Would you like to escape from urban noise, fumes and blight for an hour or so and commune with nature in the middle of nowhere?
There are many places near Guadalajara where you can do this, but not all of them are reachable by ordinary cars and doable in a couple of hours.
These are two reasons why you should head for Sheltered Spring next time you want to get away from it all.
This short, one-hour hike will not only give you a taste of the Primavera pine and oak forest, but will also acquaint you with the Primavera Caldera, which exploded 95,000 years ago and left its history on the canyon walls through which you will pass.
The hike starts at the southern end of Pinar de la Venta, a small community located eight kilometers west of Guadalajara on the highway to Nogales. I described this caminata in Chapter 18 of “Outdoors in Western Mexico,” but later heard that illustrator and cartoonist Jesús Moreno’s map to the place – charming as it is – was not always helpful for finding the spot. Hopefully, the Wikiloc link below will make it easy for you to drive and hike to this spring, known locally as La Atarjea Tapada. Even if you’ve been here before, you may want to make a new visit because the heavy rains of 2017 have eroded away great sections of the Dry River (Río Seco), revealing fascinating formations previously underground.
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