Black Beds of Lava, Like the Walls of a Maze

I woke up in Guerrero Negro and I had not been macheted in the night by Flor's brothers, though my head felt like it had been. Ugh. Why do I drink whiskey? We made our way down through the desert. The army stopped us to search the truck for guns and drugs. The whole time I had my marijuana joints in the cigarette box in my breast pocket.  They didn't seem too worried about my can opener. The road passed through vistas that defy words. For hours on end there is a sea of sand and nothing more on either side of the road. Then you round a bend and you are in a forest of cactus with castles of boulders. Then you enter a a volcanic wasteland, where the highway winds between black beds of lava on either side, like the walls of a maze. The heat shimmers in the road, and you spot rattlers sunning themselves, and lizards scurry out of your way. Three extinct volcanoes rise in succession, called the Three Sisters. Then you come out of the maze of lava, you come around a turn, and there, sticking up above the rim of a canyon is an amazing vision: Green. Hundreds of green palm trees rising from the oasis down in the shallow canyon, and rising just above the palms, the cross on the top of the Mission San Ignacio. Down in the canyon, the spring there has filled a little lake of blue-green water, which sustains an orchard of date palms. A little pueblo has sprung up around the mission. We stopped and had beer and ate lobster brought in from the coast. There was an enormous banner welcoming the Baja 1000, and support teams for the racers were partying and waiting for their teammates.