Many years ago I became a member of a Mexican family when I married Susana, one of the nine children of Francisco and Carmen Ibarra of El Platanal, Michoacán. Most of the Ibarra children grew up on the grounds of a hydroelectric plant located in a remote corner of a veritable Michoacán jungle and run by their father, an electrical engineer. The children had no other playmates but themselves and not even schoolmates, as their mother was the local “school marm” sent by the government to teach at La Planta, as the power-generating facility was called.

Here’s a real mixed bag for you: a hiking trail that starts only three kilometers from the controversial Villa Panamericana (Pan Am Games Athletes Village)  just outside Guadalajara and shows you both the best and the worst sides of the Primavera Forest.

Because you are a native speaker of English, there’s a lot you can do to help interested Mexicans improve their command of your language. In a previous article, we took a look at the most important technique in a good teacher’s basket of tricks: giving feedback in such a way that students can easily discover and self-correct their own mistakes.

“We want to show you some petroglyphs located not far from Arandas. We’ve never seen anything like them before.” This email message immediately grabbed my attention because it had been sent by two archaeologists, Rodrigo and Cyntia Esparza.  If the Esparzas considered this rock art extraordinary, I told myself, it must be extraordinary indeed. So, I made an extra effort to try to set up an expedition to Arandas—no easy task because the site was at the end of “un camino feo” (literally, an ugly road) and only high-clearance vehicles would be suitable for reaching the place.

I was a close friend of Mitch Ventura and, in a way, many of the readers of the Guadalajara Reporter also know him because he was a “guest writer” for this column on two occasions.

“This Saturday we’re going to hike up to a lookout with a gorgeous view—hope you can come,” said the email I sent out to people on my list of Caminantes (hikers).