The zoos of my childhood were places where miserably unhappy animals paced away their lives in cages of steel, concrete and glass.

YouTube video blogger Luigi Medina is dangerous. Watch one of his videos about interesting sites in the “Magic Circle” around Guadalajara and suddenly you find yourself possessed by a mysterious force that makes you climb into your car—and off you go!

Sierra Rios is a nonprofit river conservation organization founded by Rocky Contos, a paddler who made the first descent down 104 of Latin America’s rivers.

October 3 is the birthday of a late Mexican who was called “one of the most curious personalities born in the modern New World” by muralist Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, today more commonly known as Diego Rivera.

The Piedras Bola Silver Mine, located in the Sierra de Ameca, is named after a giant stone ball lying just outside its entrance. In 1967, the former superintendent of the mine, Ernest Gordon was shown five more huge stone balls in the hills above the mine, prompting him to place a telephone call to archaeologist Matthew Stirling in Washington DC.

Here’s another wonderful place that makes you feel you’ve arrived in the middle of nowhere when you are actually a mere 45 minutes from the big city.