The experience of last night already seemed far away when I woke at first light. Dan was passed out beside me but I couldn’t go back to sleep so I grabbed my laptop and got up, sitting on a park bench just outside the car, looking out over the ocean. I blogged as the sky turned bright, then just sat and watched as the red sun rose over the horizon. I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of seeing the sun rise over the water. I stayed out until my battery went dead, then got Cleo out of the van so she could do her morning routine. As I got out of the car, a gringo said good morning to me and asked about a good surfing spot since he’d seen the board on the roof. I immediately told him that Scorpion Bay was the best we’d experienced and advised him it was well worth the roundabout trip from Loreto. He thanked me and carried on.

Cleo and I walked down the beach, her running freely off the leash to pee and poop. As soon as she was done she went back to the car looking for Dan. She soon became interested in me again when I fed her breakfast.

When Dan rose, he announced he’d been bitten again, but this time by something different. The bites were much bigger and closer together. I hadn’t received a single peck and we thought it might have been because I slept on top of the doona while he’d been on the sheet. We’d have to try another tactic tonight. Dan went for a swim with Cleo while I blogged some more, but it wasn’t long before the sun was high enough to make me hot enough to wanna go in too. The water was clear as ever and the sand was black and soft beneath my feet. The bay was shallow, only knee deep fifty metres out. I dropped my body in and did a few dozen metres of freestyle to wake myself up.

Back on the beach, we hung out for a bit, still talking about last night and contemplating what to do with our day. We eventually settled on seeing whether our favourite fish taco place was open. When we drove by and it wasn’t, we thought we’d try locate the churro place again but still, no luck. So, we pulled over and had some cereal for breakfast. There was nothing left to do now but drive out of town. Goodbye Loreto, for the second time.

Dan drove us north through the desert, away from the ocean yet again. We listened to more Elon and actually finished the book. Apparently Elon would like to die on Mars while his wife and kids stay back on Earth, an interesting life goal. It was a bloody good audiobook to listen to, I was thankful Dan gave it to me. The drive took us through more mountains and desert until, excited as ever, we saw the water again. We were in Bahia Concepcion again. This is where we’d seen white sand and blue water for the first time in Baja at Playa Santispac. This time, we were going to stop at the beach with a sandbar. It was one we’d seen on our way down but didn’t stop at. I’m glad we saved it for now.

Playa El Requeson had white sand and blue waters just like Santispac, but it had a sandbar, which stretched from the mainland out to an island. By the time I’d had a shit in the bushes, Cleo and Dan were already out walking the sandbar. It was hard to believe Cleo was walking beside Dan in the water! I guess she was hot from sitting in the car so didn’t mind the cool down and the depth was also just right for her to reach the bottom so she could walk instead of swim.

There were crabs all over the place in the shallow water, some camouflaged to the sand, others with bright colours. When I saw Dan sit down in the water I didn’t understand why he wasn’t scared that something would bite his bum. No crabs where he was apparently, only fish. I sat with him and watched the silver fish swim around us.

We coaxed Cleo into the water a bunch of times, each time getting her to run faster and further. She’d always get to us, then since we didn’t actually want anything, she’d trot back to the shore of the island.

As we head back to the mainland, Dan spotted something making a wake in the shallow water and on closer inspection, we found it was a puffer fish! First time both of us had seen one in the flesh. Cleo also got sight of something under the water and chased away at it, dipping her nose into the water, then coughing up the yucky water when she came up with nothing. Crabs just don’t interest her as much as lizards.

By the time Dan had inspected the bushes, we were hot enough to want to get back in and so we did, driving the car around the bay to a different piece of water where we could sit a little deeper. Again, we coaxed Cleo into the crab infested water and she sat with us a while. We dreaded getting back into the heat of the car so lingered in the cool water, sitting in to our necks. There were people camped on the beach, but it didn’t appeal to us, there wasn’t a breath of wind and no protection from the sun apart from the half-shacks that sat along the shore.

We piled back into the car and kept going, Dan still driving. We were excited for fish tacos now, as per usual and the town of Mulege wasn’t far away. It was the first time we were truly confident we’d get what we were after since we’d stopped in this town for breakfast on our way south. We missed the turn off so took the scenic route into town, which meant we drove past two taco places before reaching the square where we’d eaten before. Keen to try something new, we fancied ourselves a bit of a taco crawl, planning to have one taco at the first establishment and two at the next.

We parked on a narrow street and walked to the stand painted yellow. We were the only customers, a feeling we were now used to, and got ourselves a couple of pescado tacos. When the toppings came out, we were excited for something good, it was one of the best spreads we’d seen yet. The fish was great and with everything on top, it was brilliant. So good in fact, we couldn’t stop at one, needing to get a second round. They were just as good.

Though we normally only ate two tacos each, we still had to try the other place so we walked down the street a while until we came to the hole-in-the-wall stand next to a school. We listened to the children play as we waited on our tacos, but we couldn’t see them since the school sat behind a high wall. These tacos were pretty good, but the first place one, even though these came with a couple of fried onion rings on the side.

A refreshingly cold Coke later, we were ready to head off again, but not before I was busting for the bathroom. With no other option, I shit in the cup. This is not the nicest experience at the best of times and is downright unpleasant when doing it inside a hot van. The necessities of van life. Shit ordeal over, Dan drove us out of town.

We stopped not long after when Dan got the sleepies. He hadn’t been sleeping well lately thanks to the van being too hot and bed bugs so he thought he’d take an opportunity. I happily took over driving while he climbed into the back on the bed and Cleo sat with me upfront. It was a cozy set up for a while, but we soon drove into Santa Rosalia, a place we’d camped before and stopped for petrol. The grossly overweight young girl filled our tank while Dan took Cleo outside for a cool down under a tap. When we tried to pay with credit card, we were denied since it wasn’t a local card. Not having enough Pesos, luckily we were able to pay with American dollars, of which we still had a small stash. Thankfully it was only half a tank since we weren’t expecting to see another servo any time soon.

We went across the road to a convenience store to get some more drinking water and we were set. I drove through town a different way than what we’d originally done and it meant we got to see the old dock buildings and structures that the sea air had rusted away. It was a beautiful part of town to drive through. We stopped at one shop thinking we’d stock up on food, but they didn’t have much we were interested in so we carried on. Dan stayed awake with me as we said goodbye to the Sea of Cortez and drove into the desert. We both remembered this as a very hot part of the drive down and we found our memories to be accurate.

I drove through the hot air while Dan downed cold beers and Cleo ruined the bed while panting her heart out. We went through two military checkpoints over the hour of driving, having to get out of the car and open our doors for inspection both times. At the first, the guy just had a quick look inside and let us carry on, but at the second, we had the most thorough search yet. We thought maybe we got that treatment because Dan had put his hair in a ponytail to stop it getting knotty in the wind so he looked a right dirtbag druggie. The military man opened containers and sniffed them, put his hands in all of our door pockets and generally ruffled through everything, asking random questions along the way, like “Is that your boyfriend?” His search was successful when he found an old film canister that once had weed in it eons ago and a small pipe that had been used at about the same time. These are things that Dan had long since forgotten about. After a bit of broken English/Spanish conversation, he told us to move the car forward for even more inspection. Dan showed his medical marijuana card and repeatedly explained that the weed tools were ancient and not in use while military man carried on searching through our stuff. When he came across the battery pack I use to charge my phone, he asked Dan what it was before asking, “For me?” We think he was fixing for a bribe. Dan asked me if he could have it and I said “No!” Eventually, military man seemed satisfied to keep the pipe and container and sent us on our way. All you have to do is protest.

After a quick check of our belongings to make sure he hadn’t pocketed anything, we drove on. Twenty kilometres later, I turned off the highway onto a paved but potholed road that would take us out to Punto Abreojos. Charlie and Jazz had tipped us off about a cool salt-heavy lagoon that was like swimming in the dead sea because of its density and it was also a surf spot. We were also keen to get back to the Pacific Ocean so we could cool down.

I dodged the potholes as best I could and gradually we felt the temperature drop as we got closer to the ocean. An hour later, we started looking for the fabled salt lagoon. We’d driven into town before we saw anything. We drove around town a while, finding a beach but no surf and it was much too cold. The marine layer hung over this town so we weren’t keen to camp nearby. We figured we’d have another shot at finding the salt lagoon so drove back out of town and looked more keenly this time, even crossing an airstrip. Still nothing, but we turned off the road anyway when Dan saw something that looked like surf.

We drove a short way off the highway to the water. The waves looked small, but surfable with a right point break. Dan got a little cocky driving onto some sand and we soon got stuck, but it was no biggie. He moved slowly to get us most of the way out, then after a quick round of digging and lodging some branches under one tyre, he backed right out of it.

We checked out the beach and waves for a while and thought it would be a nice camp. Having driven only ten minutes out of town, the marine layer was far in the distance and the temperature was pleasant with a bright sun behind us and a cool breeze coming off the ocean. I walked off down the beach for an explore and came back with a cool piece of bounty. I found a fishing cage, the ones people use for catching shellfish I think and inside was a perfectly preserved crab. I worked up some guts and picked it up (I have a tendency to imagine that dead things that still look like animals might jump up and get me). I carried it back to camp and showed Dan who was suitably impressed. I’d never seen a dead crab with all its bits still intact and bleached white from the sun. I guess because he was inside the cage nothing could get at him to eat him.

We spent the next hour or so working away like archaeologists, brushing the sand off his body and pincer arms to reveal his true shape. He was an amazing creature, with an intricate skeleton underneath his huge shell and huge pincer arms, each one different from the other, we figure because they’re used for different purposes.

I’d thought to keep him, but after smelling him that wasn’t an option so after the clean up we attached him to the front of the van to be our Baja mascot. There he would stay for probably only the drive out of camp.

Feeling as though we’d had a productive evening, we played a round of cards before I got on to making dinner. We were almost down to scraps in terms of our food stores, but I managed to make my Spanish hodge-podge rice with a tomato, chickpeas and canned spinach. Dan contemplating going out in the surf while I cooked, but he soon changed his mind, opting to relax in the living room of the van and look out at the waves.

We were both really impressed with dinner, I’d got the flavours just right according to my number one critic and he even said he’d take that over a fish taco. What a high compliment! After dinner, Dan was straight to bed and Cleo moved from her nap position outside to the living room floor so she could be near. I spent a couple of hours in my office watching the sunset cast blue and purple light over the crashing waves as I blogged. There was a beautiful breeze flowing through the car giving us our first comfortable night in terms of temperature for a while. It was no surprise that Dan had conked out so easily.

After the sun had gone down properly, I found myself getting freaked out pretty easily, especially with the side doors open. Every time a car peaked over the hill on the highway and the headlights flashed onto us I was reminded of our night last night and so I didn’t stay up much past dark, cuddling into bed where I felt safe. I went to bed hoping we wouldn’t have any bug bites to wake up to.