Speaking of sand, a couple of weeks ago my wife and I decided to take a morning drive from Penasco to Santo Tomas and Desemboque, without filling up beyond the half tank of gas that had remained from the trip from metro Phoenix, nor packing any extra emergency supplies as I would have done in the old days. As others have noted the road down is quilt work of beautiful brand new coastal highway and crushed sharp gravel rock detours. Well we made it to Santo Tomas, were greeted cordially by security and were permitted to drive around when I mentioned Jerry's name. Emboldened by our success at driving up the first two hilly, sandy roads, and seeing tire tracks going up the sandy slope of the southbound subdivision road, we decided to take a run at it and found ourselves axles deep in a sand dune in the middle of what appeared to be the roadway. After failing to free ourselves, I climbed to the top of the sand dune and flagged down a couple of trucks pulling away from the house farther south. The first attempt to pull me out with their pickup failed and so the helpful young vaquero told me to hold on while he drove of to get a front end loader which made the job a piece of cake. So before long we were back on 'solid ground' and feeling a lot better. He didn't want anything for helping but I insisted on it, partly due to my wife warning me that she would tear me a new one if I didn't. As I was thanking him I asked his name which quite appropriately turned out to be none other than Jesus. Feeling elated and bulletproof with Jesus looking out for us , we headed for Desemboque which had only been a two rows of shacks the last time we were there, many years ago. It is now much larger but still primarily a Mexican fishing village. However, not finding any gas stations we decided to head back to Penasco just to be safe.
Before we reached the army checkpoint at the mine road, the low tire light came on and the front left tire with a hole in it was gradually deflating. The soldiers were quite supportive and offered to allow us to change the tire right there, but after sizing up the situation we decided to press on looking for any llantera which might be on the way back. We made it past the aduana checkpoint where could see a row of old tires with the word llantera faintly painted on it, off to the right, but weren't sure if it was even occupied. However knowing that the tire was almost flat anyway, we pulled off the road to a welcoming, tire repair man, open for business, sitting in front of his large compressor and tire changing equipment. Shortly thereafter we were on our way with a newly patched tire and only 50 pesos poorer.
The tire took us all the way back to the US and is still holding air.
We could actually document the we found Jesus in Santo Tomas.
