Las aventuras en México: Gen y Bob fue a la playa...

Gen on Los Algodones Playa, San Carlos, Sonora

A few years ago, my friend Gen and I went to the beach… in Mexico. We both like the beach; we both like Mexico. It seemed a natural thing to do. Now, it was a great trip and we both have many wonderful memories from it I’m certain. But Gen has made dark allusions to our adventure on this blog and I must set the record straight and clear my good name.

There are many things to tell about this journey… all about getting through customs without getting arrested for faulty paperwork, how we drove into town and walked around after dark without getting kidnapped or killed, how we ate the fruit and drank the water… how we survived a federale roadblock and drove on a narrow mountain highway with Mexican truck and autobus drivers and actually lived to tell about it. How we negotiated the rush hour downtown traffic of Hermosillo with calmness and tranquility… Not least, I could tell how U.S. Customs was so hungry and deprived of ripe red apples that they confiscated mine just so they could have one. After all, that must have been the reason because it was an American apple, not a Mexican apple. But these fine stories will have to wait for another occasion.

Today, I just want to tell you about the beach. Since Ms. Genevieve has brought it up… We both wanted to spend some time on the beach so we drove out to Los Algodones beach just about an hour before sunset. The beach was a few miles north of Guaymas (and San Carlos) and we were told it was one of the nicest ones around there. On arrival, we discovered we had it all to ourselves. This made us both a little uneasy but we stayed anyway. There was no parking lot, of course, so we pulled my ½ ton truck onto the seemingly hard-packed sand of the beach.

A couple of words about the beach itself – it lies next to a scimitar-shaped “bay” and trying to reconstruct its dimensions from my memory, I’d say maybe ¼ mile long. It was a couple of hundred feet wide at the most – maybe much less. But it was a beautiful little beach with a beached boat on it (see photo) and some islands offshore that lent a ruggedness to its scenic appearance. Some of the scenes from the film “Catch 22” were filmed there. Again, there was no parking lot. We drove out onto the sand… for a few feet; the sand was fairly hard-packed and was no problemo. Farther out, it got softer and thicker, even, you might say, fluffier. Gen kept saying “go a little farther out” and “park over there, why don’t you…” So I did.

We got our ice chest, spread an old sleeping bag on the sand and enjoyed the remaining rays of the sun and watched a beautiful sunset. Gen had a glass of wine and I drank a Diet Coke… and we smoked cigars! These were not big stogie-type cigars, but thinner cigarillo-type cigars. And I swear I did NOT inhale… So the sun goes down. It gets dark. And we start to feel very alone and vulnerable.

Gen, another beach, another day...

By and by we decide to head back to town. We loaded up the truck and I thought it might be easy to just turn around in a circle instead of backing up. Had we stayed on the harder-packed portions of the beach, this would not have been too much of a problem. But on that softer, fluffier sand, it was. Pretty soon, the truck was dug in up to the wheels. Well, we investigated all our options. No help in sight. Not too much in the way of tools to dig ourselves out. Several miles to walk back to town, leaving the truck on the beach unprotected. None of this seemed of any promise, exactly. What we did have, was a sleeping bag. 

So I jammed the sleeping bag under the rear wheels to gain a little traction and then we both tried to push but that didn’t work. Then I got Gen to push and I steered and depressed the accelerator just so. This took great finesse… and got us a few feet at a time before we’d run out of sleeping bag. Then we’d move the remnant of the bag to the front of the tire again and repeat the process. And repeat, and repeat, and repeat. Finally, we reached the firmer sand and we were both able to get in the truck and ride. Genevieve was really great at pushing though, I have to say; she is quite a truck-pusher.

I learned several lessons on Los Algodones Playa…

1. Never drive your street pick-up truck on the beach. ANY beach.

2. Make sure you take tools, so that if you do get (inadvertently) off-road and find yourself mired, you can get out easily. At minimum, at least have a nice, thick, sleeping bag.

3. Make sure you have a strong and healthy young person to “help” push – while you steer of course and finesse that accelerator. No one knows how to do this better than you.  I mean, it's your truck, right?

4. Alternatively, you might wish to confine your beach adventures to those strands where you will always have plenty of company. It is a sinking feeling to find yourself hopelessly mired on a lonely beach five miles from the nearest town…

It sure was a pretty beach though. I was very happy to share it with my friend.