Columns

Waiting for Telmex to come fix your non-functioning landline telephone offers all kinds of hidden benefits: no more wrong numbers asking to speak to Rosita; no more pesky calls from Sky trying to sell you (for the 100th time) a more expensive package you’re not interested in; no calls at all, in fact.

The Guadalajara Chamber of Commerce recently put on a display of a selection of paintings representing the most outstanding of Mexico’s 121 pueblos mágicos or magical towns, which have been recognized by the Secretariat of Tourism for the efforts of the local people to preserve their history, traditions and customs.

I write this not as a reporter but as a teacher, long interested in improving what passes for education in too many schools all over the world.

Anyone searching for a fine, natural, hot-water spa on this continent at the beginning of this millennium would have heard about and perhaps ended up staying at Río Caliente Spa, located inside the Primavera Forest only 12 kilometers due west of Guadalajara.

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.