Rocky Point, El Otro Lado de Arizona

You can drive to a lot of places in around four hours from Phoenix: the Grand Canyon, Palm Springs, Monument Valley, the White Mountains. Oh, and the beach. Yes, the beach, a real one, with surf, sand and salt water, and not located amid the Colorado River's reedy shores or fabricated in a kid-friendly water park in Mesa.

But you're probably wondering how fast you'd have to drive to get so speedily to the desert's nearest coastal destination of San Diego. Well, when you're an Arizonan you don't always have to go to California to visit the ocean in the convenience of a car, stuffed to the gills with coolers and beach chairs. An hour over the international border, in the Mexican state of Sonora, stretch hundreds of miles of coastline along the Sea of Cortez, or the Gulf of California as it is referred to there. Its closest resort town is Puerto Peñasco, or Rocky Point as Americans call it.

The port has boomed over the last forty years, ballooning from a dusty fishing village with a few motels and RV parks to a bustling tourist destination with luxury hotels, condominium towers and, very soon, a cruise ship embarkation point. Arizonans flock there in all seasons for fishing, swimming, water sports, quad-riding, spa-getaways, spring break parties and just plain beach-combing. There doesn't seem to be an end to beach-front property as developers find mile after mile of coastline just waiting for construction southeast beyond Las Conchas on Playas Encanto, Hermosa and Miramar.

But as close as a dozen miles before you reach the sea coast, Phoenicians will find a still familiar landscape to the bone-dry environment they are escaping for the weekend. During most of the ride to Rocky Point and on both sides of the international border in Lukeville, saguaro cacti and palo verde trees fringe the highways and garnish the mountainsides. Even when you reach your beach house or resort on the sandy, sagebrush-filled coastal plane, familiar cactus wrens, Say's phoebes and roadrunners hunt for their meals of lizards and insects amidst ordinary cacti and agave.

Add to this mix the plethora of Arizonan tourists and you might think you were still in the Grand Canyon State. But of course, many Mexican citizens live, work and vacation in Rocky Point, so Sonoran and Mexican culture dominate the local scene, from noisy margarita bars to persistent peddlers on the beach.

Just as evident in this popular resort are the sea gulls, pelicans and sand pipers, confirming you're seeing a unique side of our arid region where the desert meets the sea. We think of our desert landscape as home to only blooming ocotillos and coral-and-black Gila monsters, but for several hundred narrow miles of coastline, terns fly its skies and stingrays swim its waters. So in a way, Arizona has a beach, borrowed one lucky day at a time from the very neighborly Mexican state of Sonora. ¡Que conveniente!