Casa de Chacala

Our latest trip to Chacala was great. Our house is almost finished, ready for painting. We made many new friends and had a great time shopping for our new house.

Our construction crew has done a great job, we are very pleased with the way they were able to work with little direction from us. Some things in the house were different than we expected-the size of the wood, the arbor on an upstairs patio, a deck off the bedroom that is twice the size we expected, but we like what they did and the reasoning behind it.

It didn’t feel so hard dealing with everyone in Spanish this time-I think everyone has adapted to our broken Spanish and are speaking more simply. Our time there was spent running around getting things and meeting with builders. We had 2 quick trips to Puerto Vallarta for supplies-we bought toilets, lights, pumps and even a couple of wicker chairs.


The beach was fabulous, although we spent very little time there. On Christmas Eve we went with eight other people to Majahua for a fabulous dinner and Christmas Day was a pot luck at Casa Pacifica. We met so many people we had to escape a couple of times to Las Varas for a break.

The market at La Penita was another highlight. They have changed the set up so that most of the jewellery and other tourist items are around the square with the rest of the market, with fruit & vegetables and house wares and clothes stretching down the street. It seemed to go on for ever. We also discovered a fabulous new Italian restaurant in La Penita with great cooking, coffee and pastries.

Things are changing fast in Chacala, there is a lot of building starting, a new restaurant on the beach, several new houses started, a gym and surf shop and a new hotel. We are not sure we will enjoy all these changes as we signed on for a sleepy little town in the backwoods of Mexico. Our house is still off the beaten track and we hope it will stay somewhat quiet in our neigbourhood, but 4 lots sold in the time we were there and building on some of them will start soon. We’ll see.

This picture shows the little tenaca on top of the house and the tiles on top of the patio roof. Hard to see but they make the house look entirely different.

We go next in late April to see everything finished fully, do the landscaping in the front so the house isn’t up so high, and decide on paint for inside. Until then we just dream of being in Chacala.