Over the course of some 35 years, I have written descriptions of more than 100 hikes to out-of-the-way sites in what I call the Magic Circle around Guadalajara, within which all five of Mexico’s ecosystems just happen to converge.
Every now and then, people would ask me to organize a hike to one of these picturesque places and I would do so, inevitably choosing a route that involved clambering over rock walls, squeezing under barbed wire fences, slogging through swamps or hanging on to a cliffside for dear life above a big drop: just the sort of excursion I considered challenging and fun in my younger days. “They wanted an adventure and what an adventure they got!” I would think.
However, the most common request I received from people who participated in those hikes was: “When are you going to organize something I could bring my kids to?” and more specifically: “I want a hike where I can take along my five-year-old.”
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