The Parque Metropolitano is Guadalajara’s biggest urban park, a carpet of green covering 108 hectares and a favorite site for joggers, cyclists and dog walkers.
On top of that, great numbers of families come to the park – especially on weekends – to picnic on the grass under a shady tree.
Some years ago, I heard a rumor that the park also had a mariposario, a monarch butterfly sanctuary, and I decided to go have a look.
Once I was parked, I walked up to a huge map of the parque, but nowhere did it indicate the existence of a butterfly sanctuary. So, I followed the standard procedure for finding your way around in Mexico: asking everyone I could see.
As usual, this worked fine. We discovered we were at the wrong end of the park, but all we had to do was walk north a kilometer and look for “Las Oficinas.” This we did and eventually we came to a high cyclone fence topped with barbed wire. We followed it along for what seemed an eternity and at last arrived at a big, imposing gate next to a guardhouse.
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