Alamos to La Aduana, Huatabampito and Yávaros, Sonora

A great side trip from Alamos is to the village of La Aduana about 9 KM west.  Aduana is Spanish for customs and the Customs office was situated here to collect the Spanish King's quinta or one-fifth of all the output of the many very productive silver mines in this area. Part of the fun of visiting here is the 3KM drive from the Alamos highway into Aduana when part of the road is down in the river bed! 

La Aduana was founded in 1664 when the richest silver mines in all of Mexico were discovered here.

Back in those times, over 5000 people lived in Aduana; today, there are only about 400 inhabitants.  The church in the plaza, Nuestra Señora de la Balvanera or Our Lady of Balvanera, was built after a Mayo Indian vision of a woman on top of a cactus.  When they piled up rocks to rescue her, a rich vein of silver appeared which was considered a miracle and started the silver boom here.    

Today when you visit the church, look on the right side wall outside and you'll see a large thriving cactus growing out of the wall about 12 feet up!   On November 12th of each year, there is a procession here of Mayo Indians and a celebration continues for 10 days to celebrate the miracle of La Aduana! 

Some of the mines are in hiking distance and the former smelter is across the river with its stack still standing and pieces of slag from the smelter all over the ground.  Ruins of former houses, current homes including several upscale homes, a small store, a B&B and two women's crafts co-ops are what you'll see in a drive to the town plaza.  The church, of course, is the highlight.  The craft co-ops are well worth a visit with many unique items like animals made from soda or beer bottle caps and much more!

On 2/26/2015, back on the Alamos highway headed west, we were now on the Ruta Sierra Mar, the highway from the mountains to the sea!  

Our destination is Huatabampito, (Hwhat-a-bam-pito) a small village on the Sea of Cortes, southwest of Navojoa and about 30 minutes south of the big town of Huatabampo.  This drive takes you through the rich agricultural areas of Sonora where wheat, corn, tomatoes and many other crops are grown on huge irrigated farms. 

This is also the homelands of the thriving Yaqui and Mayo Indians.  It's about a 2-1/2 hour drive to get to the beaches of Huatabampito.  

The village consists of a police post, a small store, an old fish processing plant, many upscale homes overlooking the beaches and the combination Miramar restaurant, hotel and RV Park.  We've stayed at the Miramar RV Park previously and enjoyed the solitude and beauty of the beach and ocean as well as the good food at the restaurant.  

The beach is one of several we've been to that have what appear to be grains of gold in the sand in or near the surf.  Near sunset, this effect is spectacular with trails of gold!  Small mounds in the tidal zone are the homes of ghost shrimp, clams and fiddler crabs.

We initially drove down the single dirt road of town that parallels the beach about 1-1/2 miles to see if there was anything new.  We only saw some new home construction or rebuilding since this place has been hit by hurricanes coming over from Baja since it is about the same southerly distance as Loreto in Baja.   The sunsets here are beautiful and there are flights of pelicans skimming the water, frigate birds, lots of gulls and small “peeps” like sanderlings. 

We had planned to stay here and relax and walk on the beach for two days but it became windy and we decided to only spend one night.

On 2/27 we headed out at 8AM for the nearby town of Yávaros, a small fishing village on a large estuary, Bahia de Yávaros, off the Sea of Cortes.  There is a very large fish processing plant here that supports the village. There are docks and support facilities for the large fish boats that work far out in the Sea of Cortes. 

A recently paved road circles one side of the bay with houses on the right side and  fishing pangas and fish cleaning stations on the water side.  What makes this place so spectacular is the variety of birds present and the huge numbers of birds!  There are brown pelicans everywhere, seeking  an easy meal, sitting on or mobbing pangas where the fishermen are pulling the fish out of their nets and everywhere on shore by the fish cleaning stations! 

Willets, White Ibis and Yellow-crowned Night Heron

In addition, we saw large groups of white pelicans, white ibis, snowy egrets, great egrets, cattle egrets, yellow crowned night herons, curlews, ducks, Brant geese, many shorebirds, stilts, many species of gulls and much more.  There are egret rookeries in the trees and birds in the mangroves that surround the bay.  

 

Cattle Egrets in the mangroves, Great Egrets and Snowy Egret

And of course, the human drama of hundreds of men and women and kids working on cleaning fish, going out in the pangas and working on nets.  We used our Sprinter van as a blind and drove on the (wrong side) water side of the street to take close photographs of the people, the fishermen and the birds everywhere.

An Alamos-based naturalist takes people out in pangas on ecotourism tours here in the bay to see the birds including blue footed boobies, which are a real treat!  None of the fishermen offered us a boat ride so we didn't get that viewpoint this trip, but I'm sure it could be arranged. 

We spent two hours here documenting the scene and always find it exciting, even though we've been here in the past.  From Yávaros, we headed north back to the popular beach town of San Carlos!