Columns

Three short but blustery storms, each followed by 12- to 16-hour apagones (blackouts): No need to check the calendar, without a doubt it’s summertime in rural Jalisco!

In 2011, bat researcher Leonel Ayala told me about a cave at the eastern end of Lake Chapala near Jamay.

Jalisco has the fourth-largest obsidian deposits in the world but until now no excavations have ever been carried out to study in detail the process by which a chunk of this volcanic glass was transformed into useful artifacts by pre-Hispanic people.

If you have a dog-eared copy of the very first version of my book “Outdoors in Western Mexico,” published in 1998, you will find a chapter – deleted in subsequent editions – dedicated to Qanat la Venta, a curious kind of underground aqueduct located ten kilometers west of Guadalajara.

I have the fortune of living close to an award-winning Mexican nature photographer who is becoming recognized – by prestigious organizations such as National Geographic – as one of the world’s great photojournalists.

Here comes yet more proof that Guadalajara lies at the center of a Magic Circle of natural wonders.