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)
“Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“The skylines lit up at dead of night, the air- conditioning systems cooling empty hotels in the desert and artificial light in the middle of the day all have something both demented and admirable about them. The mindless luxury of a rich civilization, and yet of a civilization perhaps as scared to see the lights go out as was the hunter in his primitive night.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)