And then back on the main road, Route 1, we drove for miles and miles, or I should say kilometers and kilometers.  The road narrowed to the point where it would be reasonably wide if it were only one-way, but for two-way traffic it's almost but not quite completely hazardous.  And to make matters worse whoever laid the single yellow dividing line seems to have done a lopsided job, with each lane periodically gaining or losing ground.  It'll wake you right up when you're rounding a corner with a "road train" (an 18-wheeler pulling a trailer) coming the other way with a full wheel on your side of the road, and there's nothing you can do except ride the absolute ridge of the road, which more often than not traverses a drop-off of at least 15 feet. 

But even so, everything is absolutely beautiful, even the road.  Today we drove through your standard-issue flat sagebrush desert, then into some rolling, sometimes jagged mountains, which is where we are as I type this right now, on the roof of the Cyberbuss of course, with my tent pitched this time, at a pullout from the road.  All around me are big crazy roadrunner cactuses, and the stars are so bright they're casting shadows.

 

I wouldn't want to go for a walk at night though, since everything in the desert is thorny, and these characters are particularly nasty (the cactus, not the ones in The Buss).  Notice how they grow in segments (again, the cactus):   what happens is the 2-inch long barbed thorns catch you and the whole segment is deployed to get tangled in your clothes or skin.  And I swear the plants grow inward towards the paths, sniffing for victims.  When they hook you they dig in deep, and to get the barbs out you have to pull hard while your skin is lifting from deep under.  Not much fun.  I'm not sure why they do this, but if it's to spread their seeds it strikes me as downright predatory.  Everything else around here has thorns too, even the benign looking bushes, and the thorns shed like leaves, so the ground isn't the most friendly place for bare feet.

Earlier in the day we lost a cable for our satellite phone, and pulled over in the first town we drove through, which as it turned out had the only "computer store" until La Paz, hundreds of miles away.   And we found it just by looking around.  One of those desert moments I guess, though with a modern twist.  And the store had maybe a total of 3 different cables for sale, one of which was the one we needed (a parallel male to male).   The town was pretty strange:   there was some sort of modernization going on, with a few strip-mall type stores amid the ever present taco stands and dirt sidewalks.  There was even a store selling only dress shoes, selling pennyloafers and wingtips to I'm not sure whom, and the people working in these places wore American style corporate clothes.  Each store seemed to have someone whose sole job was to constantly mop the floors cleaning the mud each person invariably drags in from the dirt sidewalk.  Don't worry, the irony of me making my first purchase in Mexico at the only corporate store for miles is not lost on me.  Oh yeah, the town had lots of school girls walking around in bizarrely neat clothes.