On January 20, 2012, the Guadalajara Reporter was the first newspaper in Mexico to report the discovery of hundreds of curious rock engravings along the shores of a small dam called La Presa de la Luz, located 120 kilometers east of Guadalajara, near the town of Arandas.

Launching his new book, “A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area, The Lost Civilization of Teuchitlán,” at Guadalajara’s Paleontology Museum this week, Reporter columnist and cave explorer John Pint described his initial encounter with the late archaeologist Phil Weigand, the discoverer of Jalisco’s most famous ruins.

One of the many geographical benefits of living in Guadalajara is its proximity to volcanoes. There are few towns in the world where you could visit three of the principle types of volcanic landforms in just one day. Several years ago I suggested that some athlete ought to climb el Cerro de Mazatepec (a cinder cone or scoria volcano), cross the Primavera forest (a caldera, or collapsed volcano) and end the tour at the top of El Volcán de Tequila (a classic stratovolcano).

Not long ago a friend sent me photos of a huge cave entrance entirely composed of tall basaltic prisms: roughly hexagonal columns which are sometimes formed as basaltic lava cools. The cave was located near a pueblito called Los Reyes, located 7.5 kilometers northeast of San Sebastián del Oeste, as the crow flies. The only problem, I had heard, was the road, which was said to be in bad shape, requiring four-wheel drive and nerves of steel to put up with hours of negotiating blind curves overlooking deep chasms. Amazingly, I found someone interested in going to check out that bad road: my neighbor Josh Wolf, who said he needed a break from sitting in front of a computer screen day after day. “My family and I are up for an adventure this weekend,” he told me.

One of the reasons why the Spaniards eventually located the capital of Nueva Galicia in the place where we find it today, is the semi-tropical climate at the bottom of the Santiago River Canyon, which in many places is 500 meters deep.

Rodrigo Orozco is a Guadalajara-based businessman, who  in his spare time also plays the role of “foster father” to 6,000 young tarantulas.