Cactus in Lava!

We did a lot of fun stuff while in Puerto Penasco. This is the final blog post on this great area.

One day we did a driving tour of Cholla Bay, then stopped off at JJ's Cantina for a drink right on the water.

There were a lot of pelicans here waiting for a handout.

I just love the 40X zoom on my camera!

On another day, Bart, one of our members who is very familiar with the area took us on a real estate tour. The area seemed pretty empty, because most of these are vacation homes. Americans are not allowed to own real estate within 50 miles of the water in Mexico, but of course there are ways around that.

Afterwards, we went to a lecture at CEDO, the Center for the Study of Deserts and Oceans.

The room we were in was decorated with colorful painted tiles, not all from around here, since I recognized the Blue Footed Booby from the Galapagos Islands.

Outside is a skeleton of a Fin Whale. We saw Fin Whales the other day on our boat trip.

Our last big trip was an all-day driving tour of El Pinacate, aka The Biosphere.

There's a beautiful Visitor Center, where you can see cactus growing up out of the lava!

Right at the entrance station to the park is a very tame Red Tail Hawk. You could even pet him!

We then drove the loop shown in the map above. It starts out with the normal beautiful desert views -

But then changes to lava rock!

We made several stops and did short hikes. The first was to the top of the El Elegante crater. This is a "maar crater," which means that the bottom of the crater is lower than the ground around the crater. It's so big I had to put two photos together.

Hi there!

We also stopped at the Cerro Colorado crater, a "tuff cone." Here's one side -

And the other. It has a diameter of almost 1/2 mile!

That's it for Mexico! Now back to the real world...