We were strolling along Ajijic’s Malecón with new friends. One of them gazed at the placid waters with dreamy eyes and began to tell us stories of amazing animals with exotic names like Megatherium and Gomphothere, creatures which used to frolic alongside the lake in prehistoric times.

Whew! Putting a book together is quite a job and, believe me, it’s twice as difficult if the text is bilingual. Yes, this second volume describes, in both Spanish and English, 25 new sites chosen from among more than 200 attractive outdoor locations which I wrote about in this newspaper over the last 30 years.

Some time ago, we stumbled upon a small shelter cave in a remote part of the Primavera Forest, alongside El Río de las Animas, the River of Ghosts. Inside the cave we found a shimmering white, bell-shaped column of rock which I decided to call La Reina de las Animas, the Queen of Ghosts.

If you don’t immediately clutch your purse or iPad when someone asks you for directions in a supermarket parking lot, it means you didn´t read “The Picking of Pepe’s Pocket,” published in this paper two months ago. That column dealt with shopping center scams popular in Guadalajara, but this time the focus is on e-mails. If you’re not too familiar with the subject, read on.

Salvador Mayorga is a man with a view and is also the owner of a ranch with a view. Mayorga was director of Bosque La Primavera for some 12 years and has a passionate love for nature and animals. Today he runs a ranch at the very top of the Santiago River Barranca on Cerro el Mexicano, due north of Guadalajara.

Pinar de la Venta, located eight kilometers west of Guadalajara along highway 15, was once an integral part of the sprawling Bosque de la Primavera, but about 40 years ago, it was turned into a Fraccionamiento Campestre (rustic housing development) and today is home to some 300 families. Of course, no one ever informed the animals, birds and invertebrates living in Pinar that they are outside the boundaries of the forest, so it’s not unusual for Pinareños to find the likes of foxes, possums, coatis and ringtails in their back yards, tarantulas, vinegaroons and rattlesnakes on their porches, motmots, cuckoos and “Tequila bats” visiting their bird feeders and gangs of Acorn Woodpeckers stealing peanuts meant for squirrels.