south too. I'm like, that's good. We're gonna have to do a reaction video to Jimmy Kimmel's segment, because that was, that was super funny. That was pretty funny. All right. We love y'all and, and we'll see you again very soon.