Lago de Chapala

From Tapalpa we moved on to Chapala. We splurged a little to stay at the Villa 1927 Arthotel right on the water. It was very nice, but a bit hard to find. There was no sign on the street, and I had to "sneak" in when someone else opened the gate. Then someone parked in front of the gate so we couldn't drive in. Eventually we got settled. They even gave us a free upgrade on our room.



There are lots of birds around the lake - egrets, herons, ducks, coots, and white pelicans like we get in Saskatoon. I wonder if any of our Saskatoon pelicans winter at Chapala?







Of course, being on the water, I couldn't resist a few reflection shots.



It was nice being right on the lake to watch the sunset while we enjoyed a glass of wine.





In the morning we took advantage of the walkway along the shore to get out for a run. Although it was less than a kilometer long, so it took a few laps to get in 5k. And afterwards, good coffee at Coffee Hour.

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Mostly Flowers

There are so many flowers in warm places (relative to Saskatchewan). Here in Mexico, they're everywhere. Bougainvillea grow like weeds in glorious colors, often at tree like sizes. I need to do some walks just to take flower photos since there are so many. As it is, I just grab shots whenever I get a chance and something catches my eye. I'm terrible at identifying plants, and in urban areas so many are introduced (like birds of paradise from South Africa). Out in the country there's a better chance they're native, but not guaranteed. Most of the id's come from iNaturalist, but posts don't always get identified.













These Rock Squirrels were running around at one of the archeological sites we visited.



A nice lichen, also at the archeological site:



And a few more abstract plant images:







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Cascada el Salto del Nogal

One day when the wind was wrong for paragliding, we hiked in to a nearby waterfall - at 105m (350ft) the highest in the state of Jalisco. We'd been warned that it was a little hard to find, but Google Maps took us straight to the parking area. My gps watch showed about 5 km round trip for the hike, but we wandered around a bit. It's mostly downhill to the waterfall, which means uphill on the way back, about 250m (800 ft) vertical.





The countryside around is dry, with cactus, so it was nice to see the water and greenery.



A pool above the lower waterfall was full of tadpoles. I kept an eye out for frogs or toads but I never saw any.



There were a number of butterflies around, but only one sat still long enough for me to photograph. According to iNaturalist it's a Texan Crescent. It was fairly small.



There are lots of interesting plants and flowers here. iNaturalist suggested these are a kind of marigold.



And these are a kind of paintbrush, possibly Field Indian Paintbrush



These were three different stages of the fruit and seeds on a tree. I'm not sure what kind.



On our drive back I spotted the red flash of this Vermillion Flycatcher. I recognized it from seeing them in Big Bend National Park in Texas. Like many small birds, it didn't sit still for long. I was hanging out the window of the car while Shelley drove slowly down the road as it moved from perch to perch. I didn't have a long telephoto so this was the only shot that was half decent (and still not as sharp as I'd like).



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Tapalpa, Mexico

We arrived in Tapalpa on a Saturday afternoon. We found our hotel (Posada Real) and checked in. It was mid range, nice rooms but nothing fancy. It had private parking which was a plus. The first objective was coffee. We found a nice little coffee shop with outdoor seating in a little courtyard with flowers (Cafe Rosa). Sadly, that was the only time we found it open. There was a Chocolaterie that stayed open late so we could have Mexican hot chocolate in the evening.









The main plaza had two churches. I preferred the old barrel vaulted one with the cracked bell in its tower over the newer larger brick one.





There was another church a few blocks away. Every small town in Mexico seems to have at least one fancy church, if not several.



Meson de Los Encinos (house of the oaks), on the second floor overlooking the plaza, became our regular breakfast stop. I drank Cafe de Olla, a Mexican mixture of coffee, cinnamon, and unrefined cane sugar.  One of the oddities is that none of the restaurants opened for breakfast till 9 or 9:30, which is quite late for us. Luckily paragliding isn’t an early morning activity.

Other restaurants we enjoyed included Los Girasoles (the sunflowers) - lovely courtyard, Madre Tierra - good coffee and more American food, and Paulines (my mother's name) - another second floor with a view of the plaza. When we went to El Jardín de Filippo there was a birthday party for a one year old in progress. We even got cake before the best pizza I’ve had in a long time.

Saturday, when we arrived, Tapalpa was a busy place. There were tons of people and a band in the plaza. I suspect it was some kind of festival. After that things quieted down. Even when it was busy it was all Mexican visitors, probably from the big city of Guadalajara to the north. We saw no white gringos like us. Which meant most people did not speak much English. In many ways that’s nice. But despite quite a few travels in Spanish speaking countries, Shelley and I have failed to pick up much of the language. We know a few words and phrases, and we're better by the end of a trip. But then we don't touch it again for a year or two and we're right back where we started i.e. dos copas vino tinto, por favor. We manage, occasionally resorting to Google Translate.

Most of the other paraglider pilots aren’t staying in Tapalpa. One of the reasons is that it’s cool in Tapalpa in the evenings and mornings. (But warm during the day.) Some of them are around Chapala which is a bit warmer but over an hour drive away. (Although closer to the San Marcos paragliding site.) And as we discovered, Chapala is very touristy. We much prefer quiet Tapalpa. Places that are focused on extracting money from tourists and gringos have a very different feel. e.g. Chapala has multiple “pet spas”!

Unfortunately, we haven’t managed to get out running since Puerto Vallarta. All the smaller streets around the towns are uneven cobblestones that would not be fun to run on. There are hiking and mountain bike trails around but we didn’t get around to tracking them down.

We're moving on from Tapalpa but depending on how things go, we might be back.

Paragliding at Tapalpa, Mexico

We’re in Tapalpa to paraglide at the nearby site. Our first day we found the launch and got our gear organized and did a little kiting to get back into it since it’s been a few months since we flew. We had contacted a local pilot (Miguel) to get site information and he turned out to be up at launch. He was very helpful and filled us in in the launch and landing, and set us up with a someone who could drive down to pick us up if we both flew.

I got in a late afternoon flight of about 30 minutes before the approaching rain made me nervous and I headed down. Unfortunately, I misunderstood the instructions and landed in the wrong one of a pair of fields, in the new barley. At least I landed near the edge and kited over to the road. Unfortunately, another pilot followed my bad example and landed in the middle of the field.

The next day we got in morning flights while conditions were mellow. We call it a “sled ride” when you don’t get any lift and just glide down. Here they call it “piano”, as in how a piano flies if you throw it off a cliff - straight down.





We were happy with our morning flights and arrived back at launch ready for more. We walked out just in time to see two pilots launch and one of them almost immediately have an accident. You could see he hit a little turbulence since his wing wobbled. Then the left tip folded in, which is usually harmless. But whether it was the turbulence, or a wrong reaction by the pilot, it went from minor incident to his wing collapsing and spinning into the ground. The whole incident was over in a second.

He had been quite close to the ground which was bad because there was no time to recover or throw his reserve parachute. But good because he didn’t have far to fall. Not that you have to fall very far to get badly hurt. He went down in heavy bush and small trees not far below launch. We could see the wing draped over the bushes but couldn’t see the pilot or what kind of shape he was in.

Shelley dropped our lunch on the ground and we immediately started working our way down the hill. It was slow going through the bush, but thankfully there were a few vague animal trails and only occasional thorns. But once we were inside the bush we couldn’t see. We yelled to the pilot to see if he was ok and to use his voice to guide us. He answered and didn’t sound too bad. At least we weren’t going to a body. I arrived first with Shelley right behind me. The pilot was standing up and amazingly only his right shoulder was hurt. I started asking him questions about how he was, but quickly realized that this was Shelley’s area of expertise and turned it over to her. She did a quick examination but there didn’t seem to be any other issues other than his shoulder. We offered to make a sling for his arm but he didn’t want it. By now Pedro (the site caretaker) had arrived with a machete and he cleared a better path for us. The pilot was able to walk slowly back up the hill to launch.

We heard later he broke his shoulder blade. He even showed up the next day at launch with his arm and shoulder strapped up. He was very grateful for our help. He had been flying for almost 30 years and this was his first accident.

It was unnerving for us, to say the least. Obviously, you know incidents happen, but you want to think you can be smart and minimize the risks - the same thinking we’d had with climbing. But on the surface this seemed totally random. Conditions weren’t bad, we’d just had straightforward flights. The day had heated up a bit but not that much.

We found out there were actually several contributing factors. Most critically it was a high performance wing. The trade off for performance is that it’s not as stable and does not recover as well on its own. This kind of wing requires skill to fly properly. But he hadn't flown it lately, he was from Germany and it was a wing he left in Mexico. He didn’t even remember, till too late, that it was a high end wing. On top of that it was old which can also make it unsafe.

So we felt a little better since none of these factors applied to us. We had relatively new wings (Phi Symphonia) that met the highest “A” safety rating. A tip folding in on our wings would have much less effect and would be extremely unlikely to lead to a crash.

On top of that, the afternoon was also a bit stressful. About a dozen other pilots showed up. And the wind dropped to nothing and even slightly "over the back". And it sprinkled rain off and on. We almost gave up and left, but it seemed like there might be a chance to fly if we waited. There is a lot of inertia in a big group like that. There were probably times that were launchable, but no one wanted to be first. Eventually a local pilot set up and did a zero wind forward launch. That opened the flood gates and a lot of people started getting ready. The problem was that a lot of them spread their wings out on launch and then didn't launch. By this point Shelley didn't want to fly, but I was still keen to get in another flight. Eventually I had to ask someone if they weren't going to launch, could they please move their wing. Just when I was ready someone moved the flag/windsock from in front of another pilot and stood right in front of me, blocking my launch. But then the other pilot didn't launch. Finally the other pilot launched, Shelley helped herd the people away from in front of me, and I launched. For a zero wind forward launch I thought it went ok. The wing dipped slightly to one side, but I got underneath it and straightened out. Apparently someone else had yelled "stop", but I never heard them. I was listening for Shelley to tell me if anything didn't look right. I'm not sure why the other person thought I should stop.

The final frustration of the day was still to come. Shelley drove down to get me and decided to be a good Samaritan and offer rides to other pilots. But the other pilots were part of a group and they had their own shuttle, except they didn't know who was getting picked up where or when. So everyone dithered in the hot sun for almost an hour. Finally we gave a ride to a pair of pilots who weren't part of the big group. Then one of the group decided maybe he did need a ride to the rest of his group so we crammed him in as well. Then the road was blocked because they were filming a movie. We found a way around on back roads. But then we had to go back to the blocked intersection to deliver the one pilot to his group. In the end we never found his group and left him at the intersection. By the time we got back to town it was well after dark. Needless to say, I was very frustrated. What a day!

See Shelley's version of the day

San Sebastian

We picked up our rental vehicle in Puerto Vallarta and headed out of town. We didn't plan to go too far the first day, just a few hours drive to San Sebastian del Oeste, one of the Pueblos Magicos. San Sebastian is obviously close enough to P.V. to get bus tours so there were quite a few tourists around during the day. But few of them stayed overnight, so it was quiet in the evening. Except "quiet" isn't  the right word because there was a festival going on which meant lots of bells and fireworks from the church. We stayed at Hotel Mansion Real, a nicely renovated 300 year old house with just 8 rooms. It was right by the church and the main square, which was good until the church bells and fireworks started at 5am the next morning!

We arrived mid-afternoon and wandered around town. We found a small organic coffee farm (Cafetalera La Quinta) just on the edge of town.



And a bit further, Villa Nogal (6 rooms) with beautiful gardens and a great view from their restaurant patio. (Hacienda Matel, across the road, also looked very fancy.)







We decided to have a glass of wine and enjoy the view. Turkey vultures were soaring by. They are graceful fliers even if not the most attractive close up. Even an interesting presentation of the bill.



Along the same road, we passed Jardin Nebulosa (misty garden?), a fancy bar and restaurant. We stopped for coffee mostly so I could take photographs in the garden. They had orchids and bromeliads and heliconia and more. Even some coffee trees/bushes in the back.





And yes, obviously aimed at tourists. But at least it wasn't Senor Frogs. And they'd put a lot of effort into the garden atmosphere which I appreciated. They had their own farm and served a lot of unique dishes with local ingredients. (We came back for supper.)











Back at our hotel, a beautiful wall display of glass bowls:



The next morning as we were leaving, I found a large (about 3 inches long) bright green katydid on the side of the car. It was missing one back leg, but otherwise seemed in good shape. Nicely camouflaged to look like a leaf, but that didn't work so well on a white car.





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