Married, single, young, old, with kids in tow, retired or entrepreneurs — Baja Mexico is enticing expats with its promise of a better lifestyle. The choices are unlimited. The colorful culture of colonial and fishing towns, low home prices, world-class surfing on the crashing waves of the Pacific, snorkeling in the crystalline fish-rich waters of […]
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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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The inhabitants of the village of Oconahua, Jalisco, have a secret. A thousand years ago, their pueblito, located 75 kilometers west of Guadalajara, was a grand city covering 500-600 hectares, and their ancestors ruled all of western Mexico from a magnificent edifice covering 15.6 square kilometers and today known as El Palacio de Ocomo. Archeologist […]
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An old railway station at the western end of the train tracks in Jalisco, Mexico, bears witness to unspeakable cruelties perpetrated upon thousands of Yaqui Indians in the early 1900s. According to the Jalisco Secretariat of Culture’s Guachimontones Guide Book, Yaquis were sold as slaves at the station “for 25 centavos a head” and “around the station were located […]
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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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Rodrigo Orozco shares his Guadalajara, Mexico, home with thousands of tarantulas and tens of thousands of crickets. He’s a man with a mission. “I want to end the illegal trade in Mexican tarantulas,” he says. “My goal is to produce 6000 tarantulas per year and eventually flood the black market so that tarantula poaching will […]
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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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Halfway between Guadalajara and Lake Chapala in Western Mexico, lies little Lake Cajititlan. Although the lake produces great quantities of fish, you’ll have a hard time finding a seafood restaurant along its shores. In fact, most of the fish caught here end up being served to hungry customers of the many restaurants on nearby Lake […]
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