The road got worse and worse as we went down it until we came to a section that was two gullies with a ridge of rocks between them. My truck had enough clearance, but Penny behind me in a Volvo sedan had to drive with one wheel on the ridge and the cacti scratching the paint job on the other side. When we got past the worst of that we stopped to talk about it. Penny and Don studied the maps and saw that there were two roads out of San Franciscito. One that went direct and one that came out a few miles down that good road heading south that we skipped. Apparently that was the maintained road while the one we were now on was abandoned. Unfortunately there was no way we could turn around and go back so we had to continue down the wrong road and hope it didn’t get any worse.
Fortunately the bad road stayed good enough until it connected with the good road. We stopped for a minute to exhale and congratulate each other for “cheating death again”. Then we drove the rest of the way out the good road until we got to the paved main Trans Peninsular Highway. A “good” road in Baja is still a dirt road, with potholes and washboard. I tried going fast to break the harmonic oscillation of the potholes in my shocks. This only made me go fast enough for a sharp rock to puncture one of my tires and I had to stop and put on a spare. The whole time I was working on that, Don and Penny in the other two cars did not catch up with us. It turns out Penny had a flat tire also (her second of the trip) and had to stop as well. That evening when we stopped at a ranchero for room and board we spent some time trying to patch one of Penny’s tires so she would still have a spare. The hole was too large for the plug-type patches we had with us. I had brought two spare tires so I left mine alone and had it professionally patched when I got home. The guys at the tire shop told me that the road had really done a number on that tire.