Puerto Peñasco Or Rocky Point

I had seen pictures of high rise towers along the beach at Rocky Point, on the northern shore of the Sea of Cortez and I knew this town is a resort designed to appeal to desert dwellers in Arizona or inland California, but a short drive through town from our overnight stop at a beach campground revealed much more of this strange community. 

In the US Puerto Peñasco (“Rocky Port” in Spanish) is known as Rocky Point which is how I shall refer to it even though it is firmly in Mexico 60 miles from Arizona. It was founded in 1927 and was known as a shrimping port to harvest the warm waters of the northern Gulf of  California, also known as the Sea of Cortez. 63,000 people live here in a Mexican resort town built to cater to American visitors. 

It’s a desert town caught between the sands of the Altar desert which looks like nothing so much as Death Valley to my eye and the warm waters of the Gulf which have nowhere to go and absorb summer’s heat and throw it back as humidity. 

What most struck me as we drove through town was how shabby the place is. This is no Pueblo Magico, colonial architecture is nowhere to be seen. Streets are wide, lined with dreary functional homes and small businesses, and many side streets are unpaved adding to the air of dusty neglect. 

Reading about Rocky Point there is an airport with no scheduled flights and a cruise ship terminal half built and abandoned which is symbolic of the neglect this town seems to labor under. There is one road in from Lukeville/Sonoyta to serve Arizona (Highway 8) and one road in from California to the west (Highway 3) along the coast. If you want to visit Rocky Point you drive.  

Type “Rocky Point” into Google Maps and the search, unfazed, returns “Puerto Peñasco”!

This is a bilingual town where English is spoken, dollars are accepted and your status as a gringo visitor not interested in Mexico is understood. This is not Mexico for Mexicans. 

In addition to innumerable hotels there are a dozen RV parks of varying quality to serve snowbirds and retired Americans who cherish the low cost lifestyle and little else. You can drink at age 18 here and drive your ATV on the streets and buy prescription medications over the counter for little cost. What more do you need for a happy retirement? Or simply a weekend away from the structures of working life north of the border? 

We saw a woman eating tamales for breakfast at the laundry. Spontaneously she offered us one to taste and pointed us in the correct direction to buy more. She spoke fluent English which we discovered only after addressing her in Spanish. 

The laundry Layne chose was do-it-yourself and very swift and efficient it was too. We left the campground with nicely empty tanks and ourselves properly showered so once on the streets we promptly filled our 30 gallon water tank with purified water and cleaned our clothes, bedding, and rugs in one lovely stop. By ten am Monday we were ready to go. 

It turns out Rocky Point is two separate communities. The Mexican town is to the east as you see it here. 

Wherever gringo money is going it isn’t being spent here. Notice the sandy avenue unpaved to the horizon. 

The foreign enclave is separated from the Mexican town by a street named with no irony at all Rodeo Drive, or dust catcher alley in my mind.

In Spanish it is Artisan’s Market, several blocks of stuff for sale you only need as a souvenir of your vacation by the sea. On a Monday morning in June it was deserted. 

And then you enter no man’s land with the famous high rises in the distance. 

Road signs are in English and speeds are in miles per hour. 

Development here was kicked into high gear in the 1990s when the Mexican government supported creation of hotels to attract Americans to the beach. And now we see the results, a whole separate world.  

We drove around a bit looking out our windows at a world made not for us. I don’t suppose we will return to Rocky Point but at least now I know what this oft mentioned place is all about. I missed our shabby off season little RV park at the other end of town. 

We didn’t stop. We had three hours driving ahead, up the coast and across the Altar Desert to another Mexican town, that one built for Americans and their teeth.