A couple weeks ago I was invited by a friend... who just happens to be an archeologist... to go out with him on a site visit. All he told me before we left was that this was a top secret mission and to wear good shoes and sunblock because we were going to be walking a lot! Well, he wasn't exaggerating, but before I get to that, let me start with some background details.
My friend, Pavel, is an archeologist for the state of Jalisco. His main job is to walk the paths of new highways and freeways before they are built to make sure that they are not building over archeological ruin sites or important indigenous areas. He has to walk on average about 10-15 kilometros each day (thats 7-10 miles). Its a lot of walking, BELIEVE ME! He will walk in one direction for as long as he can, and then turn around and walk in the other direction back to the truck just to drive to a new spot and start walking from where he left off. I really wanted to do that, but he said that he has already walked the route to write his report and now it was just going back to certain sites to take pictures and measurements.
We started out by going to Ciudad Guzman, about 2 hours from
Guadalajara. He has to meet with someone and while he was in his
meeting, I explored the city. Ciudad Guzman's patron saint is Saint Jose. He just happens to be the father of Jesus, Saint Joseph. The people of this town pray to Saint Joseph in order to get or improve their jobs. When their prayers are answered they write their thanks of pieces of colorful fabric and put them as adornments on the Saint's statue. This is their way of giving thanks to the Saint for listening to their prayers. 
Pavel and I continued walking around the city and visiting the different plazas before we went off to visit the first construction site, where I wasn't allowed to take pictures! :) We then visited a few other places because I got the long awaited question of, "Do you want to walk up to the Saint's Peak in the mountain? They are going to be building up there?" Of course, my responce was YES YES YES YES YES!!!!! :) We drove to a small trail behind a small town with a small cemetery where Pavel explained to me that each year on the day of their saint, the town carries flowers and gifts up to the crosses in the mountains to give them as offerings. So we started our way up... and up... and up.. AND UP!!.
It was beautiful... and exhausting!! We were walking up the trail and we would see stones marked with white crosses to let us know that we were on the right trail. Finally, we made it up to the top and it was a gorgeous, or at least I thought it was gorgeous. Pavel was exhausted and decided to take a nap!
The view was beautiful. After Pavel's short nap, we went up the mountain even farther to another area that they were planning to build a through. I couldn't take pictures of it because it is technically a construction site in progress and Pavel could get in trouble if picture got out. Just imagine a corn field that has been dug up and that was pretty much it, but when we started walking back and forth through the field Pavel found some very interesting artifacts. He found part of an arrowhead that was probably used for hunting and also a stone that was used to smooth over other stones. There was even a thumb grip on the smoothing stone. :)
We kept walking and then Pavel showed me this spot where there is a small waterfall back in the trees.
After making it down to the bottom I took a couple pictures of the mountain that we climbed up. It wasn't the biggest mountain in the world, but it was still a lot of fun. If you look really hard at the top of the mountain, you can see the crosses that we were standing behind. 
The ride back to Guadalajara was long and after a full day in the sun and walking, hiking and seeing a lot of really cool stuff, I was definitely exhausted when I got back to my apartment. But it was really really cool. I told Pavel that I would love to actually go on the trail walk with him.
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