Two hours later, we left the ocean for a kind of Baja-styled grass shack margarita bar. Since it wasn't tourist season, the restaurant owner had to run down the street to find someone to cook our food.
"Quatro Margarita. Mucho Fish Tacos."
A scrawny beach pup, three sizes too small, found his new best friends, and we shared our fish tacos before heading to the Pinacate. Somewhere along the way, we saw a Pronghorn Antelope - one of only two hundred remaining, a doomed gem that only a handful of people will ever see. We played a scratchy bootleg of Jerry Garcia, picking Mississippi-delta style, and soon, the heat of the black sand overcame us, 115 degree heat and the land became obscured by the distortion of the heat.
We draped ourselves in cloth - Hans in a blanket, and a belt securing it to his head and a backpack of water bottles on his shoulder. We began our way across the bleakest stretch of land in the Western Hemisphere - black upon black, save for a spare cholla or an occasional senita. When the sun faded, and the stars began to shine, we heard that sound again.the same sound as on El Elegante - a low-pitched rumble, a guttoral, "Waaaaaaaaaahhmp." We looked at each other, a kind of 'What in God's name?' kind of a look and continued to the truck. On the road out of Pinacate, we played old Bob Dylan tunes, watching the birds out in the cover of night, desert quails and cactus wrens and western kingbirds hunting for insects.
The drive out of the Pinacate was gated, and we waited there while a lady woke from the reserve trailer, frightened and confused. "How do you say beautiful desert in Spanish?" I demanded of Hans.
"Bonita Desierto."
"Ollllla. Mucho Bonita Desierto!" and I showed her our park registration ticket.
"Ahhhh," she said, "Gracias."
And I could hear a voice from the trailer.something about, "Those two Americans." She smiled and unlocked the gates, and late in the night, we were in the middle of the giant Tohono O'odham Indian Reserve, headed for Tucson while playing Paul Simon's 'Under African Skies' -
"Take this child north from Tucson, Arizona, give her the wings to fly and harmony and she won't bother you no more."
In the morning, in Tucson, we walked around downtown. I liked the city immediately. It was clean and had a friendliness, if not a bit of adobe history between the strip malls. We found an open doctor's office door, and started our way through the corridors, trying to get a spice of everyday Tucson life. There was a lot of Southwestern art - aqua-glow coyotes and pastel petroglyph Indians, and later, on Main Street, we saw an obnoxious neo-Indian sculpture.
A Black wash in the Pinacate Desert