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‘Outdoors in Western Mexico, Vol. 2’ about to hit the shelves

Whew! Putting a book together is quite a job and, believe me, it’s twice as difficult if the text is bilingual. Yes, this second volume describes, in both Spanish and English, 25 new sites chosen from among more than 200 attractive outdoor locations which I wrote about in this newspaper over the last 30 years.

What most amazes me is that totally new hiking sites still keep popping up after all this time. I have a feeling that “Outdoors in Western Mexico” could go into 20 volumes and would still not include every one of the fascinating outdoor sites in what I call “The Magic Circle” around Guadalajara, where all five of Mexico’s ecosystems meet.

In fact, in this new book you’ll find a sort of cross-section of what the Magic Circle has to offer: snow-covered mountains, geysers, deep canyons, pyramids undisturbed for 1,500 years, volcanoes, pine forests, cold springs, hot rivers, cloud forests, jungle trails, weirdly  shaped rocks, “Flying White Sheep” and even a boggy home for old and tired crocodiles. Yes, each of these can be found in a single day’s drive from Guadalajara!

“Outdoors in Western Mexico Volume 2” (Al Aire Libre en las Cercanías de Guadalajara Volumen 2) includes GPS coordinates for every site as well as start-to-finish routes on Google Earth (thanks to Wikiloc.com). I hope that means we’ll hear no more complaints that “The place you mentioned in your book has vanished,” (meaning, “We couldn’t find it.”)

One of the most amazing places in this new collection is a set of three spectacular waterfalls called Los Azules, located on the outskirts of the town of Tequila, which happens to be perched on the edge of a deep barranca. We had spotted these waterfalls with binoculars from the opposite end of the canyon in the 1980’s but were unable to reach them because the bottom of the canyon is a veritable wild jungle of lush, semi-tropical trees and plants.

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