January 2023. Ajijic, Mexico
“Millions and millions of people all being tossed up on the earth, vainly trying to connect but somehow being prevented from doing so”
I am taken to Mexico City airport by taxi at seven o’clock in the morning by a man with blue hair and eyebrows. Up through the secret security stairs in Terminal Two, the shortcut that expats are not meant to know about, I find S sitting in the waiting area, having arrived hours before me and not keen on breakfast. On the inevitably delayed and suspiciously busy flight everyone wonders aloud what everyone else is doing not having anything more responsible to do early on a Monday morning than fly to Guadalajara.
Upon reaching Guadalajara airport we are told our car hire, who insisted they were in the terminal, are not in the terminal, which is a shame since that was the only reason we had booked them. A second car hire shines through the darkness and its enthusiastic employer Jose Luis shakes his head hard at our story. That care hire are liars, he tells us, always lying to customers — their employer had lied “strongly” to us about being in the terminal. They were, he told us, at least a mile away. Joe Luis, moved by our foreign confusion and uselessness, offers us a much better rate and then, after a quick scribble on a piece of paper, sets off at a fast jog down the airport corridor with both our suitcases. After a pause we decide to follow him and find ourselves some moment later reunited and standing very still outside the airport’s front doors looking mournfully over the car park. Time passes like this, with Jose Luis standing dutifully still and clutching our bags and us quietly taking in the moment, until we muster the courage to ask what was happening. Did we need to do anything else to rent the car? Jose Luis shakes his head “no, nothing else señorita”. Don’t you need my licence? “Yes of course we need your licence. You give it in at the desk”. Which desk is that? “The one where the cars are hired”. So the car hire is not in the terminal? “No no, the car hire is not in the terminal. But we are only around a mile away”.
After flashing past the car hire closest to the airport, the first one we had selected, we land at the furthest, the one Jose Luis had cajoled us into. To cut loose from two furious hipsters complaining in LA-English about extortionate insurance costs for their black SUVs we move outside and complete a photo shoot of our little blue Ford Focus, the third member to join our mission.
The drive to Ajijic was as Sybille Bedford described it: “One turn from the airport and one long straight road to the lake,” only ours may have been better tarmacked, providing possibly one of the easiest drives I’ve ever had in Mexico, with only one monster truck nearly crushing us whilst we both sat very silently our seats watching it happen. We only missed one turning, the one signed for Ajijic, because of getting excited about discovering a big sign on the turning that read ‘Ajijic’, which is where we were heading.
Ajijic is not what we expected but nor do either of us know what we expected. Though somewhere in the back of our heads, I could tell, we felt it may be run down and industrial, a ruined dream after the idyll Bedford had described. Instead, our arrival is flanked by majestic fica trees with white painted half-trunks and heavy branches laying down their deep shadows over the road. Long cobbled streets lined up in a beautifully symmetrical formation, each named after an important date in the Mexican calendar, with men in caps cycling cheerily down them. The expats are noticeable immediately in their numbers. The Snowbirds have clearly migrated for good, and most suitably look like winter-preserved hills capped with whitened hair and energetic leather brown knees bobbing nervously under tight shorts. The streets almost feel like American suburbia, though enormous empty blue mountains in the background remind one you are very much in Mexico. Turning onto a cobbled street to enter the town leads you into a tropical warren of pretty, low, colourful houses and squat trees. Our hotel is on Calle septiembre 16, which reassures S of the secret panic she had been guarding throughout the arrival of having accidentally booked for the sixteenth of September. It seems to be Moroccan themed for no reason at all, and the room has a lovely large bay window with yellow stained glass giving a golden glow to the room and framing a large Mexican flag lolling in the breeze.
The mission begins at El Chile Verde. We order Chile rellenos, arroz, frijoles and two beers each. The bar is dingy and dark and set on the open plaza. We sit there for a few hours and chat, and afterwards, once the bar is cleared, ask the women chefs sitting at a table nearby whether they have heard of an old Hacienda located at San Martín that sits somewhere on a road snaking round to the left of the lake. They seem bemused almost to the point of annoyance about why anyone would want to go to San Martín and discuss our problematic situation in detail. This is said without being stated to us directly, but after some muttered discussions and frowns the women collectively decide that this is not really the place we want to go to. Instead they suggest another place, the “right” place, which apparently is in the opposite direction and in fact not an hacienda and in fact seemingly has nothing to do with the place we are looking for. One woman is looking it up on her phone. It’s open to the public, she announces, and closes at 6pm. Yes, you’ll have to go before six, the main woman concludes about the “right” place.
We thank the women and leave not knowing which location they’ve decided upon but with suggestions to go to a bar across the plaza for a margarita to ease the decision process, which seems reachable. We are lolling in strong saturated afternoon light towards a red and white church when a small round face with shaded glasses (not sunglasses, the ones that dim depending on the light) beneath a chestnut bob appears around a street corner. “You’re too young to be here!” It says. S politely jokes along with the eagerly joking face that yes, we’re here to try and bring the average age limit of Ajijic down, and as we turn the corner to attach a brown polka-dotted dress to the hovering face we met with a long wall of skulls running alongside it, each with a name inscribed underneath. "These are the names of deceased locals explains Lorrie, the owner of the face, who explains she is “local, but originally from Canada”. With a sweep of the hand and apparently nowhere to be Lorrie continues to tell us that candles are put under each skull on Day of the Dead. She then proceeds to give a potted history of the area, accepts being filmed on my phone, and laments house prices going through the roof as more and more foreigners flock to the town. "It’s a shame for the Mexicans,” she says with large doe-like sincere eyes, “since they only earn about seventy pesos a day”. Meanwhile there are friendly waves and shoulder squeezes and backslaps and a few ‘buhuenas tardeys’ to the many fellow foreigners passing by, as well as the brisk dismissal of a young Mexican boy who sidles up to us trying to sell us a dingy looking bag of green beans. We ask if she has heard of an author called Sybille Bedford, to which her face immediately turns uncharacteristically blank, and she swiftly moves on to another subject she does know about.
As we sense the soft drunkenness of the beers swiftly evaporating S and I telepathically communicate that it is time to go. After announcing the plan, Lorrie enthusiastically tells us she’s heading in the same direction, as is always the way. S and I make for the iconic Lake Chapala which, it turns out, Lorrie lives above. En route Lorrie finishes telling about the Mardi Gras flour fight and the dancing horses of Ajijic whilst taking gulps of breath in between her sentences, and just as we all reach the shore and feel the impromptu speech is naturally wrapping up Lorrie draws out the shape of the expat housing complexes in the sandy gravel on the lakeside. “I just realised I should give tours!” She breathlessly tells us, then, giggling, admits this has in fact been a long term dream of hers. “I would call them ‘My Mexico’ or ‘My Ajijic’, something like that....” she tells us, looking bashful and a bit taken aback by having somehow tripped over the ideal name at an unexpected moment.
The lake is as it always was. Blue hills on the other side, black cormorants overhead and white storks poised on debris, the pontoon being lapped by waves to our right, tree birds screaming and hopping up above. A fisherman wades deep and casts out a net. It is heaven, and we are here at the perfect hour. However we have been warned that the lake is definitely not swimmable: filthy, polluted and potentially containing a crocodile that was spotted two years ago. “Crocodilo Enorme” declares S, which confuses and possibly slightly agitates Lorrie. This inclusion is not part of the ‘My Mexico’ tour itinerary. S goes onto explain that these were the first two words she learnt in Spanish upon arriving in Mexico, in honour of Real Dahl’s book, which she bought on her first day after arriving. Lorrie smiles and nods along, wondering how to get her narrative back on track. We abate our passions to swim and after a while we realise Lorrie is still with us, hovering at this point for reasons we’re unsure of. As we finally all somehow successfully turn in opposite ways to leave we hear a call follow us: “I’ve had an idea!” We turn, polite English girls, to listen to what we hope is the last of Lorrie’s ideas, and it turns out to be that a house swap should take place: us moving to Ajijic and she taking our non-existent apartment in Mexico City. There’s a desperation in her voice. Perhaps Chapala is running out of steam for the expats who longer feel exotic. We say it’s certainly a possibility and that we’ll no doubt be in touch, then leave Lorrie to let the evening and our lives carry on.
The hotel has no service “por el Covid”. Alcohol is on offer at the fully stocked bar — any amount of wine, spirits, ice, and beer — but soft drinks are not and nobody will be able to serve them, “por el Covid”. I buy pistachios from a street seller and fizzy drinks from a fridge set behind a michelada stall. This shop turns out to be the one I’ve been asking for and directed to by everyone in the town yet could not find, for the reason, it turns out, failing in all ways to look like a shop but excelling in looking like a michelada stall, which it is. S needs a Kinder Bueno which I find in the pharmacy by accident whilst looking for conditioner. Ajijic is already charming and has the grandiose madcap essence that Don Otavio’s life seemed to exude for Sybille. Tomorrow we set out to look for it.