Conference in Cd. Guzman, Jalisco

On Monday the 25th, we (me, a couple other vols, and their bosses) left Metztitlan, Hidalgo on a semi-cross country adventure for natural protected areas’ best management practices conference in Ciudad Guzman, Jalisco. While the drive was long and we had some slight detours and construction, the van was extremely spacious. We did finally arrive in Ciudad Guzman after about 13.5 hours. After sessions all day on Tuesday, Wednesday we took a field trip back up to the national park called Nevado de Colima (we also went there during training). Unfortunately with the rain and fog, we never really did get to see the full volcano, but we saw some good examples of the park’s reforestation and erosion control activities. Additionally, we got to ride all the way up to mountain in some ecotourism van-thing without windows (fun, but less so in the pouring rain on the way down).

View of Nevado de Colima from the van on the way to the conference (the only view of the volcano the whole week)

Our transport up to the volcano.

Vacation 1: Guadalajara, Tequila, Zapopan

The first week of August I took a week of vacation (yes….another one) and headed West this time to the states of Jalisco and Michoacán.

Guadalajara

We (Kurt and I) arrived in Guadalajara on Saturday afternoon, where we were staying with some fellow vols and went out to dinner with a bunch of other vols from the area. The next morning, after breakfast in the big market (San Juan de Dios), we wandered around the historic center and saw the cathedral, theater, other old buildings, horse carriages that clutter the streets in the downtown (think along the same lines as the ones in downtown Chicago), and a building that is filled with murals from one of Jalisco’s most famous painters, José Clemente Orozco.

Tequila

Monday was the day for a trip to Tequila, about 1.5 hours outside of Guadalajara and the center of the tequila region of Mexico. Tequila is made from blue agave and to be called Tequila, must come from a certified region of Mexico. The town of Tequila is home to two of the larger distilleries in Mexico, Jose Cuervo and Sauza. We started off in the Sauza Family museum and then wandered through the Tequila Museum that had an interesting collection of barrels and unique bottles. In addition to the large distilleries, there are several smaller ones. We ended up with a free impromptu tour of one (El Llano), though they were between production rounds so it wasn’t operating that day. For the actual tasting and big tour we settled on Sauza. Our tour ended up to be a whooping group of four people total, and one of the other people used to work for Sauza, so we got some added perks at the open bar afterwards. It is a normal factory tour that takes you through the distilling process from whole agave to the final bottle and along the way got to sample some 4 year old oak barrel aged tequila straight from the barrel. (Side note, Jim Beam just bought out Sauza so there are now a lot of Chicago connections where and the oak for the barrels all comes from Kentucky since there is so little left in Mexico now). The tour ends in the family’s old hacienda for some more sampling. While a normal tour would include a free drink, having a former employee with us got us a pair of tamarindo margaritas, 1 year aged tequila, and a paloma (tequila and grapefruit soda).

Zapopan and the Mirador

The friends we stayed with actually live in Zapopan, a suburb of Guadalajara, so we went to explore the center of Zapopan, with some fountains, arches, a modern art museum, and big church (surprise, surprise).

Then we headed over to a park called the Mirador (or lookout) that is on the outskirts of Guadalajara and sits on the edge of a big canyon. Its really pretty and the canyon walls are fairly well forested (a sometimes rare site in Mexico), the only downside is the poor water quality in the river that was clearly evident even from a high vantage point.

Tuesday night, we went to lucha libre. This lucha experience was a little different from the family-oriented lucha in Metztitlan a couple weeks ago. It definitely had better wrestlers, costumes, and taunting from the crowd.

Jalisco (but not the part with Puerto Vallerta, the beach, or the town of Tequila)

This week we headed to the state of Jalisco on the Western side of Mexico. We visited a couple natural protected areas (La Primavera, Nevado de Colima, and Sierra de Quila) to learn about different management strategies and things like that. We also had a couple days of seminars and workshops on a variety of topics including: growing mushrooms, building straw bale houses, worms, medicinal plants, forestry programs, and making charcoal. We did get to “ride” horses for a little bit, rigged up a volleyball net, and went to a river with hot (geothermal) water.

The highlight of the trip was the visit to Nevado de Colima, a volcano. We went up to 14,000 feet on the peak of a mountain right next to the volcano and from there you can also see the peak of an adjacent volcano. We spent Friday night “in” Guadalajara (didn’t see anything of the city because we basically were on the side of a highway next to a gas station). Saturday went to a market in a nearby town before heading back to Queretaro.

Coming back was a little bit of a surprise as it seems that Christmas exploded on the city while we were gone. The main garden has about 4 nativity scenes, an elephant that moves, a scene with devils, an Adam and Eve scene, a large cow next to a giant cactus, and the gigantic plastic poinsettias. All the streets are adorned with giant sparkly Christmas shapes and most of the plazas have some of the largest tinsel “Feliz Navidad” signs that I have ever seen.

more picts than you would even care to look at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/daninewcomb/