Sonora Desert, of course everybody travelling Arizona heart about it and you hardly can’t avoid visiting it, but there are some less know areas. Or as a range we met said, “there are dripless of tourists every now and then”.
Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Reserve
First stop for a night or two, in the end three for us, the Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Reserve. We had not so much wildlife, but we saw our first Coyotes on this trip, unfortunately not very cooperative, so without a picture. And of course you have plenty of opportunities here seeing Saguaros and even finding some nice spots to camp amongst them.
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument
Second stop, the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. They have two nice loop drives in the park and also couple of nice hikes. And of course plenty of cacti, especially the Organ Pipe Cactus, rather rare in the US, more common in Mexico.
Not to miss out, a beautiful little oasis in the middle of the desert.
And us, still smiling in front of our car…
…but reality hit us ones again during our days in the desert. First of all, we saw first signs of President Trumps wall to Mexico and somehow we are now thinking over and over again about former President Ronald Reagan’s words in his Berlin speech.
“This wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.”
Ronald Reagan
What will history tell about the current idea of building a wall?
But we also noticed blue water barrels marked with flags and filled with water. As we learned later, these are put out by a local humanity organization to prevent Mexican immigrants from dying in the desert. It is a shame that the border patrol sometimes destroys the barrels as it is illegal.
Still wondering how desperate people are that they decide to take the risk of crossing the desert on foot for a better life, we came across a border patrol just arresting two Mexicans in the middle of nowhere.
In Ajo, we found a wall picture fitting very well to the overall atmosphere and feelings we had on that afternoon.
Ajo
Talking about Ajo, nice little desert town which nearly became a ghost town after the mine closed, but they found their way attracting older US citizens who prefer spending the winter in the warm desert; Snowbirds are more than welcome here.
So we had a nice walk in town and enjoyed also the wall paintings they have here in parts of the village.
And now it’s time to move on, direction East. 🙂
