We sandwich the main excitement of these few days, a fairly sizeable trek through the desert, between two 'quiet' days in which we blog, go for short rambles around San Pedro, speak a tiny amount of Spanish, learn far more than we are brave enough to speak, and eat. Lovely as they were, I have therefore little of real interest to say about the 2nd and 4th of June. They were a very pleasant version of those times I have talked about before, the 'gaps' in travelling which nobody talks about, the times between the main events. If you are on a tighter schedule that we are, and so inclined you could be always on the move. But even then you would have your 'gaps' in the form of long bus journeys, searches for accommodation, and flights. Gaps, in my experience, come in various flavours - the welcome and necessary break, the bored frustration born out of practical necessity, and suffered with much clock watching and muttering and the something in between, in which you are stuck for some reason, relatively immobile, and its not quite what you expected, but the place you are stuck is really quite nice. The 'gaps' in these two days, are the third kind.
On the 3rd though, we take a hike out to 'the devils throat', so named for its network of huge red rocks and small passageways between them.
Its fantastic for several reasons, one, and perhaps most importantly, it's deserted. The tours don't go there, so whilst you may encounter the best odd small groups of two or three people on bikes, in general the whole route there, the meandering once you are 'inside' and the various view points are silent. Moreover, the people we saw on bikes seemed to be taking only very short rides, as we would see them coming back less than half an hour after we saw them going. All of this ensures the kind if silenced we were entreated to 'listen to' on our previous tour, when we were surrounded by crowds of other people. And the fact is rocks as tall, as red and as imposing as these deserve a certain awed silence.
Secondly, it's great because it's a proper adventure to get there. I can walk for miles through empty landscapes without a problem, but the little assault course that is the route to the Devil's Throat, really livens things up a little. For one thing, you need to cross the river three times. The first time there is a makeshift bridge, composed of a pole with some small planks nailed across it horizontally. The second there are some rather slippery rocks to hop and skip your way over, and the third you have to wade. We discover this after we have spent some quite enjoyable (for me) time trying to figure out a convoluted way over using bits if deter pebbly patches and the odd rock. There are not enough of these in one place so my attempted route involved starting quite some way up river and working your way across as you travelled back down it. After some experimentation, however, I find myself stuck in the middle and have to go back again. I then raise the obvious solution, that we roll up our trousers, remove our boots and just wade. It's about knee height at the deepest, though it is a surprisingly strong current, threatening at times to sweep my feet out from under me despite it's shallowness. This solution strikes me as much more fun than it strikes M, who really, truly, hates being cold. And the water really is very, very cold.
This is the truth of the desert. You assume, or at least I did, arid heat which burns you and from which there is no respite, even in the small areas of shade. Even if you know that it becomes very cold at night, you don't quite anticipate the reality of that, assuming it will feel like a welcome respite from the heat.
Actually the desert is not necessarily about being hot. The trick is to deal with the rapid and drastic changes in temperature that happen all throughout the day. It us cold at night, properly minus 10, freezingly, shiveringly cold. It's not a respite. You long for the sun. In the day the sun is indeed searingly hot in the afternoon but in the morning you can wear a cardigan and trousers, be walking and still have goose pimples. Even in the afternoon, if you happen to walk in any kind of shade, the air feels suddenly, the temperature it really is, mountainous and cold. You cannot wear the right clothes. They only way you can get away with only one set of clothes all day us if you stay in one position and the movement of the sun does not affect that position.
So, amazingly, it is possible, once you've got over your amazement that there is water at all in this landscape (this is an oasis), to have blue feet from wading through a few inches of freezing water in the middle of arid, crumbly red desert. And all the time your face is burning. It's fascinating. And beautiful. With a light edge of pain.
Once over the river, it is M's turn to coax me, this time to clamber and scramble up one of the rocks. This is more possible than it sounds but my general distrust of heights means that M basically has to go up behind me, responding soothingly to my whimpers and pushing me up by my bottom.
All in all, it is a great hike and we return home suitably tired, hungry, sunburned and happy.
Which sort of justifies the gap. A bit.
Maybe.
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