“The mountain, she is not innocent….” Senor Reyes’ voice trailed off as his words hung in the dry air of the climber’s hostel in Tlachichuca. John and I toned down our giddy anticipation and shifted uncomfortably in the sudden gravity of the moment. Reyes was perfect, exactly the type of mountain man you expected to […]
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Several small towns in northern Mexico offer a welcome respite and interesting overnight stop for tourists bored by the long and monotonous stretches of desert driving on their way south. One such destination is Sombrerete, mid-way between the cities of Durango and Zacatecas. According to some, there was so much silver in this area that […]
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Every two years, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) awards the Equator prize (worth 30,000 dollars) to communities that have shown “outstanding achievement in the reduction of poverty through the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.” One of the winners of the 2004 Equator prize was the indigenous community of Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutiro, in […]
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Think of warm sunshine and beautiful beaches. People who explore Mexico more deeply learn about colonial cities, handicrafts, and history. Mexico also has an incredible range of geography, from desert to tropical jungle and, yes, snow-covered mountains. The third highest mountain in North America is a few hours from the airport in Mexico City. Climbers […]
Continue Reading(Este artículo apareció por primera vez en Ron Mader’s Eco Travels (www.planeta.com) Un desierto cuya inmensidad bordea montañas con aspecto de cráteres, donde abundan aereolitos esparcidos en sus alrededores, asi como el recuerdo de un cohete espacial que cayó en su árido territorio, hacen de la misteriosa Zona del Silencio, en el norte del país […]
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As vertical shafts go, this is a seriously deep one! Long considered to be “bottomless” since no-one had ever managed to find the floor, we now know it is precisely 335 meters (1099 feet) deep, making it the deepest water-filled sinkhole anywhere on the planet. The El Zacatón sinkhole is on El Rancho Azufrosa, near […]
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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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In most places, a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, but not in many parts of Jalisco’s Primavera Forest, located at the western edge of Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-biggest city. In this woods, a person trying to take a shortcut to some spot only 100 meters away may suddenly find himself or herself […]
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Three thousand years ago engineers in Persia devised an ingenious solution to one of mankind’s most serious problems in areas without rivers and lakes: how to get water from point A, where it abounds, to point B, where it is desperately needed. Today their invention is generally referred to by its Arabic names, qanat or foggara, also […]
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