The tourist boom should subside next week as the school year commences and families resume normal work and study routines. The lull will give government agencies a bit of a breather to cook up some strategies for providing services required as the area’s popularity grows.

Leading the list of nagging problems are the increasing incidents of vehicle gridlock and lack of sufficient parking spaces that frequently plague the Chapala-Jocotepec corridor. Juan Carlos Borrayo, regional chief for Jalisco’s SVT traffic says that traffic has been so heavy that his officers have been instructed to focus on keeping the stream of visitors rolling rather than writing tickets for infractions.

“Last Sunday the Chapala tourist zone was so packed that I watched one car circle five times in search of a parking spot;” he recalls. When the driver asked for guidance, the officer could do no more than shake his head with a hopeless shrug of shoulders.

Queried on the subject this week, Mayor Gerardo Degollado said he has come up with a quick fix scheme that involves opening new parking areas in the vicinity of La Cristiania Park. “It will take one to two months to do the required ground work, but eventually we will have extra space to accommodate around 700 vehicles.”  He qualified the plan as a stopgap measure that will provide relief while the proposal for building an underground parking lot along Paseo Ramon Corona works its way through government red tape. Once that happens the estimated eight-month construction process can begin.

The Lake Chapala area’s boom in tourism is expected to cool down as the summer vacation period ends next week. With plans for more beautification projects and visitor attractions on the drawing boards, local government agencies are up against new challenges to meet the greater demands that come with of a more vigorous tourist trade. Photo by D. Palfrey.

The increase in tourism has also brought new challenges for authorities in charge of public safety and security.

Chapala’s municipal police force now operates a small corps of tourist police, with just enough manpower to patrol the city’s main tourist zone. They are currently getting some back up from local Civil Protection chief Osbaldo Sandoval who recently began dispatching a two-man team to help keep an eye on weekend visitors along Chapala’s waterfront. That tactic leaves Sandoval short strapped to deal with other emergency situations that can emerge. His crew responds to an average of 1,500 to 2,000 emergency calls every month.

The Chapala area Harbormaster’s agency is also short-handed at the moment. Chief officer Jose Suarez explains that the federal agency’s seven-person staff not only handles licensing for all types of boats and aquatic sport vehicles, but is also responsible for checking on fishing and tourist vessels to see that proper safety precautions are observed, keeping vigil on private vessels launched in the lake and responding to navigational emergencies.  

Considering the mayor’s plans to build new Malecon areas and otherwise improve the waterfront tourist zones in San Antonio and Ajijic, there is no doubt that the municipal government and other government agencies will need to beef up personnel and services in order to adequately attend to the flood of visitors that will be drawn by those magnets.