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Here is a little tip that might help. If the cop asks for a mordida then ask for the ticket. He will not want his name on a ticket knowing you can the tell his boss that he first asked for a bribe. They will probably just let it go if they can't make any money. There is a reason that motorcycles, for instance, which don't have plates, the riders don't have helmets, the driver is lane splitting or passing on the right, and probably speeding through a red light doesn't get detained. The cops know he probably doesn't have any money so it isn't worth their time. If the cop doesn't ask for a bribe then just take the ticket and pay it promptly for your 50% discount. Never offer a bribe and never pay a bribe. Even if you are traveling out of town. Offer to follow them into the station. Especially if they have already asked for a bribe. Either way it will be a little adventure that will make a good story later. Just like most places in the world (not all) traffic control by cops in Mexico is not really about public safety...it's revenue. Alan

There will likely never be much improvements to infrastructure in most of lakeside. Like most things in Mexico, it is all "designed" to function at minimum standards and will be repaired the same way when it fails. There are no building standards, no home inspections, no licensed plumbers or electricians, no enforceable codes, no concrete or brick standards, no civil engineers, and almost no wastewater treatment facilities. The government knows that there is massive corruption at all levels and so even if property taxes were to triple (in our case that would move ours from six dollars per month to 18 dollars per month) that increased money would just get siphoned off by local folks in charge at every level and services would not improve. There is actually not raw sewage in the streets of Riberas but there is a lot of gray water which if left standing can get funky. The roads are not great but they are not better anyplace else except in some downtown streets in Chapala. Our water comes from the same well that serves much of San Antonio and Mirasol and it does come in unfiltered but our coto pre-filters it and the individual homes have filters and we all drink it without problems. On the plus side, the local water doesn't have chloramine or chlorine dioxide in it. Google those things sometime. Many cities in the US provide drinking water that is treated wastewater. Nothing wrong with that but I'm not sure I'd like that option here locally... I always say that Mexico is not for everybody and one needs to adjust expectations to keep from going crazy. Alan

Thank-you to all the people that answered my question. I'd like to point out to all the posters that recommend I rent for awhile prior to buying, no where in my original post did I say I was buying. Moving lakeside can mean renting too. As for the posters that wonder why I want to be in a gated community, it's none of your business. My question wasn't asking whether i thought I should be in a gated community or not. I love this board for the people that give great advice, but as for you others I hate social media.

sorry to bother you---I need to be banned---

Do you know how to do anything else other than be extremely obnoxious and spew conspiracy theories?

Virgo most of us remember that about the time this person said they were coming, Feb. 2020, the sh*t hit the fan with Covid-19. Doesn't surprise me that they probably cancelled all plans of coming and laid low like millions of others. Now it looks more like it might be safe to think about coming. Or 100 other reasons. But does it really matter!?

I do remember the short window of time when they were stopping motos and golf carts. It lasted about a month and then back to normal. I daily see both of these in open violation again. I was recently stopped by a Guardia Nacional after making an illegal U turn on the highway near Cajititlan. He was very polite, did not ask for a bribe, I knew I was wrong (and it was a dangerous turn) and he gave me a ticket. But because I spoke to him in Spanish and didn't try to argue with him he wrote the ticket for no seat belt which saved me several hundred pesos. I paid the ticket at Bancomer after going online to print a copy of the incident. This new level of cop is supposedly required to pass some honesty and anti-corruption tests before being given a job. The guy I dealt with was quite professional. State Transitos not so much... Alan

Welcome...you will fit right in with a few others who like to post but then think they have the right to call out any response they don't deem worthy. Not just disagree but call out and capitalize words to show your superiority.

She's flying INTO the US. I wouldn't worry about one day coming into US. Hopefully the OP will be in US long enough to renew.

If you're worried about "water issues" for a RENTAL, then you're not going to make it, personality wise, in Mexico.

We bought one from Amazon a few years ago and it's a lifesaver. It sits in the sun to charge itself, then you can bring it in and plug it into your phone. Neither you or your phone need to be out in the sun. It also charges the normal way, plugged into a regular charger, and when fully charged you can charge three more phones at once. We take it up north when we go camping and often have no electric hookups for our RV. We've also used it down here when we've had lengthy power outages.

This is pretty easy to figure out. The clear, fresh water falls down from the hills. It finds underground seams, small creeks, then it reaches ground zero. Where the groundwater is now saturated. The only way to get more in, is to take some out. This is where wells come in. They are surprisingly irregular. For example we have one in Chapala Haciendas and another nearly finished - but we are at the top of the mountain, so it doesnt' make sense. Most of the soil here has a high clay content. Not good for running water. So I would say to ensure good water, go as high as possible. Eventually, they may start harvesting more lake water, like they already do near Ocotlan. That wont make sense unless they build some sort of distribution system. There is a famous Canadian writer, Paul St. Pierre, who wrote living in Mexico is like living in a live Opera. I would say living in Mexico is like living with a mild form of insanity.

No need to visit, ask away is more accurate over time as it reaches a larger audience. That is what this board if for. Many areas get very low on water in May and the water can be quite dirty. Some fraccionamientos and towns get water 3 days a week for several hours each day year round so they have to have storage tanks whereas others gets water 24 hours a day often 365 days a year and the water is drinkable for most. In many fraccionamientos hundreds of septic tanks are above the water supply whereas in others waste water goes to a septic system. There are many options in between. Like wise internet and electical supply can vary a lot. there are many options in between.

So I'm wondering how someone who has only posted ONE message here.... the one above.... but knew to come onto this Forum an give a great testimonial to this doctor's procedure. A grain of salt comes to mind, but then I'm just skeptical about things like this I guess.

Let's don't start with the personal back and forth please. Thanks RickS for pointing out a lot of people have had their plans changed by covid. That could well be the case here. The water situation here is very location specific though there is a growing general problem because of total dependence on ground water and wells. At some point it appears there will have to be a lake water treatment system. IMHO the best fraccs for rental are in and around Ajijic with the exception Chapala Haciendas and Brisas de Chapala are both pretty nice these days. I also know there are several fraccs on the east side of Chapala which might be worth of consideration. A lot depends on what you want in the way of price, location and amenities. One deterrent for the west side of Ajijic is most of the shopping is centro and east and traffic from that side of Ajijic has become pretty difficult much of the time these days. La Floresta is a wonderfully located and upscale fracc but the price of rentals there reflect this. If at all possible you should go into an AirBnB or short term rental and then take your time exploring the various options before entering into a longer term lease. If you come down soon, the selection available is at the maximum during the off season. Don't hesitate to negotiate price on a rental lease. I think the rental market is pretty soft right now. When you get here by all means use this group as a sounding board to check your observations and ideas. For the most part this is a very helpful group with a lot of local knowledge. Like any board of this type, threads tend to wander. Just focus on the posts that stay on topic and ignore the rest.

Car Rentals - Ajijic/Chapala/Guadalajara - Chapala.com Webboard So have you ever visited in the 2 years you've been asking questions? Wow, some people just visit and figure things out in person. Hmmmmmmmmm.........does makes one wonder.

The last municipal traffic laws for the Municipality of Chapala that I have were updated by Moy in 2019. The copy and paste, below, refers to the wo quetions asked in this thread: what documents are drivers required to present and which towable offenses? You need to have: up-to-date plates, original (or receipt) for current tarjeta de circulación, sticker (now a card) for the plates, insurance coverage in amount by law. Foreign-plated cars can circulate so long a they comply with immigration/importation laws and comply with laws (including current plates and requirements) from their home entity. Within the municipality, a vehicle can be towed for: no current license plates, plates covering other plates, failing to have/display transit requirements in Article 23, wrongly parked or abandoned, public vehicle circulating for private use.

As a general rule, passports must be valid for six months beyond the date the traveler will exit the U.S., however, the U.S. has signed agreements with a number of countries to waive this requirement. https://help.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-905?language=en_US#:~:text=As a general rule%2C passports,countries to waive this requirement.

I recommend everyone make sure their paperwork is in order long before this happens.

the VERY FIRST THING you should do is ask to see the officers ID which SHOULD be displayed on his/er chest. This should insure all following events are proper. Also note date time and vehicle plate

I think the point was that RO water readily sold locally in 22 liter garafons for drinking has essentially had enough of the minerals and other crap removed to be used in a humidifier without clogging it up over time. I'm pretty sure that Angus knows the difference and was merely offering the O.Duck a workable, 'cheap and available solution to his problem.

I live behind th construction site next to Walmart. I have spoken to the head engineer, who was here a few days ago. He said the money has come in. This company has projects in Guadalajara. What they did in the past was bring their team in from Guadalajara daily. They probably need to finis what they are doing in Guad. Small taks are being worked on now. A worker there estimated the work will begin agin in Sept. TIME WILL TELL. The engineer said the plan is complete the commercial - 2nd, 3rd floor condos first and then the building on Colon. No plans to finish th 3rd building in the back. I've been told the company doing this has an excellent reputation. Finance has been thr problem.

For those interested in the current state of stem cell research: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7367472/

As this thread was mine and has gone off track I am closing it. Remember, you can contact me or another moderator and ask for a thread you've started to be closed.

I have to reply to nonsense. RO is filtration whereas distillation is condensation of steam. Think about it. Water has suspended and dissolved impurities. RO removes suspended material and some of the larger disolved ones,wheras distillation removes all impurities. When you use a steam iron steams comes out of the iron and leaves minerals in the iron.

No Shinola! Must you drivel on every thread?

That advice was for the time before refrigeration. Despite what you may have heard, it's safe to eat raw oysters year-round, as long as you know where they were harvested. https://health.howstuffworks.com/food-nutrition/raw-oysters-are-safe-to-eat-every-month-year.htm

Unless they've changed, Estafeta does not import medicines. I know iShop does. Another option is iHerb that ships directly to Mexico. Slow but it works and is often cheaper.

A bit of knowledge is always worth knowing. If you fight with these guys in a small town or ever in a city like I did in Mexicali I lived to regret it after being stopped 14 times in about 3 1/2 years. They knew my face and my newer Maxima. I only paid 2 small morditas. Once at 11:30 Sunday morning I feared I might end up being beaten but went to the police station behind these two mean cops to pay. They parked across the road from the police station and asked me to pay them again. I said no so they hammered the gas and sent gravel hitting my car. I wondered what the deal was with this type of offering to "help" us (police) out. Seems because a lot of people like the deal they are offered especially decades ago for several reason you haven't heard of. First many do not like anything to go to the government. Second cops live on very low wages. Third screwing over the authorities is fine because they screw you over often. Forth the cop is being a good neighbor by giving you the chance to pay much less than the ticket and you don't have to spend any valuable time dealing with the ticket (long lines decades ago to pay it) and you can be on your way in 2 minutes.

This probably deserves its own new thread....but what the heck: Explaining the Pandemic to my Past Self - 1 Year Later - YouTube

Yep, you farted. There is nothing political about the fact Mainland China has designs on Taiwan. It has been all over the news for quite some time. Hard to see how anyone could miss it. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-wants-control-over-taiwan-thats-a-problem-for-us-tech-companies/ar-BB1bjfnK Have you missed the recent news of the incursions of the Chinese military into Taiwanese space? This is the advantage to reading the foreign news. They actually tend to tell you what is going on. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/14/is-there-really-a-risk-that-china-will-go-to-war-with-taiwan https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1436464/China-US-tensions-Taiwan-invasion-military-drills-Beijing-war-South-China-Sea-latest-vn My point was very simple and relates directly to the takeover of Hong Kong. Taiwan may be next and for that reason I would not see it as a good place for expats. That is all. Simply because of this reality I wouldn't put it at the top of any list of best places for expats. I might add this is the first one of these "best places for expats" things I have seen that even had Taiwan on it. That definitely caught my eye.

We are going to install a giant solar powered fan to blow it all towards Ajijic 😁 sh"t is going to hit the fan

Spencer's website will tell you the same thing as Jillin.

Things could be worse and they are in many other places these days. In my initial post I assumed that most know China has been behaving very aggressively towards Taiwan these days. Many pundits see an actual invasion as quite possible. I don't see anyone, however, suggesting that Mexico will be invaded by anything other than retired gringos looking for sunshine and cheap eats.

It appears that threads are only judged by the moderator to be "political" and become locked when anything to do with the US is criticized. Fine to bash other countries, it seems, but don't dare contest the "greatest country on earth".

RO water can not be called "distilled" because it isn't. The same result is obtained by a filter. RO was developed as a cheaper way to get pure water for small laboratories. Take a few drops of water and place it on a small mirror. In a few hours you will see how much minerals are in the water you tested.

The filtered water sold in garafons has been run through a reverse osmosis and is essentially distilled.

We have lived in Chapala Centro for eleven years and never had problems with water

I know but others may not and that is the purpose of this forum. And I forgot one... Mision Chula Vista.

Ajijic is not the center of the universe. I have been in Chapala Centro for over four years and we have had no water problems.

I have been in my home in upper Ajijic for 17 years. I have a cistern (10,000Liters). Over the years, particularly the last five or so the water supply and quality have become a problem. About one year ago SIMAPA changed the well to my area. The water now has a very, very bad smell and is dirty. Prior to this I used use the water from the tap (I have a good purification system). I changed one of my filters to a 10 micron charcoal filter and this helped with some of the smell. Now, I would not think of using the water for drinking, etc. The problem with the water supply to our houses is mainly: 1. SIMAPA is not able to keep their equipment (pumps) working (age?), and a huge increase in developments/customers?). When one or more pumps are not working they have to shut off the water to areas so no water is coming from the city into my cistern. Also, 2. The pipes from the street to our cisterns can become corroded (plugged). Think of our arteries as we get older. This results in the flow of water into the cistern diminished, and with water not always coming I can run out of water. When this happens the city is supposed to supply us with a free truck of water but the demand frequently does not permit this. So far, this spring I have called for a private water truck three times to deliver water to my cistern. Yes, water is problem, but it is not so much the supply but in the delivery. In time the underground water will be used up and then there will be a real problem.

I think the OP is rather freaked out about now reading "water for several hours for X number of days a week". They may not understand the water storage systems in Mexico that nearly every house has. So here's a sort of a primer... Water comes from wells that are controlled by the local water government authority. They pump from the wells to your house. You may have a meter or they may have guesstimated your usage based on number of bathrooms/ pool etc. in some parts of town. You pay them and, imho, it's not much. Most people pay for the year in January. After the meter, it's your responsibility to have storage for your water. This may be an underground aljibe (cistern) or a tinaco (roof top) or BOTH. The pressure from the street water is enough to get water up at least one floor into a tinaco which then feeds the house by gravity. If the pressure from the gravity fed water isn't enough for you then you can add a small booster pump (1/6 or 1/3 HP) beside the tinaco. Tinacos come in various sizes with the most common being 750 liters. More upscale homes do not have a tinaco at all. They only have an aljibe from which they pump water to the rest of the house... often through water purification systems. An aljibe can be any size and it's important to find out HOW big it is. Mine holds only 6,000 liters aka small. One cubic meter of water equals 1,000 litres. There's lots more to learn about purification systems but the above is the short version of understanding your water. Now you have to think in metric but the important thing to know is to conserve water all the time and to understand how the water system works here. Suerte~

Do not rely on hearsay from anyone who lives in a fracc or your real estate agent. Pick one and ask for the fracc records so you can verify what percentage of the fracc members pay their dues. Compare the math of a small fracc with 50 homeowners that collects 50% of the dues vs a large fracc with 450 owners that collects 50% of the dues. When the time comes to drill a well, and it will, an assessment will be the method to pay for the new well. A lot easier to pay for a well when you have members who pay their dues. There is strength in numbers. A fracc that has amenities such as a club house, pool, tennis courts, racquet ball courts, and/or gym, etc will have leverage with non-paying members because they can ban the deadbeats from using the facilities. A fracc with few amenities does not have that option. Also it is common to hear at lakeside that "Mexicans do not pay their dues." It all depends on which fracc you are referencing. Some yes and some no. Good luck.

R U serious? This is almost as bad as the guy trying to pick a new cell phone on here.....at least this is relevant to lakeside tho. Make a visit for several months, rent something in 1 or more places, and check things out directly.

I went for a single stem cell injection in my left hip as my cartilage is almost gone after 51 years of dancing on it. I forget the man's name, but he also comes from GDL and provides this service in Dra. Justina's Clinic. I had an x-ray before the procedure to confirm my suspicions of diminishing cartilage. He told me to wait about 5-6 months and get another x-ray. I did and my cartilage is growing. I can only speak for my experience but I'm grateful I caught it in time while I still had cartilage for the stem cells to initiate re-growth. I did research before choosing this procedure and these practitioners. As always, do your own research and determine what you feel is safe and in your best interest. Stay safe out there! Val Jones

The mind is very powerful and when you are in pain , you welcome anything that works..so if it is placebo , be it.

How powerful is the placebo effect? The placebo effect is powerful. In a study carried out at the University of Harvard , its effectiveness was tested in a wide range of disturbances, including pain, arterial hypertension and asthma. The result was impressive: 30 to 40% of the patients obtained relief with the use of placebo. Placebos can be equal to the effectiveness of stem cell "therapy".