Jan 13--A Great RIde Through the Land O' Cactus

I believe we got our earliest start yet--6:50! We were mostly packed up before the sun even came up! I guess it was cloudy, so maybe it didn't get light as quickly as when it's clear. Anyway, it was an early start.

We had a little bit more uphill after a short downhill that we had to walk up, but that was it, pretty much. The rest was downhill or flat. At first it was pretty bouldery, but then it turned to sand. Sand is my new best friend! Rocks are my enemy!

We made really good time. The scenery was incredible! So many different varieties of cactus, and these weird, Dr. Suess-like trees. Some of the cactus were in bloom. We've been told, as we move south, more and more cactus will be in bloom.

Look! It's a heart cactus!

Dr. Seuss tree

We did hit some rain for awhile. Enough that we put our rain jackets on. Then it quit. We even started to dry out. We made it to El Sacrificio, a roadside restaurant on Mex 1, and stopped in for lunch.

It started to rain again. We stayed inside for about two hours. Jan (note correct spelling of the guy from South Africa) had joined us. We actually had a great time. I had carne asada with fries (sort of), refried beans, tortillas, and Coke. They had a few things like cookies, and candy bars. I got some cookies that had four marble sized coconut snowballs on a little shortbread cookie. They were delicious!

We hemmed and hawed about what to do. Jan lit the fire saying he was heading on, at least to El Descanso, another roadside restaurant a few miles down the road. So we all decided to go on too. It started to rain again as soon as we got on the road.

We pulled in to El Descanso. We asked if we could camp, and they said we could. It was about 4:00. When there was a break in the weather, we set up our tents. Now we're hanging out in the restaurant. Hopefully the weather will be better tomorrow.

Flat Will getting a little religion.