Live Long and Hike! Hiking Guru Offers Tips for Beginners John Pint - MexicoNewsDaily.com
go to original January 19, 2022

Views like this mile-high one at El Divisadero in Jalisco await the new hiker

When hiker Alejandro González recently published his guide to hiking in Mexico, Vive y Camina (Live and Hike), the founder of Bakpak Magazine’s goal wasn’t so much to organize excursions for already experienced hikers but rather to lure city folk out of the metropolis and into the woods.

He also wanted to leave them with such good feelings about their experience that they would happily come back for many more hikes thereafter.

“There are many things in life that we take for granted,” says González, who is also the founder of Bakpak Monterrery, one of the most active groups of senderistas (hikers and trekkers) in northeastern Mexico. “A sky of blue, a meadow, a tree. But the very fact that we can see these things at all is magic, the very fact that we can walk on two legs without falling flat on our faces, is magic.”

“If we demonstrate the value of nature,” he says, “if we teach it well, in such a way that people have fun and enjoy the experience, it generates a link between them and nature, and this link will be of inestimable value in absolutely everything they will ever do.”

This is truly a noble undertaking in a society where the younger generation would often happily keep their eyes glued to a smartphone 24 hours a day if they could get away with it.



Architect and cartographer Alejandro González has been publishing Bakpak Magazine since 2005

The trick is that enticing city slickers of any age to follow a trail into the unknown could go terribly wrong. If, at the end of their first such experience, they come home utterly wiped out, chewed on by gnats, covered in poison ivy and walking on blisters, it’s a sure thing that they’ll never go on a second hike — and down the line, they will probably make sure their children won’t either. Hence this book.

“Be prepared!” is definitely the right motto for anyone about to walk into the woods, and here, González shares his hard-won experience and discoveries about proper hiking gear with those willing to follow him out of their comfortable homes and into the fascinating forests, mountains, deserts, canyons and jungles that Mexico is famed for.

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