Trip to Mexico

Last week we spent four days in Mex­i­co, in the city of Puer­to Penasco. This city is locat­ed on the coast of the Gulf of Cal­i­for­nia, 100 km from the US bor­der. It’s four hours dri­ve from Phoenix.

Amer­i­cans and tourists with a US visa can freely enter Mex­i­co for a peri­od of 180 days. Because of the city’s prox­im­i­ty to the Unit­ed States, it is vis­it­ed by many Amer­i­can tourists from Ari­zona, Cal­i­for­nia and Texas. The Amer­i­can name for this city is Rocky Point. It is a small city with a pop­u­la­tion of about 45 thou­sand peo­ple. Puer­to Penasco is locat­ed in the Mex­i­can state of Sono­ra after the Sono­ran Desert of the same name. The two Amer­i­can states of south­ern Cal­i­for­nia and Ari­zona are also locat­ed in this desert, but the appear­ance of the desert in Ari­zona and in Mex­i­co is strik­ing­ly dif­fer­ent. If in Ari­zona the desert is more rocky and very diverse veg­e­ta­tion, then in Mex­i­co it is sandy, with some monot­o­nous gray-green bush­es (it is not clear whether they are alive or with­ered) and very dirty. Bags, banks were lying along the entire road as soon as we crossed the Mex­i­can bor­der. In the city itself, very beau­ti­ful and expen­sive vil­las are also side by side with very poor and dirty shacks.

Amer­i­cans and tourists with an Amer­i­can visa can freely enter Mex­i­co for a peri­od of 180 days

My chil­dren’s friends and I stopped at the coast lined with lux­u­ri­ous vil­las, many of which are owned by Amer­i­cans and rent­ed out to vaca­tion­ers. At high tide, the water came right up to our house, and in the evening, when the tide start­ed, it went almost 200 – 300 meters, expos­ing the sandy beach and coastal stones with crabs, snails and shells. At low tide, when the heat sub­sides, vaca­tion­ers come ashore and roam the lagoons and rocks, but this activ­i­ty, as it turned out, is not entire­ly safe, because dur­ing this peri­od of the year a lot of stingrays come to the shores. True, they are not very large near the shore, some­where the size of a saucer or plate, and if you do not step on it, they do not attack a per­son, but quick­ly swim away.

Our friends arrived on Mon­day and we arrived on Thurs­day. So, on the first day of their arrival, one of them a stingray pricked his leg. There was a lot of blood, friends even went to the Red Cross, where he was helped. It turns out that the slopes are elec­tric and pierc­ing. These, appar­ent­ly, were pierc­ing slopes. After this inci­dent, we were all on our guard: we swam and espe­cial­ly walked in the water in spe­cial slippers.

Once we went to the city cen­ter for fish. There are many fish­ing schooners in the port, fish and shrimp are sold almost on every cor­ner, but we bought fish at the mar­ket. It’s more civ­i­lized there. The Mex­i­can bazaar is very sim­i­lar to our cloth­ing mar­ket.