La Purísima

Today we had a field trip to La Purísima, an oasis two hours north of Puerto San Carlos. We drove through two hours of the typical flat desert scenery. At some point I fell asleep and when I woke up we were next to a virtual forest of date palms with red rock mesas and mountains surrounding us. We stopped in the forest for a lecture from Vero on carrying capacity, which being an Ecology major, I’ve encountered in every semester for the past three semesters. It was such a change to be in a forest with shade and a canopy. It definitely confirmed my sneaking idea that I may be more of a forest person than a coast person. I loved listening to the birds and walking through the trees-even though they were date palms and the ground was still essentially sand. There were sightings of someone’s horses further in the stand but I couldn’t find them when I looked. I did find a bunch of goats though, which are in the picture album (or will be once I upload…). To fulfill my equine craving I saw a lot of horses on the drive, apparently a bunch of people keep them for ranching. I even saw one guy herding his goats on horseback right next to the road. Which reminds me of another interesting Mexican anomaly. You’ll have like 2 miles of really nice roadway, then 200 ft of awful potholes, then 2 miles of really nice road again. And there’re full-on road signs for what appear to just be someone’s small ranch.

After Vero’s lecture we climbed back in the vans and drove another 15 minutes to the edge of a mesa or something like it and climbed down (a much shorter and less intimidating hike than our last one) to get to the oasis itself. It was so pretty, where the desert just burst into green. And it was so nice to be in freshwater again! I don’t particularly like swimming in saltwater, it’s such a shock if you get any up your nose or in your mouth, and you feel grimy after swimming in it. This water was fairly warm and there was a great ledge that everyone put their stuff on and ate lunch on. The only downside was that the rocks leading into the water were super slippery, but I just kept a hand on them as I went down. We swam around for probably half an hour, then got out and had a lecture from Eduardo on oasis ecology, right on the rock facing the oasis. That was one of those “Well, I’m glad I chose this study abroad program!” moments, how many people get to have class while wearing a bathing suit, looking out on an oasis surrounded by palms, cacti and mesas?

We had another two hour drive back to the center to two pieces of good news: the student server, and therefore internet, was back up and there were hamburgers and French fries for dinner! We really do all like the Mexican food and happily eat it 24/7 but it’s really nice to get an all-American meal occasionally. The fries were surprisingly good, they reminded me of O-fries but with less than half of the grease.