As in most cities around the globe, you can choose to live either in town or out of town. Both have advantages and disadvantages. In our case, the home we are renting is located directly in the quaint village of Ajijic, so the decision was made for us.
I’ll do my best to describe the village. As you walk around town, you’ll pass very high-end, walled estates priced over a million dollars and next door or maybe across the street, a very modest home belonging to a working-class Mexican family. Everyone coexists side by side and guess what…it works great. It reminds us many of the small villages we visited in France.
As we journey down the cobble stone streets, with Tuck in tow, we greet and are in turn greeted by these lovely people. Everyone smiles as we exchange Buenos Dias, Buenas Tardes, or Buenas Noches, depending on the time of day. The broader we smile, the broader they smile. We have even had the occasional older men greet us with “Buenos dias amigos”….which is a real honor and not given lightly. It’s very humbling to be greeted as friends, when all they hear of America and Americans is how much they are hated North of the border. Therefore, we are doing all we can to change that mind set and let them know that all Americans don’t follow in lock-step with Trump and Fox news. We hope that our mere presence here will help dispel that notion.
I’ll paint another picture. As we walk around town in the morning, we see cute school kids walking to school, merchants setting us their shops, restaurant owners meeting their suppliers out in the street (delivering amazing breads, butter, meats, etc.), local residents drinking coffee and chatting in the town square, the local cathedral opening for the day, the occasional cowboy riding down the street on his horse, a Zumba class in process with great Latin music down on the malecon, gardeners pruning all the plants (things grow really fast here), city buses maneuvering down ancient streets (don’t ask me how they do it, but they do), construction crews renovating ancient buildings (it’s fascinating to look down 10’-20’ into huge old stone foundations laid hundreds of years ago), tile setters designing decorative tile facades around doors and windows….and then right next door, a very new and contemporary bank or cell phone store. In short, there’s nothing like it in the states. That’s one of the great things about traveling to another country…it forces you to learn, and accept, other cultures. Put another way….Americans aren’t “all that”.
We’re off to view a possible rental home this afternoon. It’s owned by a local resident and his cousin, who is a jockey in Seattle. What a small world.
Adios for now,
Wayne, Claudia and Tuck