"El heróico e impoluto alcázar de la muy noble ciudad de Aurora" (Or "The Aurora Alcázar" for short) is a former fortress/palace built in the sixteenth century by Simspanish conquerors on the city of Aurora, it's located at the top of a gentle hill on a site once occupied by a Simztec shrine. Today the building functions as the Regional History Museum, indeed the three surrounding gardens lay bare a testimony of the passage of time. The east garden shows what's left of the Simztec shrine, it's remains unearthed in 1925; the north garden, unchanged since 1867 was designed following Simeuropean (?) style, popular on the simmerican (this is getting a bit silly ) continent at the time; lastly, the west garden features a meteorological observatory built in 1906. The Alcázar is part of a major urban park and it's one of the most visited tourist attractions in the city of Aurora.

Phew! built it from scratch, took me over a week to make it look decent and there's still room for improvement, but anyway, I hope you enjoy this image and it's brief history!.

Far from any major cities and only connected by an average-speed country road are several old-style villages tucked between the mountains with stunning views of the ocean. Many of these towns changed over time as tourism grew, which led to the construction of hi-rise resort hotels and a subsequent influx of beach-goers and yachtsmen.

This particular town is one of the smaller ones and lacks any marine facilities, but many people will sail over here due to be able to take in the grandeur of the towering rock face that surrounds the town on three sides. This causes the town to have longer than average "nights."

Today we are catching the town in the later part of the morning, and the pitch-black shadow caused by the eastern rock face has almost receded. The two resort hotels in this town are seasonal, and tourist season has just begun. The beach is not particularly full and the hotels are just getting started up for this year's tourists, which explains their empty parking lots. The fancier hotel to the east has already sent the first two of its white and yellow shuttle buses to the city to pick up customers from the airport - a 40 mile drive. One of them can be seen heading west on the country road. The larger hotel on the west end of town already has its first group of patrons - a large group of foreign tourists filling two chartered buses.

The crowd currently gathered on the beach is watching a mid-sized cruise liner slowly make its way through the water. The ship is based in the city 40 miles away and so it's a frequent sight in many of the coastal towns in the area. Another sight to behold is the multi-million dollar yacht that has also entered the scene from the west. It would also appear that there are some people on jet skis racing each other. The beach generally gets 3-4 times as full when tourist season is in full-swing.

Lastly, the bleak building at the base of the mountains is a corporate office where bigwigs meet to discuss future plans for the city's dominant oil company. A small group of black cars can be seen making their way up the hill to the site.

All cars and other vehicles are static models Photoshopped in. Photoshop was used extensively for this image.