To read about them, please visit Guerreros de Guadalajara, a bilingual entry in my Flickr account.

La Minerva, warrior woman of old and symbol of modern-day Guadalajara, photo courtesy of TheLittleTx, Flickr Creative Commons.

As is the case in many big cities, one of the best things about Guadalajara is what lies outside its boundaries. That’s the case with two colonial villages just outside the city limits, Tlaquepaque and Tonalá.

Tlaquepaque is the more carefully groomed, tourist-brochure version of the colonial village – and it’s delightful, with its nightly serenades by mariachis, streets that were made for strolling and lushly landscaped courtyards. Tonalá, on the other hand, is still a little rough around the edges, with an outdoor market where you can still get a hearty meal of steak, chicken or fish in the market for about $2.50, or pick out your fresh produce and a cut of meat to go with it, all while watching the children run and play in the plaza next door.

Tonalá is a destination for shoppers of bargain artenanía, which ranges from kitchy Aztec calendars and frog-shaped ceramics to sophisticated creations from some first-rate artists. Here’s a little peek.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

My friend Alicia, like me, struggles to remember to bring the cloth shopping bags when she goes to the supermarket. This day, she remembered. Here’s a little reminder she likes to keep handy:

“It’s not enough to be biodegradeable; it’s necessary to be bioAGREEABLE.”

I liked the way this clever slogan captured one of the most important principles of sustainability: “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” In that order.

Carlos with his collection of miniature bicycles and a photo of his father, an avid bicyclist.

This intrepid group of biking photographers is dedicated to promoting biking in a variety of ways. Besides their weekly outings, which traverse a variety of rural terrains around Guadalajara and further afield, they’ve organized get-out-the-vote campaigns, children’s outings, first aid workshops, bicycle repair workshops, and a fundraiser for Haiti – all aboard the seat of a bicycle.

(Haiti Benefit Ride – Photos by Carlos Ibarra)

Founded by Carlos and other local photographers about two years ago, the group has grown to include non-photographers, as well, and works to initiate beginners into the biker’s life.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner, or a child, or even if you’ve never been on a bicycle,” Ibarra said. “The idea is to get out there and start pedaling, and we want to help with that. We’ve even had some riders who want to go faster, and they’ve gone on to form their own groups because we’re too slow – that’s ok. There’s room for everybody.”

That said, the group does some pretty heavy trekking, by a beginner’s standards. A recent fundraising ride for Haiti went 100 kilometers. And the off-trail mountain biking in Jalisco’s rugged countryside can be a challenge, especially when a storm comes up – as it did on a recent campout in Juan Rulfo country, from San Gabriel to Tapalpa.

“It was cool,” Ibarra enthused, showing photographs of dripping, smiling bikers. “It was an adventure.”

And indeed, this must be the most documented biking group of all time, with as many photographers as there are among its ranks. Here’s a slide show of the highlights from the group’s last two years.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

The group provides plenty of fun for the younger set, as well. A recent bicycle fiesta for the children, neices, nephews and young friends of Camara Rodante featured piñatas in the shape of cars.

“We were playing a little with the idea: Get rid of the cars!” said Ibarra, chuckling. “que no son muchos. It was something symbolic, and the kids loved it. Others didn’t want to because they liked the little car. But we were reinforcing the idea of using the bike – that it’s good for your health, that it doesn’t pollute, that you can move yourself quickly and easily.”

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Matter of fact, you can ride with a herd of cyclists pretty much any night of the week – just pick your flavor. “Al Teatro en Bici” (To the Theater by Bicycle”) is one of a seemingly endless number of bicycle-oriented initiatives in Guadalajara. There’s Camera Rodante, a hard-riding group of biking photographers. There’s GDL en Bici, a group of young professionals dedicated to reclaiming the streets for all commuters, not just cars. Their nocturnal rides, each one with a theme and costumed riders, have drawn upwards of 4,000 participants.

Tuesday I got a taste of the Guadalajara bicycle explosion, as well as why it may have evolved. Guadalajara is a city that has evolved, like most U.S. cities, around the automobile, and public transit is somewhat disorganized. A morning taxi ride to Tonalá, a village on the southern outskirts, took me 15 minutes; the bus ride back, an hour and a half. It took longer than that to figure out how to take the bus back to Tonalá.

And that’s not even mentioning the aggressive stance a pedestrian must take in order to negotiate the glorietas, traffic circles where a seemingly endless churning mass of vehicles whirl past.

Little wonder, then, in a city where many people don’t have cars, that frustrated commuters turned to bicycles, then teamed up to find safety in numbers. It couldn’t have been easy, however; in a city where just a few years ago, bicycles were seen primarily as a vehicle for street vendors and poor people.

On Tuesday, the first ride after the holidays, hundreds milled about with their bicycles in front of Punto del Arte, a classy cafe in the Centro. Suddenly a shout rang out – “Ya vamos!” followed by the voice of Aretha Franklin blaring from the loudspeakers attached to the lead bicycle.

“What you want, baby, I got it… What you need, you know I got it. All I’m askin’ for is a little respect…”

I don’t know about the impatient drivers who waited as the wheeled hordes streamed through the red lights, but the message wasn’t lost on me.

The eclectic soundtrack weaved from Rolling Stones to Caifanes, from Lynyrd Skynyrd to Café Tacuba to Guns ‘N Roses, and the elation was so high you could feel it bouncing from the Beaux Arts decor in the old city streets. We plied those streets for about an hour before ending up at the spectacular neoclassical Teatro Degollado, where we piled in to see a free showing of ZaikoCirco, a surrealistic international troupe of circus performers who, of course, supported the effort with bicycles in their act.

All in all, a phenomenal performance – beginning with the commute.

“This is my office,” he says with a broad smile and a sweep of his arm toward the mirror-like pool in front of him, the basalt formations all around and the forest beyond. We’re in a place he’s dubbed “Naturaleza Mistica” or “Mystical Nature,” where water has carved these crystalline pools into the rocks all around.

It’s a place that invites contemplation, inspiration and renewal. Birdsong ricochets from tree to tree in the stillness of the afternoon; the water drips from pool to pool, and a cricket chirps from a nearby crevice. I can’t imagine a better place for an office. Luis is the founder of Eco-Tours Guadalajara, the area’s first tour company dedicated to outdoor adventure. Now he and his 10-member crew lead adventures in rockclimbing, rappelling, ziplining, mountain biking, scuba diving and canyoneering.  Today he leads a group of travel writers, in Guadalajara for the SATW convention, through various degrees of terror and exhilaration on the first three, beginning with a rappel down a 50-foot sheer wall and a clamber up another one, followed by a leap from a cliff on a zipline.

Now we’re following him through a grassy field to a rocky forest as he interprets the geological and biological wonders of this place.

It was a leap of faith that brought Luis to this place in his life. He was an excellent secondary school teacher – so good that he was promoted to school principal. He enjoyed education, and his wife Lucinda taught there, too. But something in Luis kept calling him to the great outdoors, to the wilds of the mountains that encircle Guadalajara.

“Finally I couldn’t take it anymore,” he said. “I needed to be outside, in nature.”

So after 11 years in public education, he and Lucinda left their jobs and founded Eco-Tours, taking their teaching skills to a new audience. Now their pupils learn to overcome their fears and bond with the natural world around them.

It wasn’t easy in the beginning. Luis approached local tourism officials for support, but they were skeptical.

“Ecotourism in Jalisco? There’s no demand for it,” he was told. But he persevered, and now business is booming. His is one of four ecotourism companies in the Guadalajara area.

“We have one of the most spectacular sites in the country for ecotourism – excellent walls for climbing, beautiful landscapes, amazing canyons, and all just 45 minutes from Guadalajara,” he says. “This place is a natural for ecotourism.”

Click here to take the photo tour

Contact Luis and his crew at promociones@eco-toursguadalajara.com or call (011) (52-33) 13 68 93 11. The Spanish-only website is at www.eco-toursguadalajara.com but Luis is conversant in English.

One of the menu of outings offered by the Society of American Travel Writers in its pre-conference lineup was “Eco-Adventure in El Diente,” and with a name like that, how could I resist? Especially with the excellent training provided by Jamie, who nearly killed me in my first exposure to rock climbing this spring. It wasn’t until I went online today and googled it that I realized that where he failed in May, he may have succeeded in October.

El Diente (The Tooth) is about to bite me…

My account of my May adventure will appear in the Dallas Morning News this fall (posthumously, perhaps) so I asked Jamie to provide a few tips for beginners as I prepare to punish myself on the cliffs of El Diente. (El Diente pic compliments of Marc and Kristi, who climbed there a year ago and made it sound like a piece of cake in their excellent blog… Thanks, guys!)

OK, so after reading Marc and Kristi, and after going through Jamie’s tips (below, for the very brave), I’m feeling better about the climb. Honestly, it’s the mountain biking that I’m kind of freaked out about. I’ll keep you posted – if I’m not in traction.

Read on for Jamie’s excellent tips. And if the climbing bug bites you, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Climbing tips for beginners

From veteran climber Jamie McNally of Austin

1.  It’s all about the feet.  Most people think you have to have loads of upper body strength to be a good climber. Not so. Footwork is much more important than often realized, even on steep or overhanging terrain. Think of using your legs to propel you up the rock rather than using your hands and arms to pull.

2.  It’s also about balance. Your first inclination when climbing is to cling to the rock. Resist the urge. You want your weight distributed over your feet. This means that your center of gravity, especially on slabs, is often further away from the rock than is initially comfortable. But if you press too close against the rock, your weight will shift and your feet will often slip.

3.  Use your bone structure to your advantage. Climbing is often a race against muscle fatigue. One way to avoid flaming forearms is to climb with straight limbs as much as possible. You can hang from a chin-up bar a lot longer with straight arms than you can with arms bent at the elbow. Try it. Think of straightening your limbs and using your skeleton to rest on each hold while only using your muscles to move between holds.

4.  Trust your shoes. The sticky rubber on the bottom of even cheap climbing shoes is otherworldly. Dime-sized edges, rounded nubbins, and near-microscopic rock crystals are all stellar footholds. You can even stand on near vertical slabs.

5.  Don’t be afraid of cracks. Today in Texas (and in a lot of other places) most people start out climbing in gyms and learn pretty quickly how to grab different types of holds. This type of climbing is intuitive and feels natural. Climbing cracks requires a totally different technique that seems unnatural and is often painful at first. As a result, in some places, crack climbing has become a lost art. But learning to jam hands, fists and feet into different-sized cracks will improve your climbing and open up a world of rock that would otherwise be unavailable to you.

Here are some of Jamie’s photos from a recent climb at ERock.