Not too much to say in the desert

I know it has been a while since i last wrote. I hadn´t seen a shower, never mind an internet connection, in over 10 days. I have tried a couple of times to write down what has been going on, my cycle through the baja, but my mind has been empty. here is what i tried to write the other day:

It is just after dawn at a roadside cafe about 1-3rd of the way down the Baja California in Mexico. Trees are few and far between and the birds are clinging in choughs to one of them, their varied and excited singing the only thing breaking the silence of the sun´s movement up over the horizon. The 4ft dry sticks of cactus that make up the perimeter fence have 20ft long shadows. I have come to the conclusion this morning that i smell really bad. My groove lately just hasn´t been one that has involved washing, but i think perhaps now is the time. I have been cycling. Each day i wake like this at dawn, pack my shit up, eat a little and then just go. This part of the day is by far the best for cycling as it is not too hot and my body is rested form 10 or 12 hours of sleep and ready to eat up some miles. I cycle most of the day and think about nice things and watch the countryside change around me and try to explain to myself what i am seeing. First the road to San Diego, filled up with lycra-clad weekend cyclists, surf shops, fast food chains. Beautiful beaches. Then across the Mexican border to Tijuana, which i stayed in for all of an hour as I wanted to get as far away from the border, and at the same time higher and more varied chances of trouble, as possible before i slept. Then the cosmopolitan, americantouristcentric lands along the coast, the smell of barbequing beef and cruise ships docked in the harbour. Then seeing the density of people thin along with the vegetation, until finally 3 days ago a big ass hill took me up into the High Desert. I watched an entire ecosystem change in a few miles. Trees became shrubs, shrubs became cacti and huge boulders, lumped on the hard sand like beached whales. Towns became pueblos and pueblos became single ranches and cafes clinging to the desert. Every 30 miles or so there will be one of these squat little buildings, perhaps with a few trailers behind. Here a family will be basically chilling, kids running around, hot food, beer and random odditiees on sale -sun glasses here, cds there, elephants carved out of marble somewhere else, waiting for one of the few cars that drive by to stop and for slightly disorientated, desertified locals, truckers or tourists to eat and drink.

It is at these places that i find myself in the afternoons and where i eat a big meal and then ask if i can camp on their land. they always say yes and never charge me, but for a few days now none of them have offered to show me where the washroom is, and i don´t like to ask because i am not paying for my spot, so, well, i haven´t washed so much. And now i know that i need to do that in the next day or two.

But in this rhythm, smelly or otherwise, i have covered around 400 miles from LA down to where i am now, a place with a name almost totally irrelavent, at the junction of the only highway that crosses the baja with ha dirt road down to a beach.

Perhaps you can see from how i am writing that i hven´t spoken to anyone in a meaningful way a few days. My spanish is good enough to eat and sleep but not to describe, let alone explain. A week ago I went off the highway down a dirt road to another beach and spent 2 days with a friend of mark´s named Allen, a man who used to raise horses, koi and a monkey in san diego but for the last 18 years has lived alone in a backwater in mexico. He grows things, reads all day, has beauty in every direction and a big pool table in the middle of his large, one roomed cabin. He described it as paradise. I could see myself doing this in 40 years and it scared me. I couldn´t resist his book collection though, and am now travelling with a total of 8 books, which is totally ridiculous despite the fact that some of them are small. But when am i going to get my hands on a copy of woody guthrie´s autobiography, or an amazing compilation of parables from various chinese and japanese people (if i told you they were zen monks what judgements would you make?)... and who can refuse a william blake compilation when someone gives it to you saying that ´he had the most insight on the world out of any writer´. So as the evenings draw in and when my tent is up and ready i slip a few of these pages under my skull and the day rounds itself off nicely.

Yesterday was different though- when i pulled into my afternoon cafe i saw another bike sat outside and my heart smiled. Here was Juan, cycling from argentina to alaska. Cycling north, against the prevailing winds, with a donated bike and trailer after the one he started with got washed away in the tsunami that followed the earthquake in chile. Spanish. Top man. The cafe itself was the front end of a ranch that streched back into the desert, with maybe 2 dozen completed jigsaws on the wall, the most intricate and faded of which was what can only have been an ivy clad countryhouse from somewhere in Somerset.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/47339411@N04/5513388929/in/pool-1359126@N23/,

The uncle was playing the accordian, and i got out my clarinet and we played a while. he wanted to teach me two songs, the second of which was super simple but i just couldn´t get the timing of it right, at least to his ear, and much repetition and frustrated laughter ensued.

And now, with the shadows of the poles down to 5ft and the uncle and his shy cattle'herding son with coffee come to say buenos dias, i will go. I wanted to write a blog post but i guess communicating, like any skills, gets a bit rusty if it isn´t used for a while... the desert has sucked away my words.
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now it is a few days later, and i am in an oasis village named san ignazio with tortillas in my belly and the sweatsalt out of my hair. here i have been sitting in boats watching whales- it is extraordinary- they come up to the boat and poke their heads out and allow you to pet them like a horse. their skin is like the arm of an expensive leather sofa. their eyes are as deep as the eyes of horses. the barnacles on them are gross and beautiful at the same time. i met a yoga teacher from santa cruz with a street musician husband who invited me to stay with them in their place two towns along. i will be there the day after tomorrow. after that, and another 300 miles of road, things are still a bit up in the air; maybe to max's friends' spot 300 miles south on the mainland, maybe directly to belize to do some scuba diving. or maybe somwhere to learn to surf properly. or maybe follow the whispers of ayawaska ceremonies in costa rica but, as i keep saying but totally failing to do, today is the most important day to think about and the stand next door sells tacos and margharitas, so i will be off.