After leaving the Valley of Fire, we headed south towards Kingman. The next day we turned onto a part of the Historic Route 66 that led us to Lake Havasu. A retort town on the Colorado, which we will remember because of the Char-Bones, where we ate an excellent steak – probably our last in the USA.

The border with Mexico was about three hundred kilometers south. In Gila Bend we filled our two tanks to the brim with diesel (U$ 2.90 per gallon). We reached Ajo, a pretty village with a Mexican atmosphere, on January 19, 2020. The border was now within reach and soon we would probably see parts of the Trump wall again.

But before that we came across something that we liked better: Here, in southern Arizona in the Sonoran desert and only thirty kilometers from the border with Mexico, the organ pipe cacti grow into the deep blue sky. Along with saguaro and fishhook cacti. The area is also full of chollola cacti and ocatillos, which are now green before they bloom red in spring. (We saw how beautiful this looks in Big Bend National Park in April 2019 when we arrived in the United States!)

PS. We come across US Border Control vehicles every day. Warning signs along the road indicate that you should not take hitchhikers! It could be refugees who crossed the border irregular …