The Guadalajara Reporter
Guadalajara's Largest English Newspaper
Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city, happens to be situated right next to a beautiful pine and oak forest covering more than 36,000 hectares. For as long as anyone can remember, el Bosque de la Primavera has been referred to as “Guadalajara’s lung” and in 1980, when big-time development plans threatened the woods, the entire forest, whether publicly or privately owned, was declared a Protected Area and Wildlife Refuge.
It’s 7 a.m. at Rancho El Zapote. The air is full of early morning sounds. Loudest of all are the roosters who live only meters from my tent and have been trying to wake me up since 4 a.m. Then come the chickens, a very large pig and dozens of loudly mooing cows, one of which wears a clanking bell, indicating that she is the leader of the herd. Suddenly I hear the distant and repeated gurgle of a car engine which doesn’t want to start, accompanied by incomprehensible shouts of men who, I’m sure, are crowded around an uncooperative truck. Finally, varoom, varoom, va-ROOOOOM! The deafening attempts to start the car go on forever and I decide it’s time to get out of my sleeping bag and into my caving pants. Today we are going to visit La Cueva de los Monos (Cave of the Figurines), which can only be reached after a long, hard climb up a steep mountainside above the little town of Toxin, which is located 37 kilometers northwest of Colima City. The cave is so named, I understand, because local people claim they found artifacts inside.
A month ago we briefly stopped to peek at Amor Corazón, a most unusual Restaurant not far from Tapalpa. Inside we found decorative two-headed snakes wound around columns, “thrones” straight out of Lord of the Rings and a fascinating mural with figures made of wine bottles and shiny glass balls. “Shades of Gaudí,” we said; “Who created all this?”
Californians Barbara and John Dye have spent the last two years working in Guadalajara as members of the U.S. Peace Corps. Barbara, who holds a degree in geology, assisted the team which cares for the Bosque de la Primavera, while John, a graduate in mechanical engineering, carried out special projects for CIATEJ (Jalisco Research Center for Technology and Design).
Without a doubt, the best-known feature of the Primavera Forest, situated on the fringes of Guadalajara, is its celebrated hot river. In fact, Río Caliente has become the symbol of the entire Bosque, even though the caldera in which it lies has plenty of other geologically interesting phenomena.
We would like to extend a sincere apology to those residents of Lakeside who last weekend turned up to participate in a hike through the Primavera Forest to be led by the Reporter’s John Pint.
A scream of terror rings out in the deep woods. A hiker races about in circles, leaping into the air and shaking her limbs wildly. “Something’s crawling up my pant leg!” she shrieks to her companions. Modesty cast aside, she rips off her pants to discover inside, not the scorpion, centipede or spider she expected, but a humble, utterly harmless, pine needle.
