A Mountain Between Sea and A Flatland Desert
The Peninsula and Cerro Illescas are located more than 150 km west of the Andes, in the middle of a flatland desert, the Sechura desert. The cerro is a series of small hills (up to 500 m. in elevation) interspersed by narrow and short valleys formed during rare rain events. Vegetation cover is extremely reduced in the peninsula, and only a few shrub and tree species grow in the area, especially mesquite trees and shrubs locally known as zapote. An endemic species of fox, the Sechura desert fox is found in the peninsula. Along the coast, and at its westernmost point, there are colonies of sea lions, blue-footed boobies and Humboldt penguins.
Read more about this topic: Illescas Peninsula
Famous quotes containing the words mountain, sea and/or desert:
“I never weary of great churches. It is my favourite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
“They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalms 107:23-24.
“There were three classes of inhabitants who either frequent or inhabit the country which we had now entered: first, the loggers, who, for a part of the year, the winter and spring, are far the most numerous, but in the summer, except for a few explorers for timber, completely desert it; second, the few settlers I have named, the only permanent inhabitants, who live on the verge of it, and help raise supplies for the former; third, the hunters, mostly Indians, who range over it in their season.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)