Columns

Last week I attended a seminar called Hemp & Learn in Ajijic. I was persuaded to go by Juan Álvaro Cortés, who, it seems, runs a Guadalajara  belt-manufacturing company on weekdays and spends his weekends transforming the lives of epileptic children through the Fundación Mexicana de Cannabis Medicinal, a non-profit that advises parents of children with epilepsy.

In previous articles I have mentioned Bakpak, an excellent magazine for hikers and campers published in Mexico, which costs nothing and is full of information about the great outdoors (but entirely in Spanish).

In addition to publishing a magazine, the Bakpak team organizes excursions for people living in and around Monterrey and Guadalajara. Recently, they told me their new season of activities for 2020 would start with a hike in La Huasteca, an area just outside Monterrey filled with limestone mountains, many of which are long, thin and high, running in parallel lines like giant knife blades. Cañon la Huasteca, they told me, is actually the beginning of the Sierra Madre Oriental, which extends south for 1,000 kilometers.

World Wetlands Day has come again, this time with a special significance for the people of Teuchitlán, because February 2 marked the tenth anniversary of the acceptance of Presa la Vega as a Ramsar site, “a wetland of international importance.”

When it comes to great hiking trails, residents of the towns along Lake Chapala’s north shore have only to stroll out their doors and head up into the hills.

I recently read a story stating that the small town of Cajititlán, located 16 kilometers north of Lake Chapala, should be renamed “Ciudad Mural,” or the City of Murals.

Belgian-born pioneer in electronic music, Joel Vandroogenbroeck, died suddenly and unexpectedly on December 23.