Playa Balandra
Interesting facts
- El Hongo once toppled after a visitor climbed onto it for a photograph; its cap was lifted back and fixed with cement, so the famous mushroom is partly a restoration.
- The mushroom shape comes from differential erosion: wind, waves and salt spray wear away the softer rock at the base faster than the harder cap.
- Balandra was listed as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention on 2 February 2008, covering about 449 hectares.
- Its mangrove is the largest in the Bay of La Paz, with about 22 hectares of mangrove forest fringing a lagoon of some 30 hectares.
- The proposal to protect Balandra was submitted in November 2007 by the local conservation group Niparajá to Mexico's commission for protected areas.
- A near twin of El Hongo, another mushroom-shaped rock, stands on Isla Danzante, about 24 kilometres southeast of Loreto, further up the Baja coast.
Why it is worth it
Balandra is not one beach but a shallow bay on the Gulf of California near La Paz in Baja California Sur, where six small beaches line the shore all year and a seventh appears at low tide. The water is so shallow that you can wade across the bay from one side to the other, over sandbanks that shift with the tide. Seen from the low hills that enclose it, the bay becomes a pattern of pale sand, milky turquoise shallows and deeper blue channels, ringed by bare desert hills and the dark green of mangroves.
The bay's best-known feature stands on one of the beaches: a rock formation that locals call El Hongo, "the mushroom", a weathered stone with a broad cap perched on a narrow stem, shaped by wind and sea. It is the image most people carry home from Balandra. Around the lagoon grow three species of mangrove, red, white and black, which shelter fish nurseries and wading birds, and the wider reserve has been found to hold more than 800 species of plants and animals, among them dozens classed as at risk.
Balandra was declared a federal protected area for flora and fauna on 30 November 2012, covering 2,512.5 hectares of land and sea. Since then the number of daily visitors has been limited, and the beach remains without buildings: its charm is precisely the emptiness of the desert meeting a sea as calm as a lake.
Getting there
Balandra is about 20 km from the centre of La Paz, reached by road along the coast. The nearest airport is Manuel Márquez de León International Airport in La Paz (LAP), about 28 km away. There is no public transport to speak of; most visitors come by car, taxi or tour.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Playa Balandra is a beach located on the Baja California Sur peninsula of Mexico in La Paz. It is located on the Eastern side of the peninsula, but faces west, as the southern tip comes up. This beach is located on Balandra Bay. The water is very shallow, allowing visitors to walk across the bay to the other side. There are also many sandbanks located on this bay.
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