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.

Guadalajara painter Jorge Monroy, working with a team of three other artists, is nearing completion of a huge mural gracing the newest building of the Antiguo Hospital Civil complex.

The huge Bosque la Primavera that hugs Guadalajara’s west side now has two signposted Interpretive Trails. I described the first one in my September 13, 2013 column and here comes a report on the second.

In the summer of 2010, Jennifer Day, a University of Washington graduate student, and “Scooby the Conservation Canine,” an energetic black Labrador, were invited to spend four days in Jalisco’s Primavera Forest hunting for the scat of wild animals that roam the woods.

Susan Street is a social scientist at Guadalajara’s Social Anthropology Research Center (CIESAS). She lives in Pinar de la Venta, eight kilometers west of Guadalajara and her house is situated at the very edge of the sprawling Bosque La Primavera, home to 340 species of vertebrates, including coyotes, lynxes, a puma or two, and, of course, rattlesnakes. As you can imagine, none of these woodsy creatures know exactly where the forest ends and Pinar de la Venta begins.

There’s something special about Tapalpa. Meandering through its narrow, picturesque streets is a pleasure all its own and what better way to end a day of wandering than in an armchair in front of a roaring fireplace, sipping a potent Ponche de Granada?