Buena Vista with cardon cactus

Yesterday we flew from Las Vegas via Phoenix to San Jose del Cabo, at the southern tip of Baja California in Mexico. We drove up the coast of the Sea of Cortez to Buena Vista, where we'll be for the next week.

I am surprised how green it is here. It may not look like it from this picture, but the coastal strip is full of beautiful green trees and bushed which are flowering and leafing right now. It's really good for birds too, which I wasn't expecting. Being an almost-island Baja California has much less species diversity than mainland Mexico. There are only about 50 species here in the summer but the birds that do occur seem abundant and obliging.

The cactus on the right is a cardon cactus - very like the saguaros we saw in Arizona but thinner, and more branched. It can grow even taller than the saguaro apparently - up to 19 metres - but the ones round us are a modest 3-4 metres.