If you think you have a problem with the occasional noise of firecrackers or fiestas, pity the poor souls who live next door to one of those cantinas or salones de eventos from which a window-shaking barrage of ear-splitting music blasts away all night long.

“Have you ever seen how they make raicilla, John?” asked my friend JP Mercado. Well, I had been told that raicilla was a kind of moonshine made in the mountains somewhere near Mascota, but beyond that I knew nothing, so when JP offered to take me to a taberna (rustic distillery) where they make it, I signed up on the spot.

On January 30, geography researchers at the University of Guadalajara (UdG) presented a 535-page book on the geoheritage of La Primavera Sierra, describing in detail its “volcanic diversity.”

Having an art gallery just down the street is pretty cool. They always have something going on and last weekend was no exception.

La Presa de la Tortuga is a small body of water located 20 kilometers west of Guadalajara and accessible from Highway 70. Last Sunday, my friend Rodrigo Orozco suggested we go for a hike in the wooded area west of this lake.

Thanks to Facebook, I now have hundreds of “friends” I wouldn’t know from Cantinflas.