Discovered in 1959 and made known by the iconic Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the Los Cabos Arena Waterfalls, in the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California Sur, turned 50 without losing an iota of their magic.
The Arena Cascades are an amazing, natural underwater spectacle. As an orographic whim, a marked slope of the seabed, aided by the strong marine currents characteristic of the area, causes the sand to slide downhill on the seabed, literally resembling a waterfall of sand of a beautiful golden color.
It is located within the Cabo San Lucas Flora and Fauna Protection Area (APFF), decreed in November 1973. The reserve measures approximately 4,000 hectares, of which only 5% is land surface, the rest is marine.
These sand displacements were discovered in 1959 by Francis Shepard, a researcher at the Scripps Oceanographic Institution in San Diego, California, and were made known by the French oceanologist Jacques-Yves Cousteau.
The historical records of marine geology indicate that the origin of the Gulf of California dates back approximately eight million years, when the tectonic plates began to separate and move the peninsula away from the continental massif. Thus giving way to the formation of the great marine canyons at the end of the continental platform, as is the case of the sand waterfalls in the Los Cabos region.