Day 47

After the heat yesterday, we decided to get up even earlier and make our miles before the heat of the day set in. When we awoke at 6, the sky was already aflame. A deep orange was growing above the sea, like all the sunsets we've watched this whole month in reverse. It was broad and was a protracted affair. We packed our things looking up now and again to see it change. The orange bleached into a brighter and brighter yellow until it was almost white, when a dark orange glow appeared in a small centralized portion of the horizon. I was putting powdered milk into my bowl and I looked up and it was there, like a pinhole into a blinding reality beyond the sky.

It hadn't gotten cold at all during the night and as soon as I felt its rays I could feel it's warmth too. It wouldn't be long before everything was baked and radiating it.

We were riding at 7:30. Not bad, but we could do better. As our friend at the tienda in Puertecitos had told us yesterday, the road was more of the same: paved mostly with a few bridges under construction. The was no one at work this morning, so we often ride through the half- finished bridges than take the dirt detour.

Somewhat unexpectedly, we gained and lost a good deal of elevation. Far more hills than the past few days. Though it was harder, the hills keep the ride exciting, and we had a few descents that really got me smiling: creating through a narrow slit in the rock, then opening up into a huge vista of brown mountains paired with sinking mountain islands just offshore. It seemed like the kind of road they would film a new car commercial on.

A gusty wind had picked up in the night and continued to blow all morning, but it hadn't decuded a direction. Around every curve it would blow from the opposite direction. At least it kept us a little cooler.

There wasn't much in the way of habitation on this section. The names on the map were hardly inviting. There was a place called "El Huerfanitio (the little orphan)" and perhaps more forward "Isla El Muerto (Death Island)." So we were pleasantly surprised to see a store open on the roadside. We pulled over to fill our water, which we had nearly depleted after on 2 hours of riding. A woman came out to see us and invited us in. We filled our water from a Gatorade cooler while she and another woman talked with us. They were very polite and seemed as though they had been just passing the time there together all morning and would continue to do so all day. Maria and Himelda were their names. They had us sign their log book. Lluc and I both noticed that our spanish quickly deteriotes the longer we spend in the sun. Our brains a little fried, our comprehension was slow, but they were forgiving and they recommended that we stay at Campo Beluga in la Bahía de San Luis Ganzaga with their friend Manuel. We were in fact going there, so we thanked them and headed for it.

Partway there, we were shocked to see around us, grass. Green grass. Growing naturally in the desert sand. We were bewildered how the morning's terrain of nearly all rock had given was suddenly to verdant life.

It was half past noon when we came to the military checkpoint and Pemex that marked the turnoff for Gonzaga bay. There wasn't any sign, but I made a best guess about what gravel road we should take to get over to the water (it was in plain sight). We rode the one I picked and it quickly turned to sand, which is kryptonite for our bikes. They become useless burdens that must be dragged, pushed and pulled, wanting to fall over at every chance. We did so for over a half hour, saw a car, asked them which way to Campo Beluga, and they pointed the other way. Damn. But instead of turning around, we took another sandy road that brought us to the right road. Another half hour of pushing later, we found the place.

I found Manuel in the little shed where he lives. He was a fisherman and had few teeth and baggy shorts. He gave us water from his jug and he sat on a bucket to chat while we filled up. He mumbled and spoke quickly, so he was hard to understand, but he knew Maria and Himelda. We asked to  stay for a while to cool off by the water, which he didn't mind. "No hay pera (no problem)." So we got shade under one of the thatched palapas and soon waded into the water.

It was clear as air, the stones of every color and texture imaginable, with far more diversity than I would've thought to come from these mountains. The water was warm and we floated bouyantly, with little 4-inch fish nibbling at our fingers and toes. I thought aloud as we floated bouyantly in the salt water looking at our feet and the horizon, "this could be a screensaver."

Dying off, I approached our neighbors, the only others in the camp, to see if they knew the road south of here. I had hardly said a word before we were invited to dinner: "You're probably living off of energy bars, and Manuel gave us a bunch of fish." They were a worldly crew: Mike, the Canadian was there on his own. Marie and Scott lived outside Ensenada but she was French and raised in Africa, and he was American but spoke Danish and German and had lived on a boat in Europe for years. They were both artists and we had a ball talking with the lot of them. Oddly the wind picked up around sunset into an all out gale by sundown, so we hid to the leeward side of thier partial shelter and talked of Mexico, art, Steinbeck...

At bed time (8:30) we found shelter from the wind on the porch of an empty cabana on the beach. Over the railing, the milky way plunged headfirst into the black ocean and the thatching shivered in the wind.