Leaving Los Angeles at 5am, roughly 8 hours later my wife and I found ourselves crossing the border into Mexico at Lukeville, Arizona. No hassle and very quick. From here it takes 1hr to drive to Puerto Penasco, your right-side landscape is the El Pinacate Grand Desert Biosphere Reserve for most of this drive. There are 2 major access points to the reserve, one at the 72km mark, and the other at the 52km mark. Visitors will only access a small portion of this immense reserve, but the vastness of the land will leave a lasting memory.

The visitor center (recently built) is accessed at the 72km mark and is well-displayed by large signs. You won't miss it. The turn-off is a paved 7km road that ends with one of the most scenic areas of the reserve. The Schuk Toak visitor center is very much worth visiting and is a excellent facility to plan and learn about this incredible landscape. The staff are friendly and informative. There are short walks and medium hikes that traverse this area. The location was chosen specifically for its diverse and unique surroundings. Lava flows are everywhere, diverse plant species abound, massive sand dunes are reachable by a 45 minute hike, and views of El Pinacate are often superb.

You can happily spend 2-3 hours exploring this area. The fee for the reserve is 60 pesos ($5) and this fee allows visitors to explore both access points. After one completes their visit of the Schuk Toak area of the reserve, one can drive to the 52km mark and take the more ambitious route to explore some of the reserves wonders. Here at the 52km mark is a 76 km NON-paved loop road (dirt) that leads to some of the reserves massive craters (3 in total). The dirt road is maintained and passable to cars, but it does take at least 3-4 hours with stops.

Access to the dunes is from a short dirt road from the visitor center parking lot:

Therefore, visitors have 2 choices when exploring the El Pinacate reserve. Firstly, they can spend 2-3 hours enjoying and exploring the visitor center area. Secondly, if prepared, one can spend another 3-4 hours on a dirt road, viewing the representative craters of the reserve. Be prepared with water and a full tank of gas. Because of time constraints and some concern over our Toyota making the long dirt road journey, we limited our visit to the first access point.

El Pinacate is exceptional. The landscape, particularly in March is beautiful and very photogenic. Despite previous visits to several desert national parks/monuments in the United States (Death Valley, Mojave, Joshua Tree, Saguaro, Organ Pipe Cactus, Petrified Forest), I was never disappointed or letdown by this tremendous landscape. Indeed, El Pinacate in many ways incorporates many of the unique features of these diverse parks into one massive reserve. A worthy world heritage site, and accessible by car for US travelers based in Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, Phoenix, or Tuscon.

While I would be pleased to see the park extended to include the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in a transnational property, it is not absolutely critical to the protection of either area, and nor does it add vital areas of importance. Still a worthy extension, but probably not something we'll see in the near future.