John & Susy Pint

Estudios demuestran que las sopladoras de hojas suponen peligros inesperados para la salud, especialmente para México Por John Pint Niños mexicanos: ¿qué hay en el aire que respiran y cuál es su futuro? Foto: John Pint Un reciente análisis de la Escuela de Medicina Icahn del Hospital Mount Sinai de Nueva York indica que la contaminación atmosférica y acústica de las sopladoras de hojas a gasolina (SHG) afecta gravemente a la salud respiratoria y también está asociada a problemas como el cáncer, las cardiopatías y la demencia, y que los niños, en particular, son muy susceptibles a estos peligros. Otro estudio muestra cómo partículas extremadamente diminutas de metal procedentes de pequeños motores de gasolina pueden ser transportadas directamente al cerebro a través del nervio olfativo, produciendo los rasgos del autismo, el trastorno por déficit de atención y la esquizofrenia. Estos estudios suponen un uso estacional de las SHG para soplar las hojas de los caminos, no el uso intenso y ...

Guadalajara is where all five of Mexico’s ecosystems come together--with amazing results By John Pint Guadalajara's Magic Circle:  by J. Pint after Rhoda & Burton For a while I’ve been asking myself how it’s possible that I keep finding new natural wonders to write about after 25 years of living near Guadalajara. So, one day I sat down with a map and drew a circle around the city, with a radius of around 250 kilometers, nicely encompassing the places a citizen of Guadalajara could conveniently drive to in one day. As I looked over what was included in that circle, I realized it was filled with attractive, picturesque, exciting, charming, even amazing sites. There was Lake Chapala, biggest lake in the country, the Primavera pine and oak forest, the live and fiery Volcán de Fuego, the white sand beaches of the Pacific Coast, huge, deep canyons carved by the Santiago River, limestone mountains supporting incredibly rich cloud forests like El Cerro de Manantlán, the mangrove swamps...

Mexico’s Río Santiago: river from Hell or heavenly river? by John Pint The Ahogado Creek, filled with industrial waste and raw sewage from toilets, flows out of the Ahogado Dam toward the Santiago River. A new movement is afoot to clean up Jalisco's Rio Santiago, widely considered the most polluted river in Mexico. Salvador Peniche of CUCEA, the University of Guadalajara's Center for Economic Sciences (under the leadership of Gustavo Padilla and Margarita Hernández) has teamed up with his colleagues in the International Society of Ecological Economics to issue a clarion call to government, business and the public at large:  “¡Verguenza! Shame!” they are crying, over the toxic waste and raw sewage that flows through what used to be one of Mexico's most beautiful rivers. Public outrage focused on the sad state of the Santiago River in 2008 when Miguel Ángel López,  an eight-year-old boy, waded into the river to recuperate a soccer ball. He died eighteen days later, not from d...

  By John Pint Ciudad de México is the most populous city in North America, teeming with around 25 million inhabitants. There couldn’t be much green there, you’d think, but, according to Peter Winckers of Aztec Explorers hiking club in the capital, that assessment would be dead wrong. “ Believe it or not, 51% of Mexico City is still green, and nine of our favorite hikes are entirely inside the city limits,” says the Dutchman, who’s been living in the capital for over 13 years. Whether or not you are a hiker, Winckers claims that  Mexico City is much more interesting than many other big metropolises because, “Originally it started out as 21 little villages which all grouped together into the monster that is now Mexico City. In fact, you could say we have 21 Barrios Mágicos inside the city limits: Magical Neighborhoods. So our group started out doing walking tours inside the city. Then we got into hikes and finally day trips.” Winckers is...

  By John Pint Travel + Leisure magazine calls San Miguel de Allende “Mexico’s hidden treasure” and everyone I’ve spoken to agrees it’s as close to Paradise as you’re likely to find on this little old planet. It is, however, “town,” and those Sanmiguelenses who occasionally get a hankering for “country” may appreciate the advice of local resident Randy Kremlacek who is one of the leaders of the San Miguel Hiking Group. “ The group has been doing this for at least 20 years,” Kremlacek told me. “In the beginning, hikers showed up at a local gas station at 8 a.m. on Sundays. I joined them because I thought it would be a good way to meet people, and to get to know el campo , the countryside. I had zero experience hiking. “ The first time I went with them, we were walking along and suddenly they started climbing up this mountainside… and I thought: it's perfectly flat to the left; why are we doing this? So, it took me a while to learn what hiking is all about.” ...