The telephone brought us both relief. The auto club gave a jump-start, and my travel agent suggested Mexico. I want simply surf, sand and solitude. She booked me on a flight here, to San Carlos. San Carlos lies in cactus country, as parched, barren and desolate as any found in the American Southwest.
Thorny brush covers seared hillsides, and everywhere, cacti project pipe-organ arms upward.
In a twist of landscape irony, these unadorned expanses fall to platinum beaches and a sapphire sea. I check into the San Carlos Plaza, a 173-room resort hotel at one end of a broad bay. Its twin, stubby appendages stretch into a Levis-blue sky. I ask an employee if the formation has a name. She cups her hands to her chest like a trucker describing Dolly Parton.