The Desert Changed My Life. It Can Change Yours, Too.
The desert of Baja California now threatens the U.S. border with Mexico. In the desert, the sky is blue and the sun shines bright. This is the Baja California Peninsula, a vast expanse of lowlands that lies between the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Sonoran Desert to the east. The peninsula is covered with hills, but the terrain is flat. The Pacific Ocean, in contrast, is wide and flat, stretching south to the Gulf of Tehuantepec.
Baja California, however, is much more than the area surrounding San Jose, CA. Baja California has its own fascinating history and geography. The peninsula is the northernmost part of the mainland of modern Mexico. It is wedged between the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Sonoran Desert to the east. Mexico, along with the U.S., Canada, and Costa Rica, shares the peninsula with California. Mexico has given Baja California its own unique history, culture, and geography. The peninsula, which extends for more than 350 miles, has a long and complicated history.
The Baja California Peninsula, with its desert climate, is not easily recognized from the American Southwest. It was thought to be a part of the “Rocky Mountains.” But now, we know that Baja California is as different from the American Southwest as it is from the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora. The mountain ranges are gone, buried beneath the desert. Baja California has its own unique geography.
On the Baja California Peninsula, the coast is not flat, as it is in the American Southwest, but jagged. The landscape is dominated by low cliffs and jagged mountain ranges. Mountains of varying heights rise up to 500 to 1,000 feet. Many of them are visible from the air, and can make it seem as if the land is covered in a thick blanket of clouds.
These high mountain ranges and the desert