Between El Rosario and here is three hard days of riding through absolutely nothing. You can break camp at dawn, pedal all day without a pause, and still not make it to the next vague human settlement before dusk. Nothing but the arrow-straight road, the absurdly high sidewind, and an infinite expanse of plants that all want to draw blood. It feels like a place that the tendrils of humanity have repeatedly tried and failed to colonize. There are old abandoned buildings. New abandoned buildings. Buildings that weren’t even fully built when they were abandoned, their unfleshed rebar left to rust into the ground.
It’s been chilly the whole time, and the few people there are have become as cold as the weather. They don’t smile or say hola back. Nobody barely made eye contact with me for the entire stretch. The loncherias served me like I was some kind of vengeful ghost; ignoring me as much as possible, selling me delicious food with a look of distracted dread, as if only to appease me and get me gone as soon as possible. There’s something going on out there that I’m not privy to. Maybe some toxic byproduct of tourism.
Guerrero Negro is an actual town, and people here are friendly again, but I’m not looking forward to going back into the desert. The isolation out there is soul crushing as shit.
Last night there was nothing to do but roll way off the highway and camp out alone among the cactuses. When the evening wind died with the last light, it was as silent as death and nothing moved at all in the dusty moonlight. Once or twice some indistinct sound echoed from miles away, and I could not help but lie awake thinking of the chupacabra.
The solitude will pass, my friend. Perhaps you are reaching your first hump, as Heinlein described.