Repeating our course of the night before but with the advantage of daylight and with my wife behind the wheel, we managed to avoid our earlier mistakes and wound up at the Federale outpost in about an hour and 45 minutes, a record. As the last of the mud flats receded behind us, the humidity once again dropped abruptly. Captain Gringo began going over events of the previous evening to his friends in low, urgent tones mostly inaudible in the front seat. The intensity of the delivery grew inversely with our distance from the approaching outpost, and soon the other two looked pale and were excitedly murmuring in guttural undertones¹.

Not disappointing the trio, the Federales once again met us with raised automatics. As the vehicle rolled to a stop, a spokesman lowered his gun across his chest and stepped stiffly forward. The important part of the language barrier behind us this time, my soul mate was ready.

"No wee-pons," she declared. "Voy a Puerto Peņasco," I added, not waiting for a response.

He glanced over his shoulder at his commander, and receiving a communicative nod, uttered one word, "OK".

We were on our way!

My soul mate still behind the wheel, we proceeded along the primitive road that parallels the railroad track through one of the most remote areas in all of Sonora. Alternating between deep arroyos and shifting sand dunes rivaling those of the Sahara Desert, this thirty or so miles skirting the backwashes of Adair hasn't changed appreciably in hundreds of years.

But sand can play games with your mind. Two days earlier we had traversed a well-defined road cut deeply into the dunes at critical points; today after crossing the first deep wash we found ourselves staring at a wall of lofty maximum-angle dunes completely unmolested by even so much as a footprint.

My soul mate spoke first, "Where's the road?"

We studied the dunes for a few moments, heat rising into our bodies from the griddle below our vehicle. A lizard skittered across the smooth face of the dune, slipped sideways a few inches and paused, lifting one foot and then another to achieve momentary relief from the searing surface. Wiping the perspiration from my eyes, I glanced at the external thermometer above the windshield. It read 128° F. Instinctively, I reached to turn on the refrigeration, but got a mental image of myself carrying an empty gasoline can up the face of that dune, feet sinking into the burning sand halfway to my knees. I quickly changed my mind.

Shifting into low range, my soul mate put her foot down and the vehicle whined forward, the motion producing the only discernable air movement. Having started too close to the incline, we soon mired in and were forced to recoil for a second try.

Now my soul mate, still feeling more than a little irritation at being uprooted from our well-deserved vacation to save a trio of misfits who turned down Search and Rescue, wasn't about to provide them an opportunity to scoff at a woman driver. She backed nearly to the other side of the wash, slammed the intrinsically imperfect automatic into first gear, and bouncing forward across the wash managed to get the speed up to about 20 mph. We hit the base of the dune with a resounding thud and started up the side like a tarantula on hot asphalt. Equipment and gringos came off the floor, hit the ceiling, and returned with a resonating clap, amid squeals and grunts. We cleared the top, coming down with a forward, then backward bounce that produced similar results; but this time the verbal accompaniment was conspicuously missing.

She stopped once again. Before us lay a vista of many miles of lofty dunes punctuated by deep arroyos, but no trace of a road.

"It was the blow we had last night," I observed, "I had forgotten how this stretch can change."

The silence from the rear compartment was deafening. My soul mate shifted the vehicle back into gear and whined forward again. Over the next two hours our three passengers became intimately acquainted with the ceiling of the vehicle, as time and time again they and our equipment took flight and resettled in short bursts tuned to the peaks and valleys of the dunes. It really was, I am sure, a torturous ride; but quite frankly, the only choices given road conditions and the weight of the loaded vehicle were to do whatever was necessary to make progress or give in to the sand. My soul mate did a magnificent job, especially considering the terrain; and we did not get stuck a single time, which was especially significant in comparison with our trip of two days earlier. I know of no one who could have done a better job. And our passengers, spread-eagle on their backs, feet crammed against the front seats, head and arms outstretched to hold the unsecured equipment in check, bounced mile after mile in silence, as little by little the roadway materialized beneath our wheels.

¹Ignorant of other important phenomena of the area, the trio were probably not aware that neither visas nor vehicle permits were required for the western edge of the Sonoran Desert between Puerto Peņasco and Baja California del Norte. Without this knowledge, they were probably in mortal fear of being arrested or shot by the Federales.

 
Copyright (c) 1996-2010
Larry K. Fox

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