A Report of Ajijic, Lake Chapala, Mexico Nightlife (1994)
A report of Ajijic, Lake Chapala, Mexico Nightlife
I’m sitting on my balcony overlooking the mountains and the lake. It is 76 degrees , the sun is shining and there is a gentle breeze blowing, The New Democratic Party is a distant memory and I just figured out how to get the ecstasy channel on the parabolic.
Life is good Life in the day light hours is good. Life at night is k 9 hell.
This is more a confession that a whine because in “Ajijic” (Spanish word for loud insomniac dogs) the chain reaction of barking that occurs originates in my yard.
If you are a budding sneak thief don’t let the barking deterred you from breaking into my house because when people come to the house the dogs lie down and whimper like Lassie on Timmy’s grave sight.
On the other hand, cats, birds, opossum and large butterflies on the other side of the 12 foot wall had better beware. Every morning I have the grizzly task of raking up the remains of small otherwise healthy animals who have presumably died of heart failure
The problem is that my dogs only bark for a period of 20-30 minutes and then grab a nap. They are exhausted having only gotten 16 hours of sleep during the day. It is, however, long enough to rile up the neighbors dogs to the west, who have much better stamina (how proud their owners must be) and can go for hours The chain has begun but it takes several more hours to get around the lake until it finally gets back here at which point the donkeys and roosters join in who in turn wake up the fireworks man who does his thing which scares the crap out of our dogs who go nuts and insist on being fed at 5:10 am. This explains why everyone here goes to bed at dusk.
An excellent solution might be to replace this years Chili Cook Off with the first annual Filipino Cuisine Festival. I have a Doberman and a Dalmatian who (and I hope they are reading this), if they don’t get their act together could make some “right fine eatin'” as we say in Southern Ontario.
The good news is I now know how to get my motion detector light to work. I run full tilt at it arms waving and barking madly, when I am 3 inches away, presto, works every time. Except one evening after to much tequilla I ran at the wrong wall and got a face full of bouganvilla and mortar. It was, of course, the best night sleep I’ve had here.