This pristine areas has never been altered by human hands from the beginning of time. Here, flora and fauna have a perfect sanctuary, without modernity intruding. The desert is rich in life, and the Reserve is the biggest preserved desert area in the world.
With more than 400 extinct volcanoes and more than 700,000 hectares, The Pinacate has been designated by UNESCO as one of the 5 World Heritage reserves in Mexico because the singular characteristics only founded in this Biosphere Reserve.
In this protected area we can find a giant volcanic shield, large mobile desert dunes, huge and awesome volcano craters, lava fluxes, Granite and quartz white mountains, endemic animals and plants, forest areas inside the desert and even an adapted fish living in desert humidities.
The entire area has singular features. A Science Fiction landscape at times, combined with the local legendary mysticism of the Tohono O´odham Cosmovison. For them, local Schuck Toak mountain (Black or Sacred Mountain in Tohono O´odham language) is the origin of life on earth, and center of the entire universe.
The local Chronicler Guillermo Munro talked with me about the dates and names of the astronauts who came here on at least 4 expeditions made by NASA. describing the contact with the local community, where at the time the future spacemen visited and stayed Puerto Peñasco, spent in one of their trips the night at Las Conchas and shared some time and party in local businesses with the local authorities of that time.
The Pinacate´s Reserve was just an unexplored area, only visited by hunters and woodcutters. Access was free to Americans on the Mexican side because a non-existent border line which allowed the free crossing for anyone. For the NASA team, their first trip was during November 1965, and the last excursion before the moon conquest, made on February 1969 just few months before the first human stepped on moon.
The Pinacate and Great Altar Desert Biosphere Reserve was used to test the NASA equipment as it strongly mimicked conditions on the lunar surface.
This beautiful and remote area is attracting more and more international tourism, although the numbers remain small. Summers are prohibitively hot (rangers will not even allow you to enter the Reserve in the hottest months.