Water, rocks, and plants

 I explored the southwestern edge of Punta Banda this weekend with friends. The blue waters, rocky coastline, and unique flora and fauna make this fog desert impressively beautiful.

A rocky cove roars with every wave.

Baja California is known for its raw beauty and unspoiled landscapes. Jagged cliffs, thorny plants, and endless mountains dominate the countryside. It's is a stark contrast to the lush terrain below the surface. That makes it an ideal place for scuba divers to explore. 

A scuba instructor eases first-time divers into the Pacific Ocean.

It's not only cactus and scrub brush that grow in Baja California. Countless wildflowers come alive in spring. The majority of precipitation falls during late summer and early fall, providing an explosion of life. 

Some years conditions are right for a super bloom -- a rare desert botanical phenomenon in which an unusually high proportion of wildflowers whose seeds have lain dormant in desert soil germinate and blossom at roughly the same time.

The Mediterranean climate also causes some wildflowers that have an annual lifecycle in other parts of the continent to live a perennial lifestyle. Lupine in Baja California grow continuously, developing thick woody stems that resemble tree trunks.

In Baja California, lupine are perennial. This is the largest lupine I've ever seen, standing about 6 feet with a trunk measuring about 5 inches in diameter.

A more than 120 cactus species call Baja California home. The peninsula contains about 10 percent of Mexico's cacti diversity, of which about 76 percent occur nowhere else.  

Unidentified cactus needles glow in the sun.

More than 160 species of amphibians and reptiles live in Baja California. Three species of horned lizards, known for their blood-squirting defense behavior, live from central California through the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula. They mainly eat ants, especially harvester ants, but also consume other small invertebrates, such as spiders, beetles, termites, flies, honeybees, moth larvae, and grasshoppers. 

A juvenile horned lizard, likely Blainville's Horned Lizard - Phrynosoma blainvillii, takes refuge among the charred remains of a campfire.  

The agave family, also sometimes known as century plants, includes more than 25 species of hardy desert plants with sharp spines along the edges and at the tips. Their tall colorful flower spikes dot the landscape as far as the eye can see. Indigenous people used fibers from the leaves to make cloth, bowstrings, and rope. Agave has long been a food source. Young flower stalks, buds, and hearts of  the plants are roasted, serving as a staple food, even through drought years.

When agave bloom, they spend all of their resources feeding pollinators to ensure seed production for the next generation.