La Bocana, Santo Tomas and Ensenada

I recently visited a little beach town in Mexico near Ensenada, Baja California. The first time I visited this place was when I was little, and what I found most striking (other than the fear of falling off a cliff) were these "crystal-like" flowers that grew all over the mountains and completely covered them from top to bottom. That's the memory I kept for decades until about two years ago when my parents took the whole family back there again. The first thing I looked for? You guessed right! The "crystal flowers" (picture below)

I spent the last couple of weeks taking photos of the place and working on them, so that I could show them to you. I realize now I took too many (always my problem), therefore I will have to make several posts to be able to share most of them without making the longest post ever to be posted here ;)

I decided to make four categories: 1. La Bocana, Santo Tomas and Ensenada architecture. 2. La Bocana Fauna and flora. 3. Ensenada and La Bocana beach and finally number 5. The people of the area I had the pleasure of meeting.

I will start with Ensenada and La Bocana beach to share some of that much needed coolness and ocean breeze. The temperature there was in the 80's (Fahrenheit's) which is perfect and there was almost always overcast. The water was a bit cold but even us (we currently live in the desert with temperatures high enough to roast you medium well) could go in and enjoy the waves.

Enough of the blabbering, here are the photos...

La Bocana, we had to travel for a couple of hours on a dirt road and over treacherous mountains to get to the beach you see on these two photos.

Diving for sea urchins is the main source of income for the fisherman in La Bocana.

The boats would be anchored and look as if abandoned in the middle of the ocean while the fisherman dive for the sea urchins.

Sea urchins feed on the seaweed, that's why you see the fisherman diving in areas with large amounts of seaweed.

There are so many rocks on the beach they clump together with the sand and make these gorgeous rock walls.

Can I be corny and say that this beach rocks? ;)

The waves are very strong and make the rocks polish each other with every swell. I found some beautiful rocks on the beach that looked almost like gems, and some perfectly round ones which I called eggs of course.

I will let you guess what these rocks are covered with x)

Passing fishing boat.

Beautiful rock formations.

I can almost see a unicorn coming from these cotton candy clouds ;)

There is a nice little pond that forms from rain coming down the mountain. Unfortunately, the area has been experiencing a two year long drought and the pond has since gotten smaller.

The drought has also affected the amount of greenery that used to covered the mountains that surround the place.

There used to be so much more greenery, but it's still much greener than what I'm used to now, so it's still great for us ;)

See? I wasn't lying about the ridiculous amount of photos I took of the place. I sure hope you like these photos and the horrid narration that accompanies them. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out my posts, I truly appreciate it (even more so if you comment ;)