Another long gap between posts....this time it is more down to the shame of stupidity.

After seemingly taking forever in San Diego to find a gas bottle for our type of stove, we headed out toward the desert at about 2pm on Sunday afternoon. Stopping at the Desert Tower - where you get views out across the Anza-Borrego - we met the owner there who recommended a free camp site out at a hot spring near Brawley. We wanted to get out that way to go to Salvation Mountain and Slab City anyway, so it sounded great.

We followed his directions precisely. Too precisely it seems as we turned off the highway onto the hard sand track towards the site, which we were assured by the tower owner that our car was was more than suitable for....The hard sand turned a bit softer and after a moment of hesitation and change of direction to avoid a dodgy patch, our crappy coupe was completely caput. Grounded in the sand. Yep. Day 1, 7pm, sun is going down in the desert, almost a mile off the highway and we are stuck. After an hour of digging out sand and trying to push while the other drives with sticks and cardboard shoved under the front wheels, we had to face the music...it's not happening without help.

Hot, sweaty, knackered, covered in sand and dust we walked to the road and tried to flag down a 4x4 to come give us a tow. Success was always unlikely as we had already been warned about the plague of meth heads out at nearby Slab City which is why we avoided camping there. So if you were a passer by would you stop? Hell no!! One lad did though but he only had a little sedan anyway and would just get stuck too.

We bit the bullet and called the Roadside Assistance line. For once we had actually paid the extra $1/day for this and boy did we get our money's worth on the first day!!!

We were unsure if they would recover us as it was a grey area as to whether they would cover us on a track/off the highway. After a couple hours however, our saviour arrived. The opening conversation with Stacey went like this:

Saviour: "Hablas Espanol?"

Stace: "No, Hablas Ingles?"

Saviour: "No." (smile)

Oh dear, this was going to be fun. To be fair though, Stace's GCSE spanish came in handy and they somehow managed to cobble together a conversation.

This chap meant business and just put his foot down to get his huge flat-bed truck down the sand track; with a bit of a smile on his face while he was at it. We are sure if we had a regular american rather than a wild Mexican, he probably would have had one look and said "no way buddy, not with my truck!"

30 minutes later we were back on the road laughing with our Saviour as he advised us to go down a different road to the hot spring, but to look out for coyotes (while motioning a puppet-like biting mouth with his hands!)

We decided we had fought with the desert (and lost in epic fashion) enough for one night, so back into Brawley, we sheepishly pulled up at The Desert Inn motel and had a long, long shower and a short nigh't sleep.

Day one. Day ONE! What else was going to come our way on this trip?