And We Thought We Were Roughing It!

Cocktail Hour last night found us at Doug and Jill’s rig, the friends of Jan and Jim who joined us here yesterday and are parked alongside on Playa Juncalito. On arrival we met Aaron and Erin, who Jill had also invited to join us for cocktail hour. Aaron and Erin are 25 and 23, and camping in a small tent about 50 yards south of us on the beach. They’re traveling by kayak from Mulege south to La Paz, approximately 250 miles! They’ve covered about 100 miles so far. They expect to spend approximately 3 weeks making the trip, and are carrying everything they need – tent, clothes, food, fresh water, sleeping bags, stove – in their kayaks. They have only one more planned water stop between here and La Paz. Cathryn brought along an appetizer tonight and apologized for the fact it was being served on one of our regular dinner plates as we have no room in the Chalet for fancy appetizer type dishes. Erin laughed and said “Well, at least you have dinner plates – we eat our dinner each night out of a single pot in which we’ve cooked our food, and the only utensils we have are one spoon each!” They take their “baths” in the Sea of Cortez, with no warm or fresh water. They both graduated from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR recently. She’s from Alaska, and he’s from Telluride, CO. They are friendly, hearty, likeable souls and made Cathryn feel like a weenie for complaining about the bathrooms on our trip. When we returned to the Chalet afterwards, we commented that we wished we’d met them earlier in the day and had offered them the opportunity to take a shower using our fresh, hot water and shower tent. So much for thinking we are the folks in the smallest rig who are roughing it more than anyone else! The pictures are of A and E’s departure this morning, before the sun had even come over the hill.