If a showing of newer or younger foreign faces seems evident around Lake Chapala, it may be due to the growth of a novel way to travel while living more like a local than a tourist.

In 1995, Wendy Johnson was living at lakeside when a young woman who came to clean her house asked if she had heard about the 15-year-old boy who had just hung himself – on his father’s birthday in San Juan Tecomatlan, one of lakeside’s most economically challenged villages, located 20 minutes from Ajijic.

It was a scant six years ago that Carlos Martinez and his wife, Ana Garcia, opened a veterinary clinic on Avenida Lopez Cotilla, not far from the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara.

While plans to build a modern art museum overlooking Guadalajara’s Barranca de Huentitan (canyon) advance at a snail’s pace, Mexico City offers up a smorgasbord of choices for art lovers to indulge in their obsession.

On May 12, an hour before a group of Mexican students arrived at Ajijic’s Wilkes Center to begin the exercise “Difficult Journey,” 20 volunteers gathered for an orientation, led by lakeside resident Phil Rylett.

For all of her 70 years, Sydney Metrick claims she has never been “normal.”  In fact, the lakeside resident, coach, teacher and author – and misfit – says she was “all over the map.”