The taxman cometh. And with powerful steady internet the taxman hath been vanquished for another year. Layne assembled our modest paperwork online and shot it off to the accountant whom one hopes will make sense of it. Thank God for the internet. And CPAs.
There is really no reason to stop at Charly’s Restaurant unless you want a delicious Swiss meal, not Mexican in this case but fine steak and rosti which is hash browns with bacon in in proper Swiss style.
Or fresh breaded pan fried trout:
Or a loaf of Charly’s home baked bread, whole wheat and delicious with the proper crumb and good aeration.
Thirty years ago Charly married a Mexican woman and together they have built a hospitality complex at the end of the private street below. They rent rooms and cook food…
…and provide space for campers with water faucets, reliable electricity, dump services and the aforementioned solid WiFi.
It’s a work in progress where Charly also looks after vehicles in storage while their owners are back home. We were camping alone, which suited us.
Our unoccupied neighbor was a wee bit intimidating if you harbor any Walter Mitty illusions of being a traveler:
The older Toyota Landcruiser is a cult classic where it was sold outside the US for people who like dirt roads and debate the merits of a Defender Land Rover versus one of these. Notice the spare suspension spring on the front bumper. Gulp. I did notice the absence of air conditioning in the living space. We are decidedly un-macho in our comfortable van home.
Anyway we got through the tax preparation in this place and it was a good thing. Layne is now much more relaxed. Charly’s RV park is on the edge of a tiny farming village in the fertile plain south of Guadalajara with no visible tourist attractions. There is an unheated pool which Layne and I enjoyed to cool off after the 85 degree sunny days. At night it dropped to the low 50s so we didn’t even need night air conditioning to sleep! Our shorepower plug worked perfectly with the reliable electrical supply so the issue of 110 volt battery charging seems solved. Float value for the lithium batteries held at a steady 14.1 volts. Perfect.
Charly below on the left speaks German and Spanish. His buddy on the right called himself B.C. So I called him “Before Charly” and he is from Munich. Charly lit a fire and we sipped tequila and talked of travel. BC spoke of his journeys in the 60s around a Europe I remember. He has an affinity for Mexico too, something we shared. He was quite critical in a gentle way of the foreigners moving to Mexico for the lifestyle but not to enjoy the culture. It was a point made softly but firmly and he paid us the compliment of not including us in the observation.
The village has some dogs and cats being noisy at night and you can hear motorbikes from time to time but it is bucolic to a degree that allows you to forget the intrusions of the 21st century.
I would sit out at night in the darkness and turn on my e reader as I’m trying to finish a rather annoyingly mystical book by a man in love with Colombia. Magdalena River of Dreams is informative but author Wade Davis is a bit too in love with his subject to feel entirely rigorous. However I know almost nothing about Colombia so I’m trying to separate the mystical chaff from the nitty gritty ghastly history of a torn up country. I plan to approach our arrival, hopefully in June with a bit more knowledge than flat ignorance of the place.
This was undoubtedly an odd stop but it was effective and enjoyable. We have plans to see cathedrals and butterflies and at least the lower slopes of a volcano in the next couple of weeks. I may look back at the peace and serenity of Santa Elena de Jalisco with envy!
