If ever you find yourself floating on ancient waters to a place where color and texture collide; if ever the sun sets perfect on a day beautiful; if the cacti are too like humans, the sky too like the sea; if ever you visit San Carlos: stop and drink it in.

She of the sunburnt country wrote of watching things, unknowing that "their soft dyes have steeped [her] soul in color”. It is a wintry grey now, and, remembering brighter times, I wring out my memory until the rusting honeycomb reds, yellows, and pinks of a San Carlos sunset develop in a mind colorblind but colorfast.

The sun is descending on the clear turquoise waters of the Sea of Cortez, and before it drops (orange, black) beneath the horizon, it paints San Carlos gold.

We’re on a yacht, (white - of course), and I stand all Titanic-like at its bow, camera in hand, feigning knowledge of shutter speeds or f-stops, when, some 80 photos in, I realize I’ve forgotten to look around.

There’s a (grey) philosophical discussion in this, I’m sure. If, by consuming with hungry cameras (or Twitter, Facebook accounts - both blue), we fail to experience the essence of a place, is our experience any less valuable? Or is our hunger instead directed, colored or captured perfectly in 140 characters or less?

San Carlos’ Mirador Escenico has been ranked the world’s number one ocean view in (yellow) National Geographic’s Secret Journey of a Lifetime, but that means nothing until there: the craggy Tetakawi Hill clicking over from grey to yellow to orange to red to violet in an ocean transparent, then green, then blue, then black.

My pictures taken, my bags (black) packed, I sit in the (yellow) bus back to Hermosillo and see this country, my new love, through the frame of window, tinted.

“I left my heart, but I lost my own ‘Mi amor, mi corazon’”.

For more information, visit: www.visitmexico.com.

Dorothea Mackellar (“she of the sunburnt country”) was an Australian poet best known for her work, ‘My Country’.

The last line is taken from cowboy poet Charles Badger Clark’s ‘Spanish is the loving tongue', sung by the likes of Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris and Marianne Faithful.