OK- where were we?

When last you heard from me, the Chili Colorado was underway. Delicious!! Spicy but full of flavor. We have half a jar left, and next time we're thinking of adding some bacon, potatoes, little whole mushrooms if we can find them, and Carl would love some pearl onions but we don't know if we'll find those. The shrimp were also wonderful-what a great flavor!

Yesterday we embarked on our long-delayed drive up the new highway to El Golfo. Unfortunately I had the camera set wrong, so not very many shots turned out, sorry! An American we met was telling us that the beaches along there were pristine, and told us where we could access one (he forgot to say, "if you're in a 4x4").

The drive was nice as we got out of scrubby desert and into some nice sand dunes. Here I will steal a shot from Cheryl, as is my habit. Here is her blog, by the way, if you want some more good (And very amusing) reading: http://cheryl-dan.blogspot.com/



When we got to the area the American told us about, we saw a very serviceable-looking road leading towards the ocean, and thought, why not, we have lots of time. The road was fine, and fine and fine, and then was 20 inches deep in sand. With our front-wheel drive. We were screwed.

We walked down towards the beach, and there was a private property sign. OK... back to the road, see if someone can either pull us out or call the Green angels for us. It was only about 1/2 to 3/4 of a kilometre back, so we made it to the highway easily. I think it's an indication of how relaxed we've become that neither of us was cranky about this; the scenery was nice, we had water and it was a nice day, so what the heck.

We tried to flag down three vehicles with no luck. Then another pickup truck was driving towards us, rather slowly. We waved our arms, and they stopped. It was the Green Angels!

I tried to explain what happened in my really bad Spanish,and he smiled and said, "What can we do for you folks?". That was a nice moment.

When we got back to the car, it was surrounded by a group of marines, who were already digging it out. They let the air out of the tires, then 6 of them pushed us out. Once I got to hard ground again we were ok, then I had to back up about 100 yards and pull over so the marines could get by in their truck.


Then our guys filled our tires back up with their compressor. Jose is on the right, he is the boss and doesn't speak much English. We never got the name of the fellow on the left, he spoke perfect English and gave us all kinds of information about the area. (Including the fact that in Yuma in March and April, the snowbirds sell off their 4x4's really cheap. He even gave us the street names where this happens. Next year we'll go up there.)

.Nice guys- our rescuers.

So we continued to El Golfo, which is a very small fishing town. It was full of Americans with RVs and recreational vehicles, they looked like they were having a great time. We stopped and had a quick fish taco and a coke here:



One the corner were a group of teenagers, who were having a blast calling something out to cars and trucks as they drove by. Whatever it was (Your back tire is flat, maybe?) caused some passengers to lean out their windows and look back, causing gales of laughter from the teens. Nobody ever got annoyed, they just smiled and drove one. Fun in a small town.

When we left the restaurant we walked by the teens and both of us looked back at our trailing foot. Cracked them up. The beaches there were nice, but we have beaches at home, and we'd already had a pretty good walk, so we headed back. Here is one shot of the scenery that kind of worked. There were these sort of mini-canyons that went on as far as the eye can see, and led down to the turquoise sea. There's a quote from an writer, 'Writing well means never having to say, ‘I guess you had to be there.’ Sigh. I guess you had to be there.


Coming back there were no complications. Tonight we're going on our first sunset cruise, friends are having their tenth anniversary. It's cloudy out now; hopefully that will pass by tonight.