Laguna de Sayula

The Laguna de Sayula is a long, shallow salt lagoon that stretches north from Sayula for some 30 kilometers, between the Sierra de Tapalpa and the mountains to the east. It is never more than about 2 meters deep, and in the dry season much of it turns into pale salt flats; after the summer rains it fills into a broad sheet of water.

In 2004 it was declared a Ramsar site, a wetland of international importance, because of its role for birds migrating from North America. Winter is the best time to see them, when flocks of snow geese, shorebirds and herons gather along its edges, and hawks hunt over the surrounding grassland.

The lagoon also has a long human history. Archaeologists have recorded about 170 pre-Hispanic sites around its shores, and for centuries people here made salt by evaporating the lagoon's brine, an industry that made the Sayula basin important long before the Spanish arrived.