Pacific Ocean View During Test Flight

View of the Pacific Ocean view during test flight on the coast of Mexico from the window of the NASA DC-8 during an IceBridge instrument test flight, Wednesday October 5, 2011. Credit: NASA/NSERC/Emily Schaller

Although the western Baja California Peninsula coast, it extends from the border with the United States at Tijuana in Baja California state, south to the tip of the Baja California Peninsula at Cabo San Lucas in Baja California Sur state.  Also on the peninsula’s eastern coast it extends from the head of the Gulf of California to Cabo San Lucas.

The Augustinian friar and navigator Andrés de Urdaneta had discovered the return Spanish trade route (tornaviaje) from the colonial Philippines to the Pacific Coast of Mexico in 1865, using the Pacific’s volta do mar. The Manila-Acapulco Galleons were Spanish trading ships that made round-trip sailing voyages annually across the Pacific Ocean, from the port of Acapulco in the Spanish colonial México to Manila in the Spanish East Indies and back. Both under the colonial Viceroyalty of New Spain.