A Baja Travelogue
by Jack Schmidt < >

Homepage: < http://www.geocities.com/jacktar42/ >

"Let's do a Baja road trip!" Whenever I hear those words I think of the desert's inviting inhospitality, shockingly blue waters, self reliance, marine life, secret sites, drinking and driving, penetrating dust, scorpions in sleeping bags, and the possibility of being some sort of cross-border victim. Let's go!

With all that in mind, four of us -- Mary, Dave, Tracy, and I -- were planning a trip to somewhere in Baja California in early March, 1998, and we eventually settled on Loreto, Mary flying in and the three guys driving down. But as the date approached, Mary decided that she had too much to do and couldn't take the time off. So with modified plans to go to Mulegé, the three of us left on Saturday morning, March 7th. But not before Mary could fling a shoe at the truck in one final blowout. She thought that we had obligations which we were abandoning, but after an hour of discussion I decided that she really just wanted the option of joining us, whether she actually took the option or not. Sheesh! We worked in an option for her and promised to call her from Guerrero Negro in two days to see what she decided. I was quite certain that she would decide to stay at home.

With that settled we finally got on the road, and I recalled Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. Between strife and angst at the beginning and ending of the book, the main character takes a relaxing, bucolic fishing trip with a friend. The purpose of the trip is to enjoy the pleasures of nature, and as a result the two enjoy their camaraderie. The three of us were starting on just such a trip. It seems to me that women's priorities are just the reverse: the purpose of the trip is to support the friendship.

We planned and arranged space for one of us to ride in the truck bed, but it turned out that I was the only one who utilized it, and even then only rarely. Most of the time on the road was spent with all of us in the cab, farting, talking about women and fishing and boobs and beer and everything else boys talk about. Abject, puerile enjoyment.

At dusk we reached the Cataviña Desert, the most beautiful desert in the world. A few miles north of the creek we found a dirt track that led us to a hidden campsite about a mile from the highway -- beyond view of any banditos who might be on patrol. Still, it looked like the site was used enough that locals would know of it. Sandstone boulders were strewn around a patch of sandy dirt, bushes, and a fire ring. Beyond lay a velcro carpet of cardons (a cactus that looks much like a saguaro, but with roughly half the ridges), cirios (a branchless tree that looks more like a gigantic root), and ocotillo (a collection of several leafy, ten foot wires that poke up through a hole in the desert). We started a fire (with a little help from some OPEC fire starter) and I built a perfect bed of coals on which we cooked Kielbasa, potatoes, onions, peppers, and carrots. Two nearby coyotes howled as we prepared for sleep, as if on cue.

The sun rose and we found that the majority of the desert floor was covered with plants, many of which were jeweled with flowers or buds. I've never seen the desert so alive.

Returning from a private journey with a roll of toilet paper, I remarked about how much better it felt to squat than to sit on a toilet, and I was met with the usual disdain from my companions. Am I the only Westerner who feels more comfortable squatting?

After breakfast and a short drive to a creek I know about, we hiked a mile or two up the canyon and generally explored. Dave and I both felt the urge to jump into some of the large pools of water through which the creek flowed. We came across a cardon which was broken in two across some boulders, dripping its juice onto the rock and sand beneath it. Perhaps it had sucked up more water than it could support, and fallen over from the weight. I carved a chunk off the end, cut away the skin, and ate it. It tasted pretty much like a soaked sponge made out of plant material -- no surprises.

We also had a mission in that canyon: to find blue palm seeds for Bruce, a friend who owns a cycad and palm nursery. Tracy pointed out that having a mission made the exploration more satisfying somehow. He was right, but why? Do I need to have more purpose than simply checking the canyon out, or seeing what's beyond the next bend in the stream? Is there more satisfaction in completing some task, any task, than there is in sheer frivolity? No, I'm much too lazy for that. Am I attracted to the order which invariably accompanies an objective? That organization which an objective demands? Probably not, since I find nothing wrong with enjoying a little disorder. Perhaps being purposeful is being useful, and being useful has value. I might even go so far as to claim that such usefulness has an element of beauty, so that I'm attracted to a purpose because its existence, application, and fulfillment are beautiful in some way. Or maybe I'm more of a social creature than I'd care to admit, and I actually feel good about doing something for somebody else. Nah.

We walked back down, scrambled up the canyon's face near the truck, and checked out the Indian petroglyphs inside a small cavity within an accretion of boulders. Most of the markings here are unrecognizable glyphs, except for an obvious sun and a lizard. When I first visited this spot in 1980, there was no government signpost commanding -- or rather asking -- visitors not to deface the petroglyphs, and there was no graffiti on the adjacent rocks. Now there's more graffiti than petroglyphs, though the vandals haven't been so egregious as to deface the petroglyphs themselves. It was of course frustrating to see the graffiti, but it also reflected something about the impetus behind the petroglyphs themselves. Or perhaps not; being in an enclosed area, the petroglyphs were apparently not meant to be seen from a distance, as are the graffiti.

Before leaving we had peanut butter and honey sandwiches and beer, and I washed my hair. I can stand to skip a shower or two, but greasy hair really sucks. We pulled off again a short distance down the road at the gas station in Cataviña, and a boy told us that there was no gas at the station, that we'd have to buy gas from him and his friends. And that we had a nearly flat tire. It had picked up a wood screw. Why are there so many more nails and screws on Baja roads than on the roads in California Norte? With the truck in the shade of the deserted station, we discovered that we had no key for the lock that secured our spare tire underneath the truck bed. I went to the little roadside cafe and got a kid to help us disassemble the whole spare tire holder, and finally we had our spare -- nearly as flat as the tire with the screw in it. We paid the kid what he asked -- US$2 -- and followed his directions to a tire shop that was a few hundred meters back. We were greeted by a man who told us that we would have to wait about a half hour until somebody returns with a fresh distributor cap for the air compressor.

By this time I had unconsciously slipped into that mellow mode of patient waiting that should be in one's mental toolkit in Baja, while Tracy fought it for a few minutes. We had a few beers, looked around, and Tracy and Dave focused in on a wreck that looked like it could have been a BMW 2002 at one time. Two guys were working on it, but the open road was by no means in this wreck's destiny. We all got a good laugh when we eventually realized that this BMW was the convalescing power behind the air compressor. Our tire got repaired, and the BMW gave us just enough air to drive on before it relapsed.

A few miles to the south we reached yet another tire shop, this one with a lunch counter, and we topped off the tires from a nearly empty air tank. I ordered some quesadillas and got directions to the outhouse, which was floored with two truck tailgates, walled with car hoods to a height of about 5 feet, and fitted with a punched out milk crate and a bailing-wired toilet seat. Classic!

With all of the hassle about tires and air, we didn't get any gas in Cataviña (I think the guys selling gas from Jerry cans had gone, anyway), so about 40 miles south we had to pull off and flag down some help. All it took was a wave, and a Mexican guy gave us a few gallons. Not quite enough? Another wave got us a two more gallons from a couple driving north after bicycling in the country east of Loreto. So easy. Who needs gas stations? As night fell we came across a tire in the middle of the highway, and we made it our recompense to Baja to remove the tire. Good karma and all that.

We drove into Guerrero Negro, a mile or two off the highway, to get gas, tequila and rum, and to call Mary, who decided to stay home, just as I expected. We were soon in the camping area next to the whale watching site in Scammon's Lagoon (Bahía Ojo de Liebre). As Tracy cooked us some quesadillas I looked for a place to sleep. The ground was moist, and when turned over it smelled very swampy. Between us and the lagoon was a five-foot berm of soft, dry, comfortable sand. As usual, I dug depressions for my shoulder and hip before laying down the pad and bag. I sleep mostly my side, and the depressions really enhance the comfort level, especially the hole for my hip, which Dave and Tracy soon named my "butt hole."

Sunrise over Scammon's Lagoon

The next morning, as we approached the whale watching kiosk, I glanced at a nearby tent which had a sign saying, "Cetacean Research" or something. I was at first interested, as I am in just about any type of research, but I ignored it, figuring it must be a tourist scam of some sort. Instead we paid for our boat ride, donned bulky life jackets, and motored into the bay with six other people. Our skipper, Juan, idled the outboard motor, and we waited for the whales to come to us. One of the other passengers had a very cute daughter who was about a year old. I talked to him a little bit, until he started talking about how the whales sense the presence of the baby and her good vibes. Okay, nice talking to you.

We had spent a few minutes spotting many whales, always about 100 yards out, when a mother and calf came very close. The mother had a white rectangular patch about 20 cm long and 15 cm high on her left side about 1 m before her dorsal fin and about 30 cm below it. I took a few pictures, then put my camera away so that I could feel part of the scene and less as an observer. Looking through a camera lens really attenuates such experiences. At this point Dave, Mr. Photographer, decided that my spot in the bow was pretty good, so he moved in and crowded me out. The two whales slowly and repeatedly swam just a couple of feet under our boat, and circled around to get near or under the boat again. On one pass the mother put her rostrum right next to me for a full minute -- or so it seemed -- and I reached out and touched her! I was surprised at the softness and give of her skin and underlying flesh. It was like neoprene over a firm pillow. She didn't seem to appreciate my advances, for she descended very shortly after my touch, though her many subsequent passes near the boat proved that she wasn't really disturbed. At one point she did a complete roll some 100 feet from the boat. I felt lucky that Dave had crowded me into his old spot where I had the opportunity to touch the whale. As we rode back to shore the vibe guy, who really got off on seeing rainbows in the whales' spouts, said he'd been out many times, but never got as close to the whales as we had on this outing.

After we had lunch in the little restaurant and had driven off, I remembered that I really wanted to take a salinity measurement in the lagoon, so I got Dave and Tracy to turn back. I brought along an instrument for measuring the density of a liquid, and I knew I had a table somewhere back home for converting the density, plus the temperature, to a salinity measurement. I finally got my measurement, and headed back to the truck.

The woman at the cetacean research tent asked us if we were making a salinity measurement, and if we could spare a beer. Shari was direct and approachable, and I soon discarded my earlier judgment about her cetacean research. Her comfortably and coolly clad body had strong, attractive muscular definition without being stout, and her sandy hair fell disorderly onto her shoulders. Her eyes showed clarity and honesty, and her distinctive nose was somehow appropriate for a cetacean researcher. Her unabashed style and topics of conversation fit my impression of a thirty-something biologist -- the wanderer type more than the Jane Goodall type. Tracy later described her as "salty," and Dave and I agreed, though I think she might get a little lonely during her months-long stay in the lagoon.

She showed us her collection of pictures that she uses for whale identification, and told us about the behavioral research she's doing. She believes that the whale behavior known as "spy hopping" is not to get a look around, but rather as a stretching exercise. Spy hopping is apparently done in shallow water, and the whale's fluke rests on the bottom, dorsal surface down. Shari believes that it might be a post-delivery exercise. I told her that I'd send her any pictures that may help identify the whale and calf that visited us, and I promised myself that I'd do my best to get her equipment to do good salinity measurements.

While we were talking the vibe guy walked in looking rather uncomfortable. I think he was worried that we three guys were moving in on what he hoped was his woman. I'm sure Shari would have laughed at that. We all traded addresses and said goodbye.

Shari's path in life interests me. I think it's because she has found a useful purpose while maintaining and nurturing individuality. It's easy to be extremely individualistic: that's what bums do. And it's easy to be useful by joining a sea of droids. But to own a purpose as an individual is enviable. Writers, professors to an extent, and artists receive praise for achieving this. Engineers, no. Not only have we lost our individualism, but our purpose is hollow. I mean, how much purpose can I feel in developing the next generation office document product? Shari is not a spoke in a wheel, and yet she has purpose. To borrow Nietzsche's phrase, she's a "self-propelled wheel."

I still wonder why the whales approach the boats. If it were curiosity, it would have been satisfied long before March. If it were for the interaction, then why did the whale back away from my touch? Are they working slowly toward more contact, and just need more time? My guess is that they like the boat's shadow for some reason. Perhaps the shadow is a rare respite from the Baja sun, or an interesting visual or sonic experience to a whale. I wonder what they would think about a large, empty raft floating in the middle of the lagoon.

On the way to San Ignacio we stopped for a desert walk at the dirt turnoff to the San Francisco petroglyphs. In the Cataviña Desert you could gingerly walk barefooted, but here in the Vizcaino Desert every living thing bears thorns. I lay down to get a picture of the rising moon among some Joshua trees, and spent the next half hour picking thorns out of my pants. I even dropped my pants and picked thorns out of the crotch. (My companions now have a picture of that somewhere.) Even so, this desert is a diverse and fascinating cactus garden.

We reached an empty San Ignacio campground shortly after dusk and poked around in the dark in an attempt to select the best site. Our steaks had more or less survived the trip, and I think that's all I ate. A filling but highly unbalanced meal.

We slept next to the river that flows through San Ignacio, and under some of the date palms that carpet the valley. Throughout the night comical amphibian and avian noises belched from the reeds on the river's bank, and dates fell from the palms. I tracked time during my waking moments by checking Scorpio's progress through the trees.

We visited San Ignacio's Church, which was established as a mission by the early California fathers a few hundred years ago. On a previous trip my Catholic friend, John, took me on an unofficial tour of the Church. This time we behaved ourselves. We picked up our permits to visit the Indian petroglyphs called "La Paradilla," if I recall correctly, that are in the Santa Martha canyon. We fortunately made the effort to get Mexican visas as we entered Mexico (actually, 60 miles south of the border, in Ensenada), because we would have been unable to get permits to visit the paintings without them.

I drove the dirt road to the canyon, a little too fast and playfully for my passengers, who decided that I would not drive the remainder of the trip. We picked up our guide, Carlos Ojeda, at a little ranch about 20 miles from the highway, and proceeded another 30 minutes, then we hiked for about 40 minutes.

Carlos is 50, of average Mexican height, and has a guide's endurance in which he has well deserved and well concealed pride. His clothing was typical: straw hat, light shirt, dark pants, and shoes. Just shoes. We all focused on his shoes and their shoe-ness, perhaps because we were following his feet up the wall of the valley. They had basic leather uppers and probably leather soles, but the sewing work connecting the two was external and visible. Carlos placed them accurately among the rocks while we sloppily followed. Carlos speaks only Spanish, and Tracy listened through his strong local accent much better than I could.

The paintings, life-size portrayals of humans and deer, are on an over-arching canyon wall, not deep enough to be called a cave, and their production obviously required tall scaffolding. The women are painted to look like cardons. Carlos hesitantly and politely accepted some of our dates, and enjoyed telling us about the gringo scientist who got out his calculator to tell him the age of the paintings. He told us about another painting depicting "un serpiente" and I wanted to ask him if the serpent has feathers, like Quetzalcoatl. I couldn't remember the Spanish word for feather so I used the Nahuatl (Aztec) word, "quetzal". Carlos didn't understand, and when Tracy remembered "pluma" Carlos answered in the negative. Most anybody on the Mexican mainland would have known what I meant by "quetzal," and this together with the fact that the serpent, or snake, is not feathered leads me to believe that the Aztecs and their forebears had and continue to have little, if any, influence over the lower Baja peninsula.

The petroglyphs seem much more impressive in light of the fact that few have seen them. Would they be as impressive if they were in the middle of Yosemite for all to gaze upon? I wonder if some form of competition, a winning over those who haven't seen them, makes them seem more impressive. The 200th person to climb Everest no doubt felt less achievement than the first. And the Guinness Book of World Records is nothing more than a collection of competitive fools, or freaks. But successful competition can only make the viewer of the petroglyphs more impressive, not the petroglyphs themselves. Yet I still believe that their impressiveness is somehow augmented by the rarity of viewing. Perhaps there is some form of collective novelty at work here.

On the hike back I asked Carlos about the local plants, and he was happy to tell me all about them. Tea from the Palo Blanco is good for diabetes, a seed pod from something else is good for snake bite, and so on. I wish I had written it all down. Back at the truck we had a round of Pacificos, and silently imbibed each others' company and our shared event. Words would have destroyed the communion. Funny, I can't imagine a group of women behaving this way.

Tracy brought out some leaves we had collected earlier, from a plant that I knew since childhood as "Indian Tobacco," and he asked Carlos if it is indeed some type of tobacco. Carlos disapprovingly told us that it's "San Juan" and it's not to be smoked. I tried to smooth the moment over by recalling that as a kid I used to suck the nectar out of the flowers, but my mannerisms looked as if I were smoking a joint, and Tracy had to bail me out by quickly using the word, "azucar."

We paid Carlos, dropped him off at the ranchito, and drove to Punta Chivato, just north of Mulegé. I rode in the back and immersed myself in a wonderfully peaceful euphoria that might have been like a runner's high, and I fantasized about being a field archaeologist or marine biologist. I was still in the back of the truck when we reached the Sea of Cortez, so I missed out on the always startling blueness of the water that one experiences after being in the desert. As dusk came on we settled into a nice campsite several yards from the beach. I took a little army shovel and went clamming, unsuccessfully, and returned to spaghetti and wine. That evening as we had cigars and liquor, we dodged stone shrapnel from the exploding rocks in the campfire, and talked and relived the day.

Dave and I awoke simultaneously in the night, and he drew my attention to the smallest, cutest mouse I have ever seen. It scampered through our site, passing a few inches from my head, and headed off into the darkness.

After a quick breakfast I explored a tall, rocky point as Dave and Tracy angled along its base. It was my first chance to be alone since our trip began. I climbed over the point and my shadow fell down a cliff and onto a large, solitary crab who was basking just above the splash zone. He quickly slunk down into a crevice, but shortly returned to the sun at the edge of my shadow. Our joint solitude induced in me a sappy sense of brotherhood with the crab, and it felt natural, original and unique to me. I owned the feeling, and I rejoiced in feeling the feeling. Later I recalled that the main character in The Old Man and the Sea felt the same way toward the marlin below him with whom he shared the battle of exhaustion. With that recollection I no longer owned the feeling, and the powerful emotion subsided. What happened?

I skied down a sand drift that had collected on a windward cliff face, got my snorkeling gear from the truck, and went to play with my invertebrate friends. I know something about their biology and general taxonomy, and while snorkeling I made mental notes of the creatures I saw, intending to write it all down and possibly send it off to an internet newsgroup where it might be of some value. I was trying to be useful again. I couldn't just enjoy the environment. I had to augment the experience with utility. Perhaps this is the drive that moved Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck to conduct the biological explorations that produced their many genuine scientific discoveries and a book called Log from the Sea of Cortez.

The next morning we drove around the point intending to scuba dive it, but we ended up about a mile north of it on a totally empty beach bordered by volcanic outcroppings and rocky reef. Large areas of the beach were covered with small, polished fragments of seashell, and we instinctively thrust our hands into the cool deposits, brought up handfuls, and let the pieces fall through our fingers as if they were small coins. Tracy said that had he been alone he would have stripped down and wallowed in it, and I had to concur.

Just above the sand was a grave of piled stones with a driftwood cross and a sun bleached hard hat. I envisioned a skeleton in workman's garb, shoeless, lying just a foot or so below the surface. Dave casually mentioned that it would be cool to have a human skull, and Tracy quickly but jovially pointed out such hazards as local taboos and our eventual border crossing. None of us mentioned any personal reservations, though. I guess such mention would have been against the spirit of our adventure.

Our dive gear wasn't any closer to a reef than it was the day before, so I snorkeled again, filling my mental invertebrate catalog of course, while Dave and Tracy angled. Spear in hand, I came across a huge school of at least a thousand simple looking fish all about 12 to 15 inches long. Resting or sleeping between boulders, they were incredibly easy targets. I took two before feeling badly about the small quantity of meat in each. I couldn't accept their food-to-death ratio. Then I saw a very large tail and aft body of a fish attempting to hide in a hole among some boulders. Thinking its ratio was much better, I speared it and tried to pull it out of the hole while it thrashed around inside. If I had tried to yank it out it would have slipped off my spear, yet I couldn't gently pull it out because its fins and scales had wedged it into the hole. In the end it wriggled free of my spear and disappeared, damaged and likely doomed. I'll never again spear a fish from behind. Later, another good sized fish managed to squirm off my spear. I almost drowned chasing it down again, but I skewered it again, this time for good.

I came back to the truck with four fish and a lobster while my fisherman friends returned empty handed. (I didn't know it at the time, but it is illegal for foreigners to take lobsters, fishing permit or not.) It took me two hours to prepare my catch. One of the fish shuddered while I had my fingers in it. I can't say it wasn't worth it, because the ceviche we made with them was delicious and refreshing.

As the sun began to set, three or four schools of rays passed by heading south. Every ten or fifteen seconds one would jump high out of the water, flap its wings, and belly flop back in with a loud slap. Why? To remove parasites? Their skin itches? We sat and pondered this as if we were biologists, until Tracy announced that they really are trying to fly in the air. He said that one of them was counseling the others, "See those birds? They're doing it. They were once lowly rays too, but they knew that if they just put their minds to it, they could leave the water to become like gods flying through the air." But then the lead ray said, "Ignore him! He's a radical subverter. You're safer here..."

As we passed through Mulegé we got beer, water, tortillas, and paper plates for our next camp at Playa Tiburon, a rocky but easily accessible and empty beach just north of a microwave relay station. The area was littered with shells, probably the discards of a family of fishermen. After dinner and beers I spent a great deal of time making the perfect sandy foundation for my sleeping bag. Zen and the art of bed making, I guess. I pictured a Japanese rock gardener as I sifted out shells, smoothed over the sand, and sculpted my usual depressions. I thought Dave and Tracy were looking on with admiration, but they were just waiting for the shovel.

The next morning I was awoken by the sound of a dolphin breathing as he casually made his way past our camp. The moon, just past full, was setting and the sun was soon to rise. I sat up quietly, feeling harmonious and absorbed in nature, and I looked around. Beer bottles, wayward firewood, and sundry gear were strewn throughout camp. Dave, the clean freak among us, thought that the truck should be repacked before we start breakfast. Tracy helped him while I, being the sensibly disheveled one, looked for critters under the rocks at the water line (ligia occidentalis were strangely absent), and I watched a sea lion swim by just as casually as the dolphin had earlier. Two hours later the truck was packed so well that breakfast was impossible, so we went into Mulegé.

In the Mulegé Dive Shop we inquired about good scuba diving spots, and the American woman behind the counter recommended Punta Prieta just north of town. Dave had a crush on her, possibly because, among other things, she was freshly bathed and made up, her hair still wet. He asked several disconnected questions with the hope of keeping her engaged in conversation for a little longer. She had been in Mulegé with the dive shop for 19 years, and had no regrets.

Punta Prieta is a volcanic outcropping which supports a rookery. Or perhaps it's just a very popular avian resting place. It being early in the year, there were no nests yet. The birds -- pelicans, boobies, Herrmann's gulls, and cormorants -- took flight in great masses when we approached on foot. Tracy and Dave planned to return with the truck and scuba gear while I waited in the shade of a small cliff on the edge of the whitewashed terrain. The birds shortly returned, but kept a sharp eye on me. Making virtually no movement, I observed them for about 20 minutes before giving up on the arrival of the truck. The guys decided that the trail was too rough for the truck, and that we should enter on the adjacent beach and make the long surface swim to the outcropping. There was quite a bit of seaweed below the rookery, but it apparently hadn't choked out anything. In fact, I found several creatures I had never seen before, in particular a slender, sand borrowing, distant relative of the lobster. I wondered if the sea weed growth is a result of guano runoff, or perhaps outflow from Mulegé. In any case it was a unique dive spot.

We camped that night at Playa Requeson, a beach with a sandbar that connects an island to the peninsula. In 1980, when I was 18, I camped at the same spot with my girlfriend who would later become my wife. And again in 1993 with John, a friend of mine. I can happily report that it hasn't changed, except that it's a little more popular and firewood is very hard to find. The next morning I wanted to snorkel the small bay to see if a rare, thin-shelled pelecypod is still thriving here, but my companions were ready to head home.

We started the drive north at 8:30 AM with vague plans to spend one more night in the Cataviña Desert, or perhaps on the Pacific near El Rosario. We stopped at Mulege's old mission, whose thick volcanic walls make the window sills so deep that I could curl up and sleep on them. We also passed by the dive shop, but it was closed. Siesta hours. I climbed into the back of the truck for the long drive through the Vizcaino Desert, but soon the skies became dark, the cloud ceiling dropped, and rain fell. We pulled off the road and I took off my shirt to feel the drops hit my body. There's something deeply stirring about the smell of rainy desert air. It's so earthy and alive. It makes me want to suck in a lungful and never let it go.

Just north of Guerrero Negro we queued up for gas in a line of cars that stretched across the highway. Tracy figured we had plenty of time to make coffee by the side of the road, but before long Dave and the line of cars moved ahead and abandoned us, two isolated, grungy gringos squatting around the slowly boiling pot on the side of Baja's highway. Next gas and beer: Cataviña.

On the northern edge of the Cataviña desert we passed by some people who had parked their Ford Explorer in a turnout, and they watched us as we drove by. Tracy and I looked at each other as if to say, "Should we go back and see if they need help?" Dave looked straight ahead and held the wheel. We drove a while before one of us opened up a discussion about returning to the scene. We worked on Dave a little, drove some more, talked some more, drove some more, and several miles later we convinced Dave that we should turn back. The Explorer had simply shut itself down and wouldn't restart. The owners related that their other vehicle, a Toyota Forerunner, was stolen in Ensenada the day before, and now this. They were on their way to their place in Punta Chivato where they had yet another vehicle waiting for them, so if they could get there they'd be OK. I stopped feeling so bad for them. I checked for a spark, we put a little gas down its intake, and it fired up. I suppose I should have felt just as good about helping them as helping anybody, but I didn't. Their lives would have been virtually untouched even if they had spent a few days in that turnout, while somebody else in their position may have lost a rare vacation or a job. Yet I still feel uncomfortable drawing this distinction. We said goodbye, without exchanging numbers.

Shortly after, we agreed to drive straight through to home. We made record time at the border crossing -- less than one minute, thanks to our traveled appearance -- and at 2:00 AM we sleepily pulled in to the driveway.