Lake Chapala

Ok sorry about the long wait on posting this.  I came down with something this week and just couldn't pull myself to update the blog.  Anyways here we go.

On Saturday, after looking at the weather forecast, we decided to go to Lake Chapala.  It is the largest lake in the country of Mexico, but sadly is becoming more and more polluted.  I hope the people of Mexico will find a way to perseve it. 

When we started out our journey we took the bus from our house to about the bus station. Where we stopped though we found a Cathedral.

We had to walk a little ways and on that walk we found a taxi driver.  He wanted to take us to Chapala (the closest town on the lake) for 300 pesos.  Yeah right the bus was not going to even cost us 100 pesos.  So we kept walking, but the taxi driver followed us and we only paid 200 pesos which we kinda regret because we only paid 84 pesos for the trip back to Guadalajara.  Oh well. 

Once we got there we realized we got there kinda of early (12:30) the booths/tourist trap things and everything along the lake were just opening up shop and we were probably the only tourists for a good half hour or so. 

There were boats everywhere ready to take you out to the two islands the lake has.  We didn't go on this excursion because believe it our not we are a little tight on money.  So at this lake besides the seagulls that you see near water there were cranes.  I thought this was really cool because I have never seen a wild crane before. 

The lake was beautiful despite the pollution.  The town was really cute too.

Before we left the states we got a book for traveling in mexico and in it for this city they gave a great little tip for a hike we could take to see the lake better.  To get there we followed the main street in town and then turned down a stone road and it told us to turn onto a narrow alley way.  It took us two tries to find the alley. 

This picture is of me in the wrong alley way it was a dead end

Yeah we found the right trail.  It was the most exhausting 20 min of my life.

This is the blue cross the book told us to stop at.

The view of the Lake Chapala.

This is the hill that we hiked up.

We then decided to go and find something to eat and look at the statue that was right off of the beach there.  There were only a few people swimming.  They did have Kayaks you could rent and go out the to statue, but we didn't get the chance to go out there.  So we just took a picture.

Matt really wanted to take a picture with the lifeguard stand.