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Top 3 Pros & Cons of Lake Chapala


RedSwan

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1 hour ago, garmemorial said:

Mexican drivers

they have not discovered turn signals on the car

As reported in an article I recently read, a Mexican was asked why he and most Mexicans rarely use turn signals. He immediately responded "It's nobody else's business what I plan to do next". If you have lived here a while you know this response was not intended to be funny.

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2 hours ago, garmemorial said:

Mexican drivers

they have not discovered turn signals on the car

I'd have to disagree on that one. They use turn signals far more than many places NOB. And, generally, while a bit crazy maybe, they're good drivers. When you consider the volume of traffic in Guad and the rarity of accidents, they are very good. Now, at the Lake it's a bit dicey, you have Tapatios driving very fast, locals driving very slow and gringos in between unsure who to follow or dodge. The single worst thing about MX, in general, is the topes, they totally destroy the ambience of the lovely country and your ability to enjoy it as you are absolutely forced to be transfixed on the 50-100' of road directly ahead to avoid having your suspension, and sanity, destroyed by hidden topes.

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I'll have to disagree. I've never seen any place in the world where so few people use their turn signals and where so many ignore the rules of the road. And there are many very poor drivers. They do many crazy things that show no respect for other drivers or pedestrians. An obvious lack of licensing and training and consideration. It is too bad that the police don't enforce the rules of the road. If they did maybe drivers would smarten up very quickly.

I don't mind the topes at all. Most aren't hard to spot at all. Drivers should be watching the road.

Some of the bus and large truck drivers are certainly good. Probably from training and prods from their bosses and the police.

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Cedros try some places in Asia or Africa , they beat Mexico hands down when it comes to dangerous drivers. I drive a lot in this country and as a whole people are ok drivers. 

The topes are killers of cars..I just got back home in San Cristobal after a 3 day drive in Chiapas  where the topes are horrible and trucks drive too fast. Most car drivers were fine, I did not encounter crazy drivers and to drive the roads I was on you better be a decent driver if you want to survive the topes, the road collapses and the passing on curvy mountain roads.

It is interesting I totally disagree with your description of the drivers and roads in Mexico. I had a friend helping me spot the topes and we still missed a bunch and some are very dangerous..

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When ever I hear someone say Mexicans are good drivers I suspect that the sayer isn't a good driver. It is rare for me to not spot a tope. Are your eyes okay or is your car too low?

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or maybe you do not get out of gringolandia.   We were two people in the car trying to spot the topes. and still missed some with sun and shadow some of them are very hard to see, also on that road there are 197 topes on a less than two hundred km . The road right now is one of the worst I have seen. In 3 day of driving I drove about half of the time on dirt road and that paved road was worst than most dirt roads. I have a SUV so no it is not low. I still broke a bunch of things I was transporting thanks to some very nasty topes.. You need to get out more and see the rest of the country..

Mexican are good drivers as a rule.. do not always respect the rules and take risks but I have zero problem driving anywhere in Mexico except for the darn topes..

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Agree with bmh.  Those roads around San Cristobal are tope hell and most are neither painted nor marked.  They are the same color as the pavement and if you don't have someone driving in front of you "marking" the way it is easy to miss one.

Ironically, the pavement overall there was much better than it is in Jalisco.  That seems to be true of almost every state I've visited in car or on moto and now have been to about 2/3rds.  I do a lot of riding in all directions in Jalisco on the moto and I ride year round.  So I get a time sense of whether things are improving or getting worse.

The roads in this state seem to be getting steadily worse, with almost no maintenance being performed.  The carretera west of here is becoming a pothole hell.  The Joco bypass has craters in it for months now with nothing being done.  Chapala highway is worse than dirt in a lot of places.  They stopped working on the new road east of San Luis Soyutlan with it less than half finished.

Really, there's something very wrong when it comes to roads in this state.  

I don't know if they are stealing all the money or spending it all on the toll roads or what.  There is just a total lack of quality construction and maintenance here.  The contrast during our recent trip to the butterflies and points west around Morelia, Patzcuaro, Lake Zirahuen was really glaring as it was when I rode most of the northern states in a circle last fall.

 

 

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the pavement is a disgrace as well...did you drive the Ocosingo Palenque segment? It was hell last August , they are fixing it now and it is worst.. I have ot seen any main road that bad in a long long time. Monday I also had to pay 500 pesos to various demonstrators to get through and that added insult to injury, it was a trip from hell.

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Topes are often coincidental with the shade of a single tree, making them very hard to see. There is a reason:  A single tree provides shade and shelter for pedestrians. Such a comfortable spot makes for a logical bus stop location. People gather there and get hungry, so someone locates a portable snack-bike at certain hours.  Of course, that attracts even more people; some from the opposite side of the road, who must cross to catch either a taco or a bus.  For safety, a tope is built; soon to be followed by a more substantial eatery....then, a village.   So, there is progress and logic alive and well in Mexico. Expats just need to slow down when they see a tree casting a shadow across the road. It probably hides a tope.  If there are pedestrians under the tree; no doubt at all.

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The paints that last are very special products; often thermo-plastic formulations which are applied hot by special paint application machines.  They are probably not available in most Mexican jurisdictions. 

Back some 50 years ago, I was really impressed when I saw my first reflective cat eye inserts down the middle of a road in Greece.  Now, there are even highway striping paints that glow in the dark, in Europe, not North Americas as far as I know.  That would be great for topes; or maybe lights that only illuminate when a vehicle approaches too fast.  We can dream.......

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3 hours ago, bmh said:

or maybe you do not get out of gringolandia.   We were two people in the car trying to spot the topes. and still missed some with sun and shadow some of them are very hard to see, also on that road there are 197 topes on a less than two hundred km . The road right now is one of the worst I have seen. In 3 day of driving I drove about half of the time on dirt road and that paved road was worst than most dirt roads. I have a SUV so no it is not low. I still broke a bunch of things I was transporting thanks to some very nasty topes.. You need to get out more and see the rest of the country..

Mexican are good drivers as a rule.. do not always respect the rules and take risks but I have zero problem driving anywhere in Mexico except for the darn topes..

I've driven all over Mexico (except for the north east) and I've never lived in gringolandia. Well to each his own. The topes don't bother me but the bad drivers do and they are much more dangerous.

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There is no rhyme or reason or consistency in the placement, construction, or marking of topes.  I suspect more than a few of them are put out there by people trying to generate roadside business.  I am glad to see that at least in some places, like GDL and Mexico (City) the government is figuring out just how dangerous, polluting and damaging these things are and starting to take them out.

 

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On 3/11/2017 at 2:39 PM, ned small said:

Good grief! A whole bunch of BIG hospitals are 30-40 minutes away in Guadalajara,pop. 6 1/2 million same as any city NOB. No more crime here than anywhere with the same demographics and pop. NOB,probably less. The vast majority of us are not  affected by this alleged corruption now are we? Don't some of you get tired of constantly mumbling about this? I think I'll go on my patio now and contemplate my navel and the birds and bees while enjoying a bit of tequila and watch the neighbourhood kids actually playing real games on the safe street other than diddling with electronics in their basement.

 

I don't know where at Lakeside you are driving from or what hospital in Guadalajara you are driving to, but even making it to the edge of Guadalajara in 30-40 minutes seems like an exaggeration to me.  I need that amount of time just to get to the airport.  But I'm probably one of those fuddy-duddy old expat who drive too slowly for some other drivers, despite having received several photo infractions for speeding.

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Language is definitely a con for many people. Especially on the phone. I have taken 8 courses in "international" Spanish so I can often figure out the correct thing to say. But many locals are poorly educated and use a lot of slang so they may not understand me. When they reply they often speak too rapidly for me and use poor Spanish. I find it easier to understand well educated Spanish speaking speakers.

An English speaking neighbour who has been here for about 8 months won't even go to the hairdresser or a walk or shopping unless someone who speaks English goes with her.

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23 minutes ago, BCdoug said:

Cons - doesn't appear that anyone has had a problem with the language barrier - I guess you have all found a way to deal with it

Yes. I think most people who live here figure out ways to deal with the language barrier one way or the other. There are those who keep within the limits of living, shopping, socializing with and employing only English speakers. They can do this fairly easily on the north shore of Lake Chapala. Other people take classes (in person and online), focusing a lot of time and energy learning a new language and becoming anywhere from passable to fluent in Spanish. Then there are the Spanglish speakers who know enough words in Spanish that with sign language and English words can get their point across. With smart phone and computer translator programs you always have help on hand. My gardeners and housekeeper do not speak English but we all communicate just fine. My go-to guy is fluent in English and when a situation needs precision understanding I use him as a translator. I think at first the language barrier is daunting and tiring but after a while for most people it becomes just another part of daily life. That may be why no one mentioned it as a "con" to living here although it might have been mentioned by newcomers who have not yet figured out how they will deal with it. It is also quite likely that it is a con for a lot more people but is just not among their top three.

 

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People here do not speak poorly they language is that of village people, they are not difficult to understand if you speak Spanish. They have no problem understanding educated Spanish if the educated Spanish is spoken by a local . When learning Spanish you have to learn the local Spanish which is not very different and there is no problem .

The local Spanish is just as much Spanish as the educated Spanish... if you cannot understand the local in Ajijic chances are that your understanding of the educated Spanish is not much better. You just think you understand it..

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I totally agree with Bmh, the Mexican Spanish or it would be better to say the Spanish spoken in the Jalisco accent is as good a Spanish and equally correct as what American English is.  The local people here have a very good grasp of their language and speak it equally as good or better than how a Texan speaks English.  There is no problem with a Mexican speaker, the problem lies with the listener.  As far as Latin American Spanish goes, Mexico has one of the slowest, best enunciated, and easiest to understand for a begining Spanish learner than most of the accents spoken in the entire region.  If you are having trouble with understanding Mexican Spanish, take a little trip to the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Venezuela, or even Chile.  The only problem with Mexican Spanish is that they have some vocabulary that comes from Nahuatl that is different than in the rest of Latin America which uses a more standard vocabulary.  

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The only problem with Mexican Spanish isn't just that some words come from Nahutal but also that many people, in the small towns at least, are poorly educated and use a lot of slang and don't use the proper verb endings. As one local Spanish teacher told me many speak and write terrible Spanish.

I wonder if Texas is a good example for the use of proper Emglish. 

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Part of what you say is true.   The majority of the population here is not as well educated as in other parts of the world, and lots of people here have poor spelling and poor grammar skills.  But if you remember your old high school English teacher, I'm sure she would say the same thing about many Americans today.  High School English teachers are generally nazis, and I'm sure many here are the same.  But to suggest that Mexicans speak the language poorly is a terrible exaggeration, I don't think they butcher it any more than what the average american does to English.  And not every thing you probably hear and think is slang is really slang, most of it is just normal Spanish.  I learned the extremely fast speaking Venezuelan Spanish, first, many years ago and I was never very familiar with Mexican Spanish.  Since I have been living here, I don't find the two so terribly different.  They all speak the same language, Spanish.  No more so than an American vs an Australian.  Spanish is Spanish, once you learn it fluently you will be able to converse and understand anybody in the Spanish speaking world fairly easily.  A term here and there might be different, just like between us and England, but it doesn't create severe problems in communicating.  It is exactly the same way in Spanish.

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What people speak in the village is the local village Spanish and if you understand Spanish it is understandable. Yes they use some words that come from Nahuatl just like in Chiapas some Maya transpire or in Peru where the vocabulary can sound foreign  at first. I had a tough time for a few days figuring out the menus as many words were unfamiliar so you just ask what does this mean  and you get it then you can use it.

I learned English at school and when I went to visit and live in the Birmingham area I could not understand anything, same with the Yorkshire accent or Irish or regional accents from the US..It is a question of getting used to other accents and sometimes vocabulary. For me it is more difficult to understand all the various local accents in English than the various accents in Spanish..

I even have problems sometimes understanding French Canadians not because they do not speak a correct French but because their accents and some of the expressions are different, it all depends on how fast your  hearing can adjust. some people are good at it and some are not but I would not say that what I speak is the correct French and that they do not just because it is different.

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Why do I always end up behind a vehicle with-out Brake Lights? Even newer ones, the beaters I can understand. 

On the other hand most Mexicans here have a social contract with all of us. By that I mean if you are trying to merge off a cross st or other, it does not take long before some one will flash their lights &/or wave you in. Amazing grace, always give a thank you. Now I have noticed that this is not the general attitude in Guad?

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