The sandcar started it's life as a 1991 maroon Plymouth Acclaim. Mayela had a couple accidents with it and while I was in India, she and Kevin decided to cover it in sand. They went to the local playground to obtain the material in question and tried various methods to "attach" the sand to the car surface. First they tried smearing liquid nails on it and pressing the sand into it. That didn't work. Then they tried using spray adhesive then flinging the sand at it. The technique worked but it wasn't very durable. When I got back, we "painted" the whole car with polyurethane and used the sand flinging technique to get it to stick. That actually worked pretty well. Over time we added sea shells, and put a beach scene on the roof, complete with an island and a brown polynesian figure holding onto a palm tree. It was pretty cool, and got lots of attention.
We took the sandcar to Baja, Mexico to take a week of refuge in Puerto Citas. It is a small fishing town on the Sea of Cortez.
We crossed the border at the twin cities of Calexico and Mexicali. Those two cities are my favorite name for a
pair of cities in the whole world. From there, we took the road south to
San Filipe.
It is mostly paved and unremarkable.
We stopped for lunch and had fish tacos by the seashore at a little cabana. Leaving San Filipe to go further south, you
have to pass through a Federalli checkpoint. Of course, everybody had to come over to look and touch this rolling
piece of art. They didn't hassle us, rather were amazed and curious. Shortly after this, the road
turns to dirt. It is very rough and we could only do about 15-20 miles per hour. All along the road are
wrecked and burned out cars strewn across the desert. It is very intimidating. It took us 5 hours in the blistering
heat to get to Octavio's Ranch, just outside of Puertocitas My friend Larry Newsum has 99 year lease there
and built a Palapa on the property. A palapa is a structure that
looks like an umbrella with a thatched roof. Larry's is made from wood and has walls, but is similar in
architecture and style. The center pole essentially supports the entire structure.
All I heard from everybody was that the fishing is great on the Sea of Cortez. I couldn't catch a damn thing. It didn't seem to matter what type of bait, what time, or state of tide, nothing would bite. Snorkling around the reefs proved that the fish were there, they just didn't want me. I was out one day hitting a golfball across the tidal flats toward a lone rock near the far edge at low tide. There was an octopus clinging to a small pool in the rock. My only thought was you are going to die octopus. I carried it back to the palapa, cut its' head off and boiled it up. That octopus had to pay for all the fish that snubbed me and it sure was good.
We noticed that something was attacking our bread and food supplies while we were out. In order to prevent this we had to keep the doors and windows closed while out exploring. The next morning I saw the cat that was the likely culprit. Instead of running away, she just stared at me with that "what are you going to do to me, I don't care" look. I thought to myself a minute, "what does this cat want more that anything else?" Water. She slurped down the entire bowl of water and I put out another, closed the place up, and went to the beach to join Mayela. I told her about the cat and that it was named "shitfucker" temporarily. We got back and went inside the palapa to relax in the shade and have some lunch. Some leftovers were set out and when I went to retrieve the dish, a kitten was sitting on the window sill and it's two siblings were frolicing around below. They saw me and split, but like her mother, this one just sat there with attitude. It was trying to scratch itself and seemed to have it's leg stuck behind it's head. Looking a little closer, I discovered that the leg was mummified and broken in a weird pose. It looked like a piece of fishing line or something had strangled the bloodflow and it broke trying to get free. We named this one Lupe, and the other two Jose, and Pablo.
As our time was short, and Mayela wanted to keep little Lupe, I closed the palapa up while she coaxed the kitten out with a piece of meat. We made a little nest for Lupe in the back seat and headed across the peninsula toward the Pacific. The Sierra Madre Mountains are beautiful and it was a nice break from the desert. We went to Ensenada and up through Tijuana, camping along the way. As the border approached, we worried about the impending customs inspection to get back into the USA. The line at Tijuana was hours long and eventually, Lupe just crawled under the back seat and went to sleep. There was no problem at the border and an hour or so into the US we stopped for food and checked to see if she was still O.K. Little Lupe was fine, Mayela had the leg treated by a veteranerian and still has Lupe in Puerto Rico.