Too late smart

We were doing tourist things along the Malecón in Mazatlán; a van full of friends and family climbing monuments, watching divers, reading plaques, clowning, getting sunburnt, and taking selfies. But I kept turning away from the fun to marvel at the cliffs behind us.

Dry rocks, bluish-grey, crumbly and sharp-edged.

Mazatlán lies mostly on a flat plain, but towards the south end, the land is crumpled and piled up against the coast, rising sharply to meet the road, then soaring above it.

Google earth photo; the diving platform and the monument to the Mazatleca, and houses far above, at the top of the cliff.

I took many photos, using the camera as binoculars, looking to see what grew on the hillside, what rock formations were visible. Back home, I checked them quickly and deleted most of them; rocks, weeds, more rocks, more weeds, too far away, too blurry. I kept a few representative shots. Now I'm sorry. I should have been more careful. Because when I went over the few I'd kept, I discovered more than cactus and stones.

Here's a cropped piece out of the first photo above:

Do you see it? At the tip of the hill, a long, green iguana sunning himself on the rocks.

Maguey cactus and prickly pear. But more; I almost cropped it out, thinking it was a stick.

Another iguana. Green iguanas come in a variety of colours. This one is dark, with orange patches.

Despite their name, green iguanas can come in different colors. In southern countries of their range, such as Peru, green iguanas appear bluish in color with bold blue markings. On islands such as Bonaire, Curaçao,Aruba, and Grenada, a green iguana's color may range from green to lavender, black, and even pink. Green iguanas from the western region of Costa Rica are red and animals of the northern ranges, such as Mexico, appear orange. Juvenile green iguanas from El Salvador are often bright blue as babies, however they lose this color as they get older. (Wikipedia)

Here's another view of the same hill.

Just the maguey. And the iguana.

Here the stripes on his tail are visible. He's moved since I took the first photo.

I've gone over the rest of my rock photos pixel by pixel. No more iguanas. But I wonder, now, how many I deleted.