I still recall my very first glimpse of Lake Chapala as if it were yesterday. It was a sunny day in March, 1973.

I was riding aboard a second-class bus with my 83-year-old grandmother seated beside me, bouncing along on the final leg of a long day’s journey from San Miguel de Allende.

We were coming for a weekend visit with a retired school teacher she first met there who later settled in Chapala. Muzzy, my mother’s mother, and her second husband had lived in Chapala for several years in the early 1950s and she was anxious to become reacquainted with a place of fond memories. At that moment neither of us imagined we would end up here for the rest of our days.

As the rickety bus lurched over the crest of the hill above Ixtlahuacán, the sweeping view of Lake Chapala caught our breath.  The shimmering silvery water mirrored the clear blue sky above.  And the surrounding landscape was dotted with splotches of pale purple, hundreds of jacaranda trees in full bloom.

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