RATING: ♦♦♦
Lake Chapala is a large lake, the largest in Mexico. It is situated on the border between the states of Jalisco and Michoacán, at 5000 feet above sea level. It’s 50 miles long from east to west, and averages 8 miles wide from north to south.
We decided to take a narrated tour around the lake with Charter Club Tours, which is a reputable local tour company in our homebase of Ajijic. The cost was $1,995MX each (about $100USD). In other words, not cheap.
The day started out with heavy rain. The tour was scheduled to leave at 8:00 AM, but was about half an hour late because of the flooded streets. We got drenched just getting to the pick up spot. Our tour group was unusually small, only four passengers, perhaps because of the rain.
The weather didn’t clear up until mid-day. This meant that the first part of our tour, which usually is the most scenic along the shoreline, was rather boring since we couldn’t see much. We did drive through a couple of small villages, Mezcala and San Pedro Itzicán, both of which are very poor and the opposite of scenic.
Plus the road on this stretch of the tour was barely maintained. It’s just a narrow, cobblestone lane. Fortunately for us, Mexico was playing in the World Cup that morning, and traffic as light. We only met one oncoming vehicle. Would hate to drive this road on a busy day.
Around mid-morning, we left the lakeshore road, and we headed toward Poncitlán on the main highway. We spent the next few hours driving around the east end of the lake through a series of historic and quite scenic larger towns: Ocotlán, Jamay, and La Barca in Jalisco. After lunch, we turned south toward Petatán in Michoacán, and then headed east on the south side of the lake returning to Ajijic.
We’re glad we took the tour. Our driver/tour guide, Hernand, was great. But the fact is that the actual drive around the lake was not very interesting, and we probably would not do it again.
However, we did very much enjoy visiting Ocotlán, Jamay, and La Barca, and have created separate posts for each of them. In fact, we wouldn’t mind visiting them again sometime via the main highway, rather than by the lakeshore road.