The Arroyo

Sheila, Sherrell and I all stood patiently on the side of a dusty highway
at 7 am waiting hopefully for a bus. Life is sometimes surreal. We told
the port captain that we needed to catch the bus to La Paz (in our broken
Spanish) and he called the bus office in Loreto where the station is to
request that the driver on such and such day look for us at this juntion
and pick us up. Often these things work better than you might expect.
But when you haul all your junk 2 miles out into the dusty unknown slowly
baking in the morning sun, you have to wonder if your Spanish skills were
really up to the task. Perhaps somewhere there was a taxi driver circling
around looking for us, or maybe they are trying to deliver a pizza to us.

I´m pretty sure the port captain told us to make sure we were there before
8am in case the bus was early. And I´m pretty sure we got the day and
place right. But an hour later we were getting hot and beginning to
wonder.

Just as we were discussing what time we should give up waiting, the big
fancy bus rolled up the hill, pulled over, and picked up Sheila and
Sherrell and off they went.

I had previously arranged to go hiking into the Arroyo (canyon) nearby
with another couple. They wanted to go eary, 6am. But they still hadn´t
shown. I figured they bailed, but halfway back to the waterfront they
appeared, and we got to hiking.

The arroyo was a deep cut inside massive steep mounts called the Giants.
It was filled with carved rocks, trees, birds and a few pools of water.
As we climbed further up into the arroyo we had to climb through rock
caves and caverns that we could barely fit our bodies through. We kept
climbing until we reached an impass. It was hot and we didn´t feel like
exerting oursleves climbing the next set of cliff like boulders. So we
just took in the view.

Reddish rocks, green trees and lots of birds (humming birds, bright red
cardnals) were all over the place. Sometime when we find a place to hook
up the computer we´ll get them posted!

For now, though, Sherrell will be back tomorrow and Sheila will be at home
in Seattle. We plan to head further north and enjoy some island time!