Thursday, January 18, 2007

San Carlos, Sonora. We left home between 9 and 10 a.m., stopped first at Kino Viejo for gas and to mail a letter. Then I drove to Calle Doce, where we stopped to visit the bicycle shop. As we pulled into the parking lot next to the store, I first noticed a pharmacy with an amusing sign. It was called Farmacia Similar, and it claimed to sell "the same things, but cheaper". I was still smiling at that when a dog appeared in my field of vision. He was so thin that his ribs stood out, and his head hung as if he hadn't the strength to hold it up. He was drooling. He wandered off behind the buildings. When we came back, having managed to get a patch kit but no inner tubes (the shop didn't have the right sizes), the dog had wandered into the parking lot again, but he was keeping his distance, staggering. I think that if I had had a gun, I would have been tempted to put him out of his obvious misery. He was so far gone, there was nothing we could do for him, and we drove away, but we were both very quiet.

I drove for the next hour or so. We turned onto a road that offered a shortcut to San Carlos. After about six or seven kilometers, we encountered a construction zone. It was only eight kilometers long, so we kept going. At some point I stopped and let R drive. Altogether, the road - construction zone or no - was pretty awful. It did have its moments, though. We saw another dog - a little Jack Russell type obviously cared for, collared, well-fed - skipping around. I couldn't figure out where he could have come from. R said he was probably attracted to a female somewhere, and might have run for miles....Then there was the cowpoke. We had to slow down to a crawl because there was a herd of cattle wandering around on both sides of the road. The adults were sensible about getting out of our way, but the young ones were obviously not streetwise. As we were making our way slowly through the crowd of annoyed calves, a man appeared on horseback. He was about 50 meters off the road. He wore a 5 gallon hat and was twirling a lasso.

Eventually the awful road came to an end where it met the main highway (15) to Guaymas. Much relieved, we drove on to the San Carlos exit, then down a secondary road lined with palm trees, right through the pretty town of San Carlos. We saw one of the RV parks that we wanted to check out, but passed it by, following the signs for Mirador RV Park, which has the reputation of being the best RV park in San Carlos. (R says it's supposed to be the best in N. America, but that's just absurd.) What it is, is the farthest RV park out from the centre of town - six miles? There's nothing out here except the RV park, as far as I can see. There are hills around us, and a lovely harbour out there somewhere, but that's it. No shops. No nothing. Fortunately, we have plenty of food on board, so we'll be fine here for the night, but I certainly wouldn't want to spend an entire holiday here. Maybe the park's reputation springs from the fact that it offers U.S. cable TV. Eight channels. I'd rather have a real town to explore.

I'm making a note here just to aid my failing mind. I called my doctor's office this morning and heard that my last tetanus booster was 6 1/2 years ago, not the three I was guessing. The woman who gave me the information said that losing track of such things goes along with the grey hair. I checked online and saw that usually you get a booster if you have a dirty wound and it's been five years - but this wound is really clean, so I'm not going to worry about it. So - for the record - my last tetanus booster was in July of 2000. Sheesh.

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