Puerto Peñasco Sonora Mexico

We traveled to Puerto Peñasco (which most people in the U.S. call Rocky Point) in Sonora Mexico. This is a popular outing for people in Arizona since it’s less travel time to get to the sea from Phoenix than San Diego. The beaches on the Gulf of California are, in some ways, superior to Southern California. The sea there is much warmer than San Diego and the prices are much lower. As a result. there’s a lot to be said for driving down to Rocky Point instead of San Diego for a long weekend in spite of the hassles that come with crossing the border into Mexico.

This wasn’t a photography trip. Rather this was a long weekend outing with friends. Regardless, I’m incapable of travelling without a complete set of photography gear. So here’s a photo blog of our trip.

Note: None of my images include AI generated content.

The Vacation Crustacean welcomes you to Mexico…

The house we were staying in was right on the beach (a couple miles south east of downtown). It was pretty nice, especially for the price, and we arrived in the early afternoon and got settled in.

We spent the rest of the day socializing and at dinner so I didn’t take any more photos that day.

The following morning I was up early and went for a walk along the beach. It was a pleasant walk and along the way I became enamored of the different patterns in the sand. After that, it became my morning ritual—wake up, walk the beach, take photos of sand. Weird, I know, but it was surprisingly fulfilling.

I also meet this guy. He didn’t seem too friendly so I didn’t molest him.

Later in the day we had lunch with our friends at a restaurant down town on the bay. While we ate we had a view of the bay with Sandy Beach in the distance. Parasailing seemed to be pretty popular on the bay.

Swimming was popular as well. At least if you were a pelican.

Over the next few days more vacationers came in for the weekend. There was a lot of water sports going on along the beach at our house.

The sunsets were outstanding pretty much every day. We took advantage of one of them to make a great background for a group photo.

More sunset colors…

Later that night the moon rose behind the clouds. Here’s a photo of moon light sneaking through breaks in the clouds. I can’t decide whether or not I like this image. It’s a strange landscape subject but I like the moodiness of it and the ambiguity of what’s going on in the clouds.

On our final evening, we had dinner at a restaurant set on a hill over the bay. It’s a great spot for sunsets and I took this image just as the sun was about to drop below the horizon. I thought it was a nice ending to our little trip to Mexico.

I took the similar image below from the same location in 2016. I think it’s interesting to compare them ten years apart. It was earlier in the year then so the sun is setting much more to the North West. I think the above photo works better because the sun lines up with the hill on the peninsula. For me, that makes a much more pleasing composition. This is why it’s good (when you can) to go back and photograph the same location at different times in the year and under different weather conditions.

Finally, a cell phone snapshot to prove we were really there…