What’s it like to explore caves in Mexico? Here’s a story from 2006 that gives you an authentic answer—without pulling any punches.

While most people love to spend Semana Santa at the beach, members of Zotz—then Guadalajara’s only club dedicated to cave exploration—packed up their ropes, cable ladders, and helmets and headed for the pine-covered hills of Dos Aguas in the neighboring state of Michoacán. Zotz means bat in Mayan, and indeed, one would have to be a bit batty to vacation in Dos Aguas, a place truly in the middle of nowhere. It lies about 100 kilometers southeast of Colima City and is reachable only via chokingly dusty dirt roads that zigzag up and down mountains around 2,500 meters high.

By the time the last VW Beetle in the world rolled off the assembly line in Puebla in 2003, the Vocho, as it is still fondly called, had become a beloved icon throughout Mexico. One of the events that elevated the curvy sedan into the public eye was the unforgettable day a little white Vocho—equipped with a 30-centimeter propeller—crossed Lake Chapala.

All five of Mexico’s ecosystems can be accessed in what I call the 500-kilometer-wide Magic Circle around Guadalajara.

Driving only a few hours, you can immerse yourself in cool, shady forests, desert scrubland, or flat, highland prairies, and if you go far enough west in the Magic Circle, you’ll come to Mexico’s tropical ecosystems.

Cancer is frightening enough when it strikes adults. To see it afflict children is truly heartbreaking.

But what happens when the children’s families have no insurance and no resources?

In 1995, Bertha Padilla de Pérez encountered this reality firsthand during a visit to Guadalajara’s Fray Antonio Alcalde Hospital. She had been invited by her cousin, pediatrician Horacio Padilla, who showed her the children in need.

“How can I help?” she asked him.

Aguascalientes may be one of Mexico’s smallest states—covering just 0.3 percent of the nation’s territory—but it hosts one of the country’s biggest events: the Feria de San Marcos. Each year, about eight million visitors flock to the capital, also named Aguascalientes, for concerts, rodeos, bullfights and gastronomic delights.

Las Piedras Labradas has long been an ideal stop during the long drive from Guadalajara to Barra de Navidad.

After hours of winding roads through the hills south of Autlán, you finally reach the small town of La Conchita (about nine kilometers before La Huerta).

It’s at this point that a long, straight stretch of highway opens up before you—an ideal moment to veer off the road, navigate your way through peaceful mango orchards, and arrive at the base of a sheer marble wall covered in dozens of strange petroglyphs. These carvings depict everything from dogs and frogs to a large figure that resembles a bizarre mix of the old comic-strip character Nancy and an astronaut with a Mafalda hairdo.