In 2007, Jim and Carol Cook left Oregon, settled in Ajijic, and began exploring Old Mexico.
“We started out looking at colonial ruins,” Jim Cook told me, “and quickly discovered that there were 5,000 years of history behind what we were investigating. It was like peeling an onion: whatever you found had many more layers beneath it.
“We quickly discovered there was no end of haciendas all around us. Every pueblito, it seemed, had originally been associated with a hacienda.”
Cook said that in some cases parts of the haciendas had been transformed into municipal buildings or the former chapel was now the local church, but in others, the old hacienda had been wonderfully preserved.
“Inevitably, the present-day owners would welcome us foreigners with open arms, take us on a tour and quite often insist that we had to come back for another visit.”
Soon the Cooks and their friends came to be known as the Hacienda Hunters and the results of Jim Cook’s historical research began to appear on a blog called Jim and Carol’s Mexico Adventure (Cookjmex.blogspot.com), set up in the style of a photo journal.
Nearly four million visitors
Please login or subscribe to view the complete article.