Twenty five years ago I had occasion to go to the Lake Chapala area because a friend of mine had spent time there as a child with her parents who were artists. We ate and did stuff, found it to be very beautiful, stayed the week and came back to Houston. Then about sixteen years ago there was an ad in the Houston Chronicle about retiring in Mexico. My husband at the time and I went to it – it was a seminar at the airport and we were asked if anybody in the room had been to Lake Chapala. I enthusiastically raised my hand and said, “We have!” We drove down that Christmas, stayed a week, came home and went back the next June and stayed for 6 months. Canadians come to the Chapala area to get out of the cold – snowbirds. Texans come to Chapala to escape the sweltering heat – we are called ‘sunbirds’. Everybody was so friendly! Every time we would go out to eat we people would chat with us, asking us where we were from and then the friendships would begin. This is now my 16th year. The first nine years we rented in different parts of the area and seven years ago we built our house – and during the winter months we rent it out to snowbirds!