Columns

Learning does not take place if teachers simply dictate their knowledge to students. Instead, something marvelous happens when teachers put students into direct contact with what they need to learn.

If ever you are looking for a short hike through a beautiful landscape to a mirador with a great view, just head for San Juan Evangelista on the shores of La Laguna de Cajititlán.

An enterprising family has transformed Amatitán’s impressive Ruinas de Chimulco into a restaurant which is not only charming and picturesque, but, I’ll venture to say, unique, because its table-side pool is fed by a qanat, a kind of underground aqueduct which was invented in Persia 3,000 years ago.

Every year in August, my friend Franky Álvarez sends out a call: “I need 300 volunteers to plant 300 trees on top of el Cerro del Cuatro.”

 “My niece and her girlfriend plan to do the Camino a Santiago Compostela (800 kilometers) next month,” my neighbor Miguel Mayorga told me. “So my wife and I plan to take them up to La Chupinaya this Sunday to warm them up … do you want to come along?”

I recently spent a morning on the beach at Atotonilco Lagoon learning all about the plight of a tiny waterbird called the Snowy Plover.