These days, for some tourists, it seems that physical history, a sense of history, a sublimity of walking in the footsteps of the ancients by the light of nature itself, is not enough – one’s senses, incapable of an exercise of pure imagination, need to be kick-started into an appreciation of one’s surroundings. Flashing laser […]
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“Slightly to the right and below them, below the gigantic red evening, whose reflection bled away in the deserted swimming pools scattered everywhere like so many mirages, lay the peace and sweetness of the town. It seemed peaceful enough from where they were sitting.” -Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano In the purest sense of things, not […]
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Has anyone heard of a Rio Flying Cloud? A Whippet? A Phaeton? They sound like the monikers of mysterious yet amusingly kitsch vessels that move through the air in old time superhero comic books. They conjure a weird parallel universe where history is a malleable substance and citizens go about their lives with no sense […]
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As I have said before, Mexico City, to these old eyes, is too big, too hectic, too crowded, too liberal, too much of several things. Mexico City is very exciting, prosperous, problematic, fashionable, contradictory. As I have said before, there is so much to see, stately cathedrals, marvelous museums, magic marketplaces, significant statues, almost perfect […]
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San Felipe is the center of a living museum that has witnessed the passage of a continuum of men, women and children for the past 2- to 3,000 years. Whereas evidence of their existence remains in most of the canyons draining the nearby Sierra San Pedro Martir, it stands in abundance in shell mounds lining […]
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During twenty-four years of reconnoitering the highways and byways of western Mexico, I have never come across a road as rewarding as the 53-kilometer stretch from Tala to San Marcos in the state of Jalisco. This road is marked as Jalisco Highway 4 on many maps, but beware: you might also find it labeled highway […]
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Soaking wet and covered with mud, we followed the narrow underground stream deeper and deeper into the cave until we found ourselves standing about three meters above a pool of undetermined depth. The thick, dark liquid in the pool was composed of water, bat urine and guano, and a dead rat was floating on the […]
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Beneath the high walls of an ancient crater, you glide across the placid lake in a rowboat, mesmerized. “This is surely the most peaceful place in all Mexico and definitely one of the most beautiful,” you tell yourself. But just beyond those protective crater walls rises one of the most dreaded forces of nature: an […]
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Isla Isabel is located 34 kilometers (21 miles) off Mexico’s west coast. It is a National Park and wildlife refuge with a population of some 42,000 birds and, in 2003, was named a World Heritage Site. On top of that, Isabel Island is a Ramsar site (wetlands of international importance). Because the birds and iguanas […]
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The Primavera Forest is a protected area of oak and pine trees covering over 36,000 hectares, located due west of Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city. In 2010, the administrators of the forest published Aves del Bosque La Primavera-Guía Ilustrada (Illustrated Guide to the Birds of the Primavera Forest) by Oscar Reyna Bustos. Nature photographer Jesús Moreno described […]
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