DESERT RAT JOURNAL -- Installment 6, May 26, 2008

Trying to get by in Mexico with my Spanish is like trying to run the Kentucky Derby on a mule – it takes a lot of patience and the sacrifice of some dignity, but it can be done.

I crossed the border at a cluster of buildings along the border that the map calls “Lukeville” but that refers to itself as “Gringo Pass,” a kitschy name plastered across garish tee shirts and other merchandise available for sale there. I bought Mexican auto insurance and crossed the international divide gingerly, limping along on the diminutive spare tire that I put on when my left rear tire blew in the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge. Then I cruised south at about 55 mph along Mexico Highway 8, driving slowly to prevent blowing out the spare, with the top down and a Mexican radio station playing.

Once across the border, the only road on which I could legally travel without getting a visitor vehicle permit, which I didn’t think I could obtain because of the details of my car rental agreement, led to Puerto Peñasco. That’s where I went. Puerto Peñasco turned out to be the Mexican equivalent of Panama City Beach. Its beaches are filled with pot-bellied Americans drinking Tecate and shooting fireworks, the beachfront roads are jammed with jacked-up trucks playing hip-hop, and within fifteen minutes of getting out of my car to wander along the waterfront, a young woman on a restaurant balcony grabbed a karaoke microphone and asked the crowd below if we wanted to see her tits. (The answer was yes.) This was at about 3:00 in the afternoon. I’m not saying that the Puerto Peñasco beachfront isn’t a wonderful place, and that I wouldn’t have loved it as a teenager, but wasn’t what I was looking for right then. Most of the city’s tourists refer to it by its English translation, “Rocky Point,” but I keep confusing the name with “Rocky Top.”

I climbed back into the Mustang and limped back inland, where Puerto Peñasco resembles a real city. I stopped and had a late lunch at a roadside café where the matron smiled when I called her “Mama” and where they let me drink a beer with my fish tacos, although I had to cross the road to buy it. Then I glanced at my map and saw what appeared to be a smaller town west-northwest of Puerto Peñasco along the Gulf of California, so I lowered the top again and struck out to find it. The roads were not marked in a fashion that was easy for me to understand, but eventually I found the main road leading west and took it.

The benefits of being limited to 55 mph are that you notice more of the surrounding terrain and your cowboy hat doesn’t blow off in the wind. The surrounding terrain in this case was desert. But here neither the saguaro, ocotillo nor organ pipe cactus grew. Instead, sagebrush and other scrubby bushes interspersed the sand. The landscape resembled the Arizona Strip in that the brush didn’t grow higher than a few feet, but the soil was looser and less rocky. The ocean was not visible from the road. The benefits of keeping my cowboy hat on didn’t pan out too well either, since I think my nose is now sunburned.

Although the Gulf of California was invisible from the road, I knew it lay to the south and I noticed several sandy tracks leading that way from the blacktop highway. I resisted trying the first few, but eventually my resolve faded and I turned down one. The path led past a small cluster of brightly painted houses toward the sea. At first the track ran over firm dirt, but eventually it led across a patch of loose sand and, realizing that my ass would be in a deep, deep crack if I got stuck, I stopped the car to walk. I took my camera and a water bottle and set off. I had walked about 300 yards when I saw a Jeep Wrangler heading toward me. I figured I was about to be asked to leave, but I decided to feign ignorance and kept going.

I was pleasantly wrong about the intentions of the vehicle’s occupants. The driver was a man who was obviously American, and the passenger a woman who was obviously Mexican. They had been out on the roof of their house, the man said, when they saw me stop and get out. They figured I was stuck, and had come to help. I thanked them and said I was just on my way to check out the beach. The driver suggested that I try to get my car through the sand to the hard dirt on the other side, and offered to pull me out if I got stuck. I agreed, and he gave me a lift back to my car. Emboldened by his advice and offer of aid, I built up some speed and made it through the sand in the car. On the other side of the sandy patch, I stopped to let the man and woman catch up so I could express my thanks.

“Oh, it’s no problem,” the man said. “If you want to go down to the ocean, the best way is to take this road” – he pointed to a dirt strip running parallel to the shore – “past our house, then turn right.”

“Great, thanks,” I said. “I’ll do that. Is yall’s house the purple one up there?”

“No, its is the yellow house just past the purple one. Turn right and it will run you right into the ocean.”

“And if you have any trouble . . .” the woman began in a Spanish accent.

The man broke in. “If you have any trouble, we’re in the house right up there.”

“My house is yellow one,” the woman said.

“By the way, where are you headed?” the man asked.

“I’m just wandering. I thought I’d go see that town west of here, Golfo de . . . Golfo de something or other, I can’t remember the name for sure . . .”

“Golfo de Santa Clara. You can’t,” he said. “You can’t go there because the road’s not finished. They’re working on it. Won’t be finished until November.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well . . .”

“But if you want to go see the ocean, just follow that road here and take a right after her house. Her house is the yellow one. Your biggest problem, by the way, is that spare tire you’re running there.”

“I know,” I said.

“Let us know if you have any trouble,” he said.

I thanked the pair and drove to the beach as they suggested. In this way I arrived at a beautiful body of azure water known to most maps as the Gulf of California but more romantically known as the Sea of Cortez, the name that John Steinbeck chose when he described his travels across its surface in The Log from the Sea of Cortez. I parked my car and, camera and water bottle in hand, walked across a long, soft tidal flat to the sea’s moving edge. My feet sank deeper into the tidal sand the longer I stood in one place, so that my feet stayed dry if I kept walking, but if a paused the soles of my Crocs sank and warm water trickled pleasantly around the bottoms of my feet. At the sea’s edge the tide rushed inland. Waves did not lap higher and higher against the shore, as with all other incoming tides I’ve seen. Instead, the foamy surf gurgled constantly inland, climbing and surmounting the tiny ridges it had left in the sand as it retreated hours ago. It moved at about the pace that a beetle walks. I played with my camera, creating my own photographic version of Footprints on the Sands of Time – i.e., pictures of the advancing surf erasing a series of human footprints. Then I pulled my pipe from my pocket, pulled my shirt over my head to block the wind, and lit it. I squatted on my heels, looked out over the approaching water, and imagined plying its surface with Steinbeck. I do not know who the kind man and woman were, and I have wondered about the nature of their relationship – the house was “hers,” but they both appeared to be staying there, and she was letting him speak for her – but I can certainly understand why they spend their time here alongside the Sea of Cortez. It is beautiful. Reluctantly I climbed back into my car and headed back to Puerto Peñasco.

I am in Puerto Peñasco now, typing in a hotel room. I am tired and will soon fall asleep – the birds of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, where I camped last night, made a noisy rush on my campsite as soon as the sun came up this morning in an effort to steal any food I’d left sitting out. The result of the avian feeding frenzy was that I awoke at about 5:30 to various high-pitched bird calls that might have sounded lyrical under other circumstances but that, this morning, made me wish I’d brought a shotgun.

By the way, I successfully rented this hotel room from a gentleman who spoke almost no English. I was even able to communicate such complex ideas as, is it possible for me to see the room? and yes, I will pay a $5 deposit for the key. Maybe my Spanish isn’t all that bad. The mule is rounding turn one . . .