05132016Fri
Last updateFri, 13 May 2016 3pm

Hot pools versus hot river: What does La Primavera have to offer?

The town of La Primavera is located 12 kilometers northwest of Guadalajara on the extension of Avenida Vallarta (Highway 15), the road heading for Tepic, Puerto Vallarta and Nogales. It takes only a few minutes to drive south through this pueblito, whereupon you come to a sort of forest. No, I don’t mean the woods, but rather a forest of huge, unsightly signs announcing all sorts of things to do and see, from balnearios (bathing areas) to ziplines.

Rambling in March’s ­loco weather: A Surreal hike to Rio Caliente

When hikers gather around the campfire to share stories of their most unforgettable experiences in the great outdoors, you can be sure you´re not going to hear about trips that came off without a hitch, exactly as planned. No, it is far more entertaining to go back to those occasions when Nature proved itself most capricious and Murphy’s Law reigned supreme.

The forest ‘paved’ with obsidian, teeming with old mines, workshops

Recently, archaeologist Rodrigo Esparza gave a talk at Guadalajara’s City Museum on natural resources of indigenous peoples in this area before the Conquista. He mentioned to his audience the “Magic Circle” I have often written about, the confluence of all five of Mexico’s ecosystems within a radius of 250 kilometers around Guadalajara. 

Aztec ‘superfood’ makes comeback

My neighbor, Rodrigo Orozco, is growing something green and slimy in four big vats in his back yard. Because he is also raising 5,000 tarantulas (to outfox poachers) I wondered what sort of swamp creatures I might see crawling out of those vats, but Rodrigo assured me he was simply helping to reintroduce to Mexico a sort of food supplement used by the  Aztecs and other Mesoamericans before the Conquista and known to them as Tecuitlatl, which, I hate to say, Rodrigo translates as “rock poop.”