At the PEMEX station (gasoline is state-owned and subsidized in Mexico) the next morning - a car-shop with a pump in a shed, I asked the attendant what he thought of the road to Puertocitas.

"It's like any Mexican road. Got sand, got bumps."
"What about my tires? Are they okay?"
"Those tires take you to hell."

We took his encouragement without knowing that we were in fact, headed north, to a place that certainly would look like hell. Terrified, drinking warm Tecate, we crossed the sandy, rock-strewn road across the flats with a desert tortoise's persistence. From the sand came the wind; a rampage of desolation, dancing in its defeat of sameness and the everyday. It was rough road, miserable, tire-popping madness. Our one response was to keep on going and fuck everything.

Two hours later and twenty miles along the road to Puertocitas, we passed out of a canyon and onto a saline flat. This was the lowest, hottest, dreariest flat: white sand, ocotillo, not even a creosote. We saw a flash of silver in the distance - a building maybe. Some time later, we came upon it; a strange otherworldly shanty made of ocotillo and hanging cans of Tecate. I pulled the truck up. The sign said, "Cold Beer." This was the first sign of man since Chapala.