Puerto Peñasco

Puerto Peñasco is a beach and fishing city in the north-west corner of Sonora, on the northern shore of the Gulf of California, roughly 100 kilometers south of the Arizona border. It had 62,689 people at the 2020 census. It sits in the Altar Desert, one of the driest and hottest parts of the Sonoran Desert, on the narrow strip of land that joins the Baja California peninsula to the rest of Mexico. In English it is Rocky Point, a name given by a British naval officer, Robert William Hale Hardy, who sailed here looking for pearls in 1826; the Spanish name refers to the same thing, the dark volcanic rock where old lava flows ran into the sea. Phoenix and Tucson are both about 350 kilometers away, which is why it is often called Arizona's beach.

For a long time this was only a seasonal camp for fishermen from Guaymas, Bahía de Kino and other ports, who came for the totoaba; with no drinking water, nobody stayed. Things changed in the 1930s, when the railway linking Baja California with the rest of Mexico passed through, and the town and port were laid out in the 1940s as shrimp fishing took off. Puerto Peñasco split from the municipality of Caborca in 1952. In 1993 government and private investors set out to turn it into a resort, and the area was included in the border free zone, so visitors from the US can drive down without a visa (a passport is still needed). Condominiums and hotels now line much of the coast, and many residents are American or Canadian.

The old town lies between the sea and the Cerro de la Ballena, a hill by the port whose lookout gives the classic view north over the harbor, the waterfront and the resort towers of Sandy Beach. Below it, the Malecón Fundadores runs along the water with shops and seafood restaurants, the shrimp fleet ties up in the fishing harbor, and the Monumento al Camaronero honors the men who work the boats. The tides here are big, rising and falling up to 8 meters, and low tide uncovers rock pools along the shore. The beaches spread out on both sides of town: Sandy Beach and La Choya to the north-west, Las Conchas and the Estero Morúa, a bird-filled estuary, to the south-east.

Inland, the Reserva de la Biosfera El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar, a UNESCO World Heritage site of more than 714,000 hectares, protects dunes, old lava fields and giant craters such as El Elegante, where NASA astronauts once trained; its main entrance is at km 52 of Highway 8. Back in town, the CET-MAR aquarium shows turtles, octopus and fish of the gulf, and boats leave for fishing, snorkeling and sunset cruises. The fishing festival starts on Navy Day, June 1, with mariachis, folk dance and a festival queen.