Category Archives: Been there, done that

We are trying to avoid our blog becoming just a list of things we have done on our travels. Zen and the art of blogging, and all that. That said, we are doing a lot of things!

Intrepid got NOTHIN’ on us

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So why, I hear you ask, did you put James through that horrific experience of the night bus to Calama / en route to San Pedro de Atacama?

Well…. I was easing him in gently.

Tom and Cerys - Magic. And yes, it was. Very.

 

San Pedro is the nicer of the two places where one can arrange a 3 day jeep tour taking in the sights of deepest darkest southwest Bolivia, including the amazing Salar de Uyuni (the other place being Uyuni, which is where we are now. Even a rather nice chocolate tart in a relatively civilized bar have in no way changed my opinion that Uyuni is, in simple essence of the fact, a complete hole). The Salar de Uyuni had been one of the top items on James’ wish list when we first started planning the trip, so it was a dead cert for our time in South America. Unfortunately, the 3 day jeep tour, whilst being absolutely, wildly spectacular, I remembered from last time as being one of the most fundamentally basic of all my experiences within the continent (and I wasn’t exactly living the high life last time I went round this neck of the woods either). Whilst the scenery had faded for me over the years, the biting cold, the altitude sickness (4,900 metres at the journey’s highest point), the jowl shaking ride and the existence of the one singular town toilet in one of the little communities we stayed at are seemingly indelibly etched in the old memory banks. Bolivia being a pretty hardened opponent to progress in any fashion, I feared little would have changed.

How wrong I was. BOTH of the communities we visited had more than one toilet. Inside no less. Luxury.

It remains, however, a long and fairly arduous journey, made more so in our case by the fact that our carefully selected tour operator didn’t have enough people and therefore ditched us (without actually telling us so) on another, slightly less carefully selected tour group. Six of us in a jeep built for five. Rice for lunch when others got a gourmet feast. A hostel run by the least friendly, and largest Bolivian lady I have EVER seen though I still don’t know how she managed that living in the middle of the DESERT (when she bent over, owing to the Bolivian custom of wearing knee length gathered skirts and short socks, you could apparently see her bum. I missed this highlight regrettably). Just one bolt rather than the required four holding the steering rack in place…. interesting on a bumpy journey that last one. Obviously no showers and with the bitter, bitter cold (apparently we hit about -25 C), absolutely no desire to take off any clothes either to sleep or for basic hygiene purposes.

In other words, a proper ADVENTURE. It was fantastic!! (I say from the warmth of aforementioned civilized bar, post short session to chip off the welded on clothing of the last few days, shower and re-boot own personality).

The scenery is incredible. Unfortunately, whilst the Laguna Blanca was definitely white, it was due to ice rather than any natural colouring, but all the other sights along the way behaved admirably. The Laguna Verde shone bright green, the Laguna Colorada sat happily red in the sunshine, with a few strategically placed flamingoes to add ornamentation. The hot springs were hot, the geysers satisfyingly hissy and gushy. We stopped at another lake and saw hundreds of James flamingoes (they really are called this, which made James very happy), although this was marred a little by the knowledge that these birds are the late babies, unable to migrate with the rest of the flock and mostly doomed to perish by winters’ end. Still, jolly pretty they were.

The accommodation wasn’t even that bad. First night with dragon lady was pretty basic and eye wateringly cold, but once James and I had put into place our patented hot water bottle technology (an empty plastic bottle filled with water sneakily begged from the kitchen for tea), we achieved sleep beneath our covering of a sleeping bag and 5 thick woolen blankets. The next night we stayed at one of the twenty or thirty Hostales de Sal (Salt Hostels) that have sprung up near the Salar – all of which are built almost entirely of blocks of salt hewn from the Salar and are as a result pretty spectacular. The downside was that, waking last night from a nightmare of being trapped in some awful pitch black rocky place, I found myself… trapped in some awful pitch black rocky place. Not very intrepid I know, but I spent the rest of the night with the head torch on!!

This morning we made it to the Salar (or salt flats) itself, arriving at the Isla de Incahuasi for sunrise. Spectacular, if so cold that my toes may never forgive me. After a hearty breakfast (well, some stale bread rolls – but why ruin a good story?) we continued to drive over the flats, a mesmerizing experience as the salt sparkles in the sunshine. A few hundred compulsory perspective shots later, we were on our way back to civilization. Just not sure why we ended up in Uyuni instead.

Night Bus to Calama

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There will come a time in my life when I will unilaterally declare that I am too old, too cranky, too fat and too rich to take overnight buses. Fortunately (or unfortunately in the case of the rich bit) I am not quite there yet.

We are continuing our Greatest Hits tour of South America – we have stood on the edge of precipices at dawn while giant condors soar just feet over our heads, we have contemplated vicuna shawls in Arequipa, we have hiked twelve hundred vertical meters up and down the Colca Canyon to swim in a hot spring (brrrr!) and I have braved the hairdressers of Nazca (OK, and we have also flown low over the Nazca lines). Next stop is the Atacama desert and the high salt plains of Bolivia, but to get there we have to stretch hundreds of miles south across Chile to San Pedro de Atacama via the charming terminus of Calama, and this means taking the overnight bus. Now, we like to think of ourselves as being pretty hardy travelers, based on our tightly-budgeted gap year experiences, oh … 15 years ago, but in reality we are trying to ration the level of INTREPID on this trip:

  • Not at all intrepid: being met at airports by hotel shuttles, hotels with chocolates on pillows (or pillow menus, or chandeliers in the showers – see Miami), guided tours, airport lounges
  • Slightly more INTREPID: hiking without maps, tight-standing-room-only buses full of locals in traditional dress (and preferably full of chickens), navigating by the sun, hostel rooms with loos down the hall, altitude sickness and – to a certain extent – overnight buses

Which brings us to the night bus from Arica to Calama. Foreigners aren’t allowed to buy Chilean tickets from abroad, so we arrive in Arica (Northern Chile – keep up!) with our fingers and toes thoroughly crossed that there would actually be tickets to San Pedro de Atacama. Of course there aren’t, so we mill around the bus terminal avoiding the imaginary pickpockets, making friends with the local stray dogs (I must have trodden in a prime steak or something) and debating the best way South. Chilean bus services are actually pretty impressive, and so when we end up on a bus in the right direction we are pretty happy. We turn our two (reserved, but only reasonably proximate) seats into two adjacent seats by the time-honoured tactic of sitting next to each other, ostentatiously pretending to fall asleep hand in hand and being gringos. Result.

Lucy – INTREPID in Calama at 7am

Lucy – INTREPID in Calama at 7am

The bus winds its way South across the desert for eleven hours along a variety of paved and unpaved roads. The lights go out soon after we leave and the locals fall asleep soon after, leaving the smattering of gringos peering out between the curtains at the unlit verges and trying to guess what scenery we are passing in the dark. A movie plays – not badly-dubbed martial arts like the day bus to Cabanaconde, but an uplifting tale involving butch firefighters and the power of Jesus in mending broken marriages (no, really). Lucy and I eventually fall asleep with our bottles of water on our laps, which hiss whenever opened as we gain altitude during the night. The air blowers go on and off, dispersing a subliminal underaroma of pee from the loo at the back of the bus. The rattle of the luggage racks and the hum of the engine are nothing compared with the night passages in the Galapagos, and we (well, I) soon fall fast asleep. A rude awakening at half past three: everyone onto the road to have our bags x-rayed for contraband, then back on board for a further four hours of snoozing before we arrive ahead of schedule in Calama. Chocolate chip cookies and plastic coffee in a chilly bus station for breakfast, and then we find our way onto the 8am connecting bus to San Pedro, looking forward to being horizontal, to stashing our slightly clammy money belts and to the probability of a warm shower.

Us wide awake on the connecting bus the morning after

Us wide awake on the connecting bus the morning after

You never know, we might actually get used to this.

Canyons & Condors

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Fresh from our success with James’s haircut in Nazca, we wended our way next to Arequipa, a rather lovely colonial city in the south of Peru. Whilst Arequipa is a nice enough place in and of itself, the reason we (and I’m afraid most other people) went there was as a convenient launch point for the Colca Canyon. I’d been to the Colca Canyon on my last visit to South America some 15 years ago, and the memories of condors flying close enough over my head to make me duck (they’re big those condors) remained sufficiently vivid for me to be pretty confident that, yes, this should be included on our whirlwind “Highlights of South America (well, the northern bits anyway)” tour. A chance for a hiking side trip also made perfect sense in the middle of this, one of our heaviest travel weeks (two overnight buses…euurrghh).

After much debate, we decided that our best option for Colca, rather than taking the 3 day tour that’s an almost compulsory feature of this part of the gringo tour, was to get a little bit of our intrepid on and go it solo. What I’d conveniently forgotten / omitted to tell James is that the Colca Canyon is a 6 hour bus ride from Arequipa, in “local” buses. This is definitely a step up from the Bolivian chicken buses (30 year old American school buses, complete with rotund Bolivian ladies taking, yes, you got it, their chickens to market. For the curious, the chickens usually ride on the floor, upside down and tied in pairs. Seems to keep’em happy), but still lacks certain luxuries – seats that stay upright, legroom, that sort of thing. Also they tend to operate as to / from work rides for the locals, meaning that by the end of the journey it’s not uncommon to have 40 or 50 people standing in the aisle. All this I’d expected (James less so), although I have to admit that the shouts of “Ciao” by 50 or so quaintly dressed locals into 50 or so mobile phones was a novel touch to the experience this time around.

This was also our first foray into the world of the Traveler. For the uninitiated, this personage is a rare but friendly beast commonly found in certain unique habitats worldwide; their preferred food includes pizza and banana pancakes, with maybe the occasional touch of granola for the mornings, and they can be easily identified both through their brightly coloured plumage (assembled from a mix of hard core hiking gear and locally bought tat) and their unique braying call, particularly after consumption of one or several of whatever the local brew happens to be. Our hostel in Colca fulfilled both the pizza requirement and was apparently the Lonely Planet’s 7th best “out of the way bar” worldwide. We expected gringo horror – we got a rather lovely little place with an enormous stove (key at 3,000 metres) and friendly owners who quickly helped us work out our best hiking option.

Which was, apparently, to hike 1,200 vertical metres down into the Canyon (the world’s second deepest, some 50 foot less deep than the world’s deepest, Cotohuasi, which is about 40 miles away), admiring the agricultural terracing along the way, lunch and swim at the oasis down there (that much vertical descent = an entirely different and vaguely tropical subclimate at the bottom of the canyon), then hike back up again. Which we duly did. Note cheery looks for both of us on the way down and at the bottom and rather less cheery looks on the way back up! Took 7 hours or so in total and made us feel well’ard (as they say in Scouseland).

Next day was an early rise to see the condors before heading back on the bus to Arequipa. We arrived at the lookout point at about 7.45, and I spent the next hour biting my fingernails as the condors singularly failed to put in an appearance – had I imagined them last time around and is that why they were so vivid in memory??! Fortunately, right on cue at about 8.45 the condors showed up with a leisurely yawn and a stretch of their wings. Circling higher and higher above us with an apparent utter disdain for the hundred or so homosapiens below madly clicking their cameras at them, they absolutely lived up to their billing. Unfortunately we were low on camera battery so not many photos – the ones below are by no means the closest that we saw the condors (which was probably about 10 foot overhead).

Magical. So much so that I think James has forgiven me the bus ride!

Galapagos – Life Aboard

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Ah, the Galapagos. Amazing wildlife, jaw-dropping geology, fresh air, champagne. It was just like that Lonely Island video…

Well, not really. Yes, we spent our days hopping from island to island. Yes, we saw the most incredible flora and fauna. And yes, we were on a sailing catamaran motoring (and very occasionally sailing) around the Pacific Ocean with a lovely bunch of travelers / holidaymakers for a week. But there was remarkably little booze. It’s not that there wasn’t any on board, it’s just that very few of us actually felt the need (which, after a few habit-forming years of a beer or two every evening after work was surprisingly refreshing).

Other than the occasional broken night’s sleep (see below) the trip was perfect. Lucy and I were blissfully free of the seasickness that occasionally poleaxed some of our companions. We got up in the morning to the sound of the ship’s bell. A hearty breakfast, a pootle around an island, elevenses, a little snorkelling. Then a three course lunch followed by a siesta or a laze on the sundeck. More island pootling, perhaps more snorkeling, then a three course dinner, a briefing from our on board naturalist (not that kind) and bed. It was all highly regimented yet strangely comforting once you were in the flow of it – like being back at public school.

The crew were top notch, the other passengers were good company, and we all happily exchanged trivialities at first before risking anything more of ourselves (yes, I have been reading Paul Theroux, but other than this minor plagiarism I have remained relatively immune to his more misanthropic tendencies). We couldn’t have wished for a better bunch.

On reflection – and I am writing this at altitude in Peru after a six hour bus ride – my favorite part of the Galapagos wasn’t a particular animal or island (although Darwin’s boobies were amazing). The best part of the trip for me was seeing such a range of islands at such different stages of development: a fresh lava island covered in nothing but surrealism… next to an eroded lava island with a few plants and thousands of seabirds… next to an island that has been completely overtaken by vegetation, complete with giant tortoises. It normally takes huge leaps of imagination to picture anything happening on a geological timescale – here you just have to hop on a boat and travel a few miles to see millions of years back and forward in time, with all the changes in animal physiology and behavior to match. Truly fascinating.

Broken night’s sleep? Well, I have had a new business idea. It’s a new type of alarm clock for stressed executives who are having problems waking up in the morning, and it will be the recorded – yet unamplified – sound of a fifty meter steel anchor chain being hauled out of its resting place by a fifty pound kedge anchor just one thin sheet of plywood away from your head. I can guarantee its effectiveness, as I have now mastered the skill of sleeping through “slightly bumpy night navigations” (with one foot braced against the ceiling of our cabin, and with the sound of the waves blotting out Lucy’s occasional yelps as she was thrown out of bed). The anchor chain alarm clock never failed to rouse me, however. A shame that it usually marked the end of the night navigation at around 3am!

Travelling the USA: The Stats

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Road music. Chilis. Of course.
.
  • Miles driven: 5,456. Within a whisker of our initial estimate of 2,500 to 3,000 miles…
  • States visited: 17. Although yes, we’re including a few drive-by states in that
  • Fortifying ice creams consumed to energize the driver (and passenger…passenging is hard work I’ll have you know): about 25. Basically at least one a day if we were in transit
  • Pigs slaughtered in the fulfillment of James’ search for the perfect ribs: I’d say about 4 medium size oinkers. (For the curious, the perfect ribs were actually some we had about a year ago in Chef Leon’s little shack up in Vermont….unfortunately now closed down due to cleanliness violations…)
  • Hours spent hiking in incredible spectacular scenery in a hopeless attempt to un-wreak the damage caused by above-mentioned ribs: 25. Half a pig??
  • National parks visited: 5. Yeah, we achieved value for money on our annual America the Beautiful pass!
  • Maximum speed: James says 90mph, which was when I was driving (hadn’t quite got the hang of motorway speed control on the first day out of NYC). I however think this is a vicious lie, I’m pretty sure he went faster than this overtaking that Ferrari that time…
  • Occasions we took a minor and slightly unintended detour: about 30. Occasions we swore at the satnav: also about 30
  • Beasties slain in our relentless race across the land: 7,002. 7,000 winged insect type beasties which met their ends on the windscreen, 1 chipmunk (James) and one kangaroo rat (Lucy. James says this is endangered but I’m pretty sure that’s not true….)
  • Meals in chain restaurants: one McDonalds salad in the Air and Space Museum in Washington (we had no choice on this one); one Arby’s and one Denny’s – these are both a little like eating at a Little Chef, i.e., you wrinkle your nose at them until you happen to be looking for dinner in deepest darkest nowhere at 10pm, at which point one becomes rather appreciative of their all round culinary excellence. And the fact that they’re open. And the MILKSHAKES!
  • Nights camping: 4. This is way less than we’d hoped, but the campsites in national parks get booked up about a month in advance in summer which kind of threw a spanner in our camping plans. Which brings us onto….
  • Nights in plush hotels: 6. Oops. Of which Miami effortlessly wins the award for most bling by virtue of the crystal chandelier in our shower
  • Top temperature: 110 degrees (Fahrenheit – crossing the Mojave desert). Fortunately, we were in our lovely air conditioned car, so neither of us actually died
  • Inches of rain: about 10, evenly shared between two rather spectacular rainstorms, one whilst camping in the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the other whilst I had the wheel, coming out of New Orleans
  • Pounds of excess luggage shed at various points: about 40, including the cooler, the coffee machine and the “so light they almost don’t count” marshmallows
  • Times we missed the office? Zero.

Laundry Day

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Well today was set aside for admin, laundry and the like. Oh yes, there was also a knife fight.

So, we have been travelling across the States for a month now. As such, we are holed up in San Diego in a not particularly inspiring hotel (you know the type – spend more on a nice dinner than on a room for a night) tying up loose ends before we head off to South America. I could write a short PhD thesis on the merits and potential downsides of outsourcing various parts of one’s life. I have friends who contract out most of the raising of their children; I have others who believe it is bad for the soul to have a house too big to clean yourself. Anyway, let’s not get into the specifics, let’s just say that no matter how successful I may (or may not) become, I don’t believe I will ever use hotel dry cleaning services unless someone else is paying for them. I mean, six pounds for a pair of pants – come on guys! Sooo … on the road I am becoming a dab hand at public launderettes, having now used one at least twice in my life. This afternoon I had a very happy hour or so indulging in the guilty pleasure of washing, drying, folding, matching socks, drying Lucy’s things. I also pottered for a couple of hours on my laptop, sorting things out for when wifi is less available, and we packed and repacked our rucksacks in different ways. It was a very happy, pottering kind of day.

Mmmm. Laundry.

Mmmm. Packing.

Mmmm. Pottering.

Oh, did I mention a knife fight? Did you want to hear about that? Well, we went down to Prospect Beach to check out the surf, soak up a bit of sun and eat half of our bodyweight in cold stone ice cream sundaes. It must be the school holidays as there were the usual tipsy sunbathing teenagers, there were a couple of couples with their sandcastling toddlers, a mumble of bad surfers were surfing badly. We were very happily sat watching the waves, eating our ice cream and wishing we were back in the office. Idyllic, really. Anyway, some of the teenagers were getting a bit rowdy – one guy and three girls, some swearing, nothing bad – and one of the toddler mothers went over to ask them nicely to tone it down a little. We couldn’t hear exactly what was said, but the body language was universal: open hands, pointing out the young child close by, gentle downward motion to ask to quieten down a bit. All standard.

Now, where I come from the response is to apologise and to calm it down a little. San Diego, not a bit of it – the response was immediate from (let’s call him) shorty, tattooed, baggy pants guy (or shorty, for short): “NOBODY TELLS ME TO QUIETEN THE F*** DOWN! NOBODY! DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE, M*****F******?”. The girls started shouting at each other, then slapping each other, then the guys started shouting at each other, then pushing each other. At this point shorty pulls a knife, screams and lunges for the other guy, who (after a short period of almost visibly soiling his board shorts) plucks up his courage, smacks shorty in the face, picks up his skateboard and smacks shorty in the face, then picks up an oil-drum trash can and – wait for it – smacks shorty in the face. The lifeguards turn up, shorty waves his knife at them, and as a result seven (we counted them) police cars turned up and the police proceeded in an orderly fashion to – you guessed it – smack shorty in the face. Instant karma I guess. Shorty was then carted off to the cells.

It was extraordinary. During all of this the toddlers kept playing and we kept eating our ice creams, about 15 yards away. We finished our ice creams, the cops started taking witness statements. People stopped taking pictures and we rushed home.

You see, I had a wash on.

Vegas Baby – Yeah!

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I have a theory about Vegas. It’s a town that reflects your mood (am I hippy enough to say your energy??) in a super accentuated kind of way. If you let it, it can really, really bring you down. Who hasn’t felt a little concerned for the state of the human race after a half mile stroll through a casino? Watching a typically massively overweight person feeding electronic quarters (cash is so passé) into the one arm bandit whilst slurping on a super size soft drink. Dead eyes everywhere you look broken only by the green eyed stares of the deeply envious as someone wins big (given they’re playing the quarter machines, maybe up to …oooh, $150….). Or watching the impact of a licensing law that allows – shock horror – drinking on the streets. Cue half yard frozen slushy margaritas and all day amateur drinking hour. Realizing that in this town, given the quirks of Nevada state law, an 18 year old can legally watch the naked girly shows, but not the topless ones (these are licensed to serve alcohol, which the naked bars aren’t, so an 18 year old is denied entry…).

Sure, it has its issues. But here’s a confession. I kind of love Vegas. I could pretend that it’s all down to the new sophisticated image of the town, fine quality dining and world class shows. And yes, we ate great food whilst we were there (albeit at a Thai restaurant in a strip mall – considered the best Thai food in North America but maybe not quite what the Vegas tourism board had in mind). And we have seen some truly remarkable shows there too (this time, Mystere by Cirque du Soleil, which, annoying and slightly pointless baby theme aside, was wonderful in the sense that it genuinely left us both full of wonder…just how long does it take to develop abs like those….??!!). We even checked out a Chihuly exhibition and only turned down Monet for lack of time.

But to be honest what I really love about Vegas is its sheer undaunted brassiness. It’s a town built for people to have fun without even the smallest thought for taste or decorum. It’s big, bold and vaguely psychedelic – they have acre sized fountains tuned to music, a miniature Eiffel tower AND Empire State building, an animatronic giant singing frog (in the “classy” Wynn hotel believe it or not), a volcano that explodes every hour!! How can you not love THAT?

It’s just that you have to fight for your good times. Hold on (hard) to your sense of whimsy and pretend the bad stuff (I’m looking at you, Treasure Island pirate show that has been revamped with a sexy-siren sing-and-dance-off….urrrggghhh) just isn’t there.

Or just bugger it, get a half yard frozen pina colada and go win some big bucks.

Canyonlands

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Leaving the wide open plains of Texas and New Mexico behind us, we started on the part of our US roadtrip which I’d been most excited about – a tour through the Canyonlands scenery of Arizona and Utah. Some of you may have heard of the Grand Canyon – well, this is just one part of a wider tract of land which was subject to a rather large seismic shift a few million years ago. The shift, acting as it did on an area of sedimentary rock, shifted whole tranches of the land up and down and side to side, creating canyons, mountains, and weirdy beardy poky bits along the way. Or that’s my interpretation anyway… those of you with a basic geology knowledge are likely reeling with horror…

Alternatively, if you’d prefer, the great flood came along, Noah filled his boat with provisions (including plenty meat for the carnivores), and as the flood subsided, the sheer power unleashed created the Grand Canyon. Plus assorted other weirdy beardy poky bits as above. Never let it be said that I’m narrow minded.

Anyway, the upshot of all this geological / biblical activity is some truly spectacular rock. I promise that’s more exciting than it sounds……

Our Canyonlands debut was in Monument Valley, traditional home of the Navajos (and, given it’s in scrub desert and has no natural resources and precious little in the way of life-supporting environment, it’s an area of land that has been generously ceded by the US to the Navajo nation). We were staying at the View hotel, and yes it was very aptly named, no ability to complain to the Advertising Standards Authority there. We has the most amazing stay – great scenic drive through the monuments, watching the light change from our balcony as the sun set and the stars rose, and then getting up at dawn to wrap ourselves in Navajo blankets and watch the sun rise over the red stone towers. Probably my happiest time yet on the trip.

So encouraged were we by this whole room with a view lark that we attempted to repeat the experience at the Grand Canyon, choosing to stay at the North Rim (rather than the more usual South Rim) due both to my total hatred of other people getting in the way of MY views (James assured me this might be a problem at the South Rim…one of the most visited sites in the States) and the promise of a Rim view lodge. Unfortunately, the room dematerialized on (five hour long) route, leaving us to the tragic fate of having to stay on the hotel verandah drinking cocktails to get our fill of canyon-ey goodness instead. Life’s tough. We did also get up at sunrise here, but what with it being a canyon and all (and it being FREEZING cold), the views were actually more spectacular during the middle of the day. Which was fine as the North Rim is so high that midday temperatures are pleasantly mild.

Same cannot be said for Bryce or Zion National Parks, our two next destinations. Here the thermometer clears 100 fahrenheit in the heat of the day making hiking at best a sticky and miserable experience and at worst fatal. Our solution was to hike in the early morning, starting at say seven to complete a half decent hike by eleven or twelve before the heat really kicked in, before driving on to wherever we needed to be in the afternoon heat. Worked a treat and left us feeling very virtuous after a week of six a.m. rises and lots of hearty hiking. The views in both these parks are amazing. Bryce is like a sci fi set designer’s fantasy of another planet, with great pink and yellow sandstone “hoodoos” (long vertical how-on-earth-did-they-develop? spires), the most remarkable scenery I have even seen. Zion is sort of like a classical (and amazing) mountain-based park only all of the mountains are bright red, contrasting with the lush river valley below. Here we hiked Angel’s Landing, a steep and almost entirely undeveloped path over sheer rock with steep drop offs at either side. Terrified as I was (and believe me, I was!), the views were amazing and totally worth it.

An incredible week in some amazing locations and, after the food and drink excesses of the South, great to get back to a simpler existence.

Next up: Vegas and then California!

Adobe, Art and Aliens….

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…Traveling through New Mexico

The road from Dallas took us west over some of the most deserted land I’ve seen for a while.  The distances are so huge that you have to be reasonably careful about planning your route – a “short” detour here to see something half cool can add several hundred miles to the journey.

Coincidentally (honest guv’nor), our route took us through Roswell, home of the first of the mainstream UFO / government cover up incidents back in the 1940s.  I kind of wanted to see this anyway, expecting a town full of slightly bad taste alien paraphernalia.  Alas, it was all actually pretty restrained, with only the occasional alien lamp-post and Coke machine (sorry Tekla) to remind us what we were here for.  There’s an enthusiastic museum which certainly leaves the impression that something was covered up, though who knows what.  The truth is out there….

Next stop Santa Fe, a very beautiful town consisting almost entirely of unpainted, earth toned adobe houses that reminded me a little of….well, Mexico.  Funny that.  It’s also home to the Georgia O’Keefe museum (she painted almost entirely in New Mexico in her later life), which gave us a much needed burst of culture before we headed off for some New Mexican cuisine – gotta love staying in a town where tacos are actually an authentic part of the cuisine and culture!

There are horses, and there are horses. These are the latter.

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Dallas and Fort Worth – Texas

People have asked us if we are spending much time visiting friends on our way around the world, and we have had to say no. It’s not that we are friendless, it’s just that not many of them live in North Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Antarctica or any other of the slightly out-of-the-way places that we have chosen to spend our time. It was therefore a special treat for us to be able to pass through Dallas, where our good friend Julia lives with her family. We actually spent two days in the Dallas / Forth Worth area, and ended up experiencing both ends of the Texan horse, so to speak.

Let me explain: Julie breeds, trains and rides beautiful, elegant (and champion) Arabian dressage horses, like this:

Julie and Lee

Julie and Lee

And Dallas is in striking distance of the world famous FORT WORTH RODEO!

Lasso cowboy

Apparently, tripping over your own lasso is considered something of a faux pas in Texas

The two experiences couldn’t have been further apart:

  • At Julie’s we drank chilled white wine in her beautiful garden at sunset; at RODEO! we drank Miller Lite from an aluminium bottle
  • At Julie’s we had a high tea of pistachio ice cream and fruit scones; at RODEO! we had a cookie-flavoured milk shake that I made myself out of a vanilla milkshake and a cookie
  • We visited Julie’s horses on the outskirts of Dallas and saw her future world champion filly; while at RODEO! we saw a sheep being chased around the arena by a crowd of four year olds (and were laughing so hard we couldn’t take any pictures)
Future champion

Future champion. Pretty cute for a four month old.

Ah, RODEO! It was fantastically cheesy. It was absolutely awesome. They had thirteen year old proto-country singers twanging the Star Spangled banner. They had real life cowboys trussing steers against the clock. They had real life cowgirls racing around the arena with diamante bridles on their horses. They had displays of the kind of secret love that a Texan can only have for his tractor.

Tractor love

As a Zamboni is to ice skating, the beloved tractor is to rodeo

And, of course, they actually rode bulls. Very big, very angry bulls.

 

Bull riding

More camera love - high speed, telephoto, in the dark

We promised Julie that we wouldn’t think that Texas is full of cowboys riding horses (and we don’t, in no small part because of her wonderful hospitality and all round gracious awesomeness). But hey, go see the cowboys if you are in town.