Jocotepec

The concert on Sunday was great; it was in the Anglican Church in Ribera, which is a community about 2 - 3 km on the east side of San Antonio on the way to Chapala. The pianist, who is the piano instructor at the music school at the Univ. of Guadaljara, was very good. He is Mexican of Chinese heritage. I think that we’ll attend their concerts regularly and will probably join Viva La Musica; tickets to events are cheaper for members and thus one gets one’s membership virtually free if you attend many of their events. After the concert, We explored around away from the highway in Ribera. It is much less built up with lots of vacant lots and spaces.

Today, we decided to go to Jocotepec, which is about 17 kms to the west away from Chapala, near the western end of Lake Chapala. Two women have started an organic farm (I mentioned them after attending their weekly session at LCS last week). The farm is about half way to Jocotepec. We missed it and went right into Jocotepec. The latter seems to be bigger than Chapala and much more Mexican. We drove around a bit to get a sense of what it is like. We found the organic farm on the way back. It is not huge, but they are doing market gardening type farming and one can grow quite a lot on a small piece of land. They say right at the end of the dry season/start of the rainy season that they don’t have too much produce but will shortly now that the rainy season has started.

There were open houses at 2 houses for sale across the street on our block; we went in. In one house, the agent there said that he used to handle the rental of our house. He was able to tell us a bit about the house. As we suspected, the previous owners bought the house on speculation to turn a profit. They replaced the front wall which had previously been a stone wall like the side and back. They also redid the roof. We are not sure how much else they did. He said that they bought it for about $240,000. At $271,000 that we paid, he said that they just about broke even. He asserted very strongly that we got a good deal. He also said that houses in La Floresta commanded the highest price per square meter of anywhere in the area, even more than beside the golf course. He contended that houses in La Floresta are easier and faster to sell if one needed or wanted to. This is all reassuring that in spite of our haste, we did not do badly.