Roca Azul - Jocotepec, Jalisco

We had a couple of adventures today.  Our caravan's bumper pull trailer had a flat, on the busy cuota between Lagos de Moreno and Guadalajara.  Luckily, they caught it before it blew off the rim.  The caravan tail-gunner stopped, and between the two of them, changed the tire in under 15 minutes.  We took the new macrolibramiento south around Guadalajara to highway 23 south to Chapala.  Since it's designed as a heavy truck bypass around Guadalajara, but it's only 1/2 done, there was virtually no one on the best highway we've seen in Mexico.

Just outside Guadalajara

On the macrolibramiento

Then we hit highway 23 south, and within the next 5 minutes, experienced the worst highway we've seen in Mexico.

Lake Chapala

The second adventure was Ajijic.  The main highway through town was closed for a bicycle race.  With absolutely no alternatives, all traffic was being routed along the heavily forested laterals.  Since the trucks were never required to take the laterals, the trees had grown down to almost the top level of automobiles.  While we scrapped through with only the odd scritch with our Class A, our friends 5th wheel was much taller, and took some damage from forcing itself through the foliage.  We continued our slow, slow penetration of the tope infested main drag along the north shore of Lake Chapala.  Hotels and restaurants install their own topes on the highway, on the theory that if traffic is forced to drive more slowly, they may stop in and purchase something.

We finally found our way through to Roca Azul, where we had to stop and get cars moved so that we could get by on the long road in.  Then we met Teo, the concierge of the park.  He walked us into our spots, waited until we were set up, then dropped by to answer any and all questions.  He is doing things such as bringing in from Guadalajara, a specific size and brand of tire to replace the tire which expired today, calling a close personal friend who has many years of experience in an american dealership to examine a check engine light situation on one of the caravan's tow vehicles, and brought us a bucket of iced Modelo beer to make up for our troubles today.  We are under some lovely large type of fig trees on the western shore of Lake Chapala.

One other thing of note, we had a small earthquake last night just after we went to bed.  Just enough to make you wonder why the RV seemed to have gently shook like someone had rocked it.  (Our posts from Nov 1 to date have had additional photos added now that we have good wifi)

233 Km.