We´re here! We made it with no incident - flew into Guadalajara yesterday, took a taxi to the town of Chapala on the north shore of Lake Chapala. Wow, did we have stuff. Those 2 bike boxes, a huge box for the Bob trailer, and Nancy´s box full of panniers and stuff - and Mexicana handled our stuff wonderfully. It was all perfect.

We spent the evening assembling the bikes, and everything looks good. Today we took a little test ride along the lake to the village of Ajijic (Ah - hee - HEEK) and visited with some wonderful friends-of-friends Jim and Rhoda. They treated us to coffee in their beautiful home and explained why the lake is so shrivelled. Amazingly, Lake Chapala is at only 20% of its normal size. The pier at Chapala is possibly miles from the water. Reminds us of some of the water problems back home.

This afternoon was a bus trip down to the wonderful city of Guadalajara, wandering in the beautiful sunshine, sitting in cool green plazas, and exploring a huge market. Nancy´s eyes were as big as watermelons seeing how big that market was. And we found a wonderful bowl of posole (a soup of hominy and chicken) at one of the stores.

Tomorrow we start actually riding! We´ll ride along the shore toward Jocotepec, which is at the very east end of the lake, then come around on the north shore. Tomorrow´s a test-it-out day, so we don´t expect to get too far, and we hope to camp for the first time. That will have some challenges!

I am so happy to be here. I just can´t believe how beautiful it is to be in the warm sun and seeing all this.