Merry Christmas to all and a Happy New Year.
The night we returned from Banos one of the ducklings; my favourite, whom I had named Jemima, disappeared. We searched all morning in the garden and under the house because Celso was convinced it must have been a Boa Constrictor since we heard no noise and found no trace of her, not even a feather. However later, when we had given up our search, we saw a cat sitting on the garden wall which Celso expertly hit with a flying rock from 10m, and we now suppose that he must have been the culprit.
I have sort of lost track of the last few days, what happened when etc so I will just have to write about what I remember and it may be a little bit out of order.
On the Monday Mum, Celso and I went in to Tena to try to finish off the car papers and to get my cedula (National Identity document). first stop the police station to get my passport number in the system.. but of course NO... not possible... all data must be entered in Quito. Then to the cedula office... Yes, they could find me in the system, but NO I couldn´t have my cedula until I had a paper from the immigration office confirming that I still had residency status... AND where is the Immigration Office... of course... it´s in Quito. Another waste of time!
However we did manage to buy mum a Tshirt having visited practicially every single stall in the market. All the clothes here are so small. Firstly the people here are quite small and secondly the women like to wear their clothes so tight!
On the Tuesday it rained and rained, mum and I did some washing, we are not very good at the old hand washing bit but we did our best. I noticed that occassionally Carmen or Filemon would come by as if checking on us! Karina arrived on the bus at around 6pm with O´mara the dog who had been drugged to enable her to travel! Later Darwin and Juan Carlos (more of Carmen´s grandchildren) arrived. They had intended to travel with Karina but missed the bus! Pablo was also meant to come but his school had decided to add 3 days to the end of term due to some government initiative which is intended to get all the kids to the same point in the curriculum.... can you imagine the outcry in the UK if at the last minute the school dates were changed?
On the Wednesday we had organised with a motorista (a guy with a long boat with a motor) to go down the river to walk in primary jungle and to visit a rescue centre that is situated on an island about an hour down the river. We had met an English guy earlier in the week and invited him along so that he could pay at least $25 of the $90 cost of the trip! (A bit cheeky but he loved the trip.)
So.. there were 9 of us in the boat, Celso, Tris and I, mum and Carmen, Karina, Darwin, Juan Carlos and Justin (the English guy).
We stopped about 45 mins down the river at a jungle camp/ hotel where we left all the food we had brought for lunch. We walked for around 2 hours through the jungle, the last 20 mis of which was in the pouring rain. It was very muddy and slippery under foot and there was so much to see that our progress was very slow but really enjoyable. Loads of insects, incredible vines and plants, and the non stop sound of crickets and cicadas. Of course you will all have to wait to see the photos! Then back to the camp to have lunch which Celso whipped up, Tuna salad, cheese, mortadella (a kind of ham), chifles (thin slices of green plantain fried), the juciest of pineapples and a granadilla each. The camp was full of things to see too, amazing butterflies, lizards, huge grass hoppers and amazing views out over the jungle and down to the river.
Then on down the river to the rescue centre. The centre is run mainly by volunteers, students from Europe who are studying conservation. We had a German girl who showed us around but we were also accompanied on our tour by a Trumpeter bird (it looked sort of like a guinea fowl) and a Kuchucho, a small opposum like animal with a long nose. The rescue centre receives unwanted pets and injured animals, they manage to rehabilitate about 25% and get them back into the wild. Another 50% have to remain on the island as they do not have the skills to survive on their own, some are loose (like the Kuchucho and the Trumpeter bird) and some have to remain in cages. The other 25% unfortunately die. We saw Marmosets, Tucans, Howler and Spider monkeys, Kapibara, turtles, tortoises, Jaguarundis (a small black jaguar like animal about the size of a cocker spaniel), Ocelots, dwarf Caymen, a Boa and loads of parrots.
On the way back up the river the sky was absolutely incredible with huge fluffy clouds in enormous towereing formations. Just near Misahualli we stopped at a small indigenous village to look at the crafts they make and take a sneaky look at their houses and their children at play
Saturday, 26 December 2009
Mitad del Mundo & Misahualli
You can access some pictures in the usual way by clicking on the green title above. but there are also some more from Misahualli and Banos at http://picasaweb.google.com/celsor35/JungleWalksAndBanos?feat=directlink which you will have to cut and paste into your tool bar and press enter to see.
Mitad del Mundo Mon 14th
We waited until after the rush hour was over and then headed North through Quito to the Mitad del Mundo, an ancient indigenous town on the equator that translates to Middle of the World. About 50 years ago some French Scientists used triangulation methods to determine that the ancient claim was true and that the town did indeed sit on the equator. They built a monument which now houses a museum that shows the costumes and some of the customs of the many indigenous tribes in Ecuador. We spent about 1.5 hours there and then went to have a snack of Humitas (a minced maize type of cake wrapped in Maize leaves and boiled) and an Empanada, a type of pastry with cheese in that is then deep fried (but you can get bread ones too). We then made our way about 150m to the North from the monument to, what is now known to be, the real equator as measured by GPS. Here there is another museum where they tell you about the indigenous cultures and do some experiments to demonstrate some of the oddities that occur at the equator.
1. About 2m south of the equator when the water goes down the plug hole it turns clockwise, about 2m North it turns anticlockwise, directly on the equator the water went straight down the plughole with no turning at all. This is all to do with the Coreolis Effect (not sure how that is spelt).
2. If you stand about 2m away from the equator and hold your thumb and forefinger together to form a ring then it is very difficult for another person to pull them apart, but if you do the same on the equator then it is very easy for another person to pull them apart. I don't really know why and it wasn't explained.
3. You can balance an egg on its end on top of a nail on the equator. I did it and so did another girl but neither my mum nor Tristan could do it.
It was a hot, hot day but both entertaining and informative. In the evening we went out to buy a couple of Budgies to take to Carmen in Misahualli.
Tues 15th
Mum and I went on the trolley (tram) to the local shopping centre where there was a DHL office to send some Guayasamin posters to Marios in New York. I left my mum in a queue whilst I went and bought a tube and some paper to wrap it in. When I returned the queue had hardly gone down at all, so by the time it was our turn we had waited for nearly an hour, only to find that the DHL system wasn't working.... another wasted time... back to the house we went and into the car for the journey to Misahualli. Tristan was in the back with two bags, the ducks and the budgies on top, it was all a little bit cramped, but at least this time we knew exactly where we were going and door to door the journey took 5 hours. We were all glad to get there, including the ducks who took to their new night time shed with gusto. The budgies were a little more subdued even though they have a large cage with lots of space to fly and loads of perches.
Wed 16th
We awoke to rain which battered down on the corrugated iron roof of the room at the back of the house we are staying in. I let the ducks out and they loved it out in the rain and the mud. Once the rain had stopped we managed to take mum on a tour of the garden, the village and the beach. We watched the monkeys in the square playing with some dogs, took photos of butterflies and flowers in the garden and generally relaxed after our busy days.
Thursday 17th
It was hot, hot , hot today. Celso, mum, Tristan and I went for a walk to the next village, Pununo, and then over the bridge and back down the other side of the river. The bridge is the 'Tina Tina', that is what Tris called it when he was little when we lived here before. It is a suspension bridge that hangs and sways, with no proper connection at ground level. It has a series of metal beams on which lie metal plates, there are several holes, some of which have been patched and some which have not. (The name 'Tina Tina' comes from the sound made when you walk across the metal plates.) The sides of the bridge have chicken wire to prevent you falling over the edge but it is missing, or not connected securely, in lots of places; it made me very nervous years ago and it was no different today. It was about a 3 hour walk with loads to see, we collected some Bread Fruit to take back home, Tristan carried the bag made from leaves and vines over his shoulder. We saw loads of beetles, butterflies, ants, termites, grasshoppers, spiders and strange plants and fruits. We stopped to pick some Cacoa (the pod that contains the seeds from which chocolate comes), the pith has a refreshing lemon taste that alleviates thirst and was very much needed. In Pununo we got a few cold drinks from the shop and then, having passed the bridge, we stopped at the huge Sabor (Kapok) tree, which is a very active ecosystem all on its own. We passed an indigenous house on stilts with banana trees all around, a host of chickens and a few pineapple bushes before we managed to find a path that would take us along to a hotel on the far side of the river from the beach at Misahualli. Mum must have taken around 100 photos, we will have to take a look later and see!
After eating some lunch, mum and I went to an internet cafe to check our emails and then we took two inner tubes that Celso's brother Filemon has stored beneath the house and went back towards Pununo to get into the river and float down to the beach. There are two rapids on the way and mum and I flew over the first on our tyre followed by Tristan and Celso on theirs. Then for some reason mum and I got stuck and Tris and Celso moved ahead of us. Mum and I started paddling and swimming to try to move out of our slow bit of water, mum lost her shoe and then, just as we hit another rapid, she leant over to try and get it as it floated behind us. The tyre tipped and in she went. She was pulled under and past me on the tyre and then up she popped on the other side still gripping on to her shoe! She was a bit shocked and had swallowed a bit of water but she managed to grab onto the tyre and we swam to shore. Poor mum, she has now had a couple of incidents in only a few days.
Friday 18th
Another frustrating day trying to get all the papers for the car done. We found out that we had to get yet another paper - some sort of road tax- and then when went to get the car checked. This included a quick check of the lights on the car and a check that the motor and chassis numbers matched the documentation. However we couldn't pass the test until we had bought some triangles, a fire extinguisher and a first aid kit, so back into Tena to buy them, and then back to finish the check. All well this time, we went into the office to get the registration document. It was all going smoothly, if a little slowly; after half an hour it seemed like we had finally got to the end of the nonsense beauracracy, but then it turned out that we couldn't get the final paper because my passport number was not in their system. Back into Tena to another police office to get my passport number onto the system but the office was empty apart from one woman who told us that there would be nobody working until 3pm. It was just after 12 and we couldn't be bothered to wait around for 3 hours so we returned to Misahualli and we shall leave this for next week.
We spent the rest of the day relaxing. It was really hot and humid, the ducks even had to stop and sit under a tree in the shade. Later we went down to have a swim on the beach only for it to start raining, the wind was really nice though.
Saturday 19th
We (Tristan, Mum, Carmen (my mother-in-law) and I ) set off at about 9am in the pouring rain to go to Banos. It used to take about 6 or 7 hours to get there but now with the paved road and several tunnels that cut off scary drives along the cliff on the edge of a river we got there in 4. Just as we arrived the rain dried up and we stopped and found a hotel. At the first one I tried we were offered a suite with sitting room, kitchen, bathroom and 2 bedrooms, and a locked driveway into which we put the car - perfect. We dumped our bags and made our way one block to visit the church. Inside are paintings which tell the story of all the miracles that the Virgin of the Sainted Waters has performed. Some were from the 15th century and the latest in 1987. The stories always start with some sort of disaster (e.g. a car going over a cliff), then the people cry out to the Virgin of the Sainted Waters, and then they are saved (without a scratch on them)! Then on to the Thermal Baths that sit under a waterfall that falls some 50ft from one of the mountains that surround the town. We sat in the hot waters and just watched the people, there were lots of indigenous families in their traditional clothes, some had never been to a swimming bath before and were so excited. It was a very relaxing hour or so. Afterwards we went to wander the streets and look in the hundreds of tiny little shops filled with Traditional handicrafts, leather bags, bals wood carvings, alpaca or llama wool jumpers and jackets, embroidered shirts, jewelery made out of seeds, wood and all sorts of natural fibres, shells, feathers, stones etc. It is just incredible how much work goes into all the products. We left mum after a couple of hours and went back to the hotel to relax. After a couple more hours we started to get a bit worried that she hadn't returned.. I wandered the streets for nearly and hour looking for her... it was getting dark.... I even asked some policemen to check with the local hospital if any tourists had been brought in, and then at about 7pm i found her, still looking in every shop she passed and having a great time! We went out to eat in an Italian restaurant and Mum and Carmen had a couple of Cubra Libres (Rum and Cokes), just medicinal - you understand! Then we watched several Wallace and Gromit films in Spanish on the telly and fell asleep.
Sunday 20th
We ate yoghurt and cereal in our room and then mum and I set off to visit a waterfall just north of the town whilst Carmen went back to the thermal baths and Tristan slept! The waterfall is part of the Pastaza rver that has cut a thin gorge only about 5m wide through the mountain. It is probably nearly 50m deep the gorge, sort of like the one we walked up from Death Valley in California with smoothed walls from the torrent of water that passes carrying grit. The water was a muddy brown from all the rian and at one point the water falls about 10m into a large pool that seethes like a saucepan of boiling hot chocolate, this was the waterfall we had come to see. Mum was brave enough to go in an very open sided (but with bars) cable car over the river to the other side and back again, but it was far too high for me. Then we walked back to the hotel through the town and passed a colourful Sunday fruit market full of locals going about their business.
We packed all our stuff into the car and started our journey back to Misahualli. This time without the rain we were able to stop and enjoy some of the sights along the way. The first was some bungee jumping from one of the bridges that we crossed, then we stopped to visit a waterfall. We walked about 1km down into the valley through jungle to a wobbly wooden swing bridge with the sign ' Danger - no more than 5 people'... it inspires such confidence!! From the bridge we could see the water fall, it wasn't really spectacular but the best part was that there were so many Ecuadorians making the walk down to see it. Before when I have been here it was only foreign tourists that I had seen enjoying all that the country has to offer, but this time there have been masses of local tourists and they are really showing an appreciation of their country.... not so much rubbish just dropped in the streets, better signage to area of interest and more effort made to keep things looking good.
Closer to Misahualli we started to see lots of hanging nests in trees that had a wasps nest at the centre. Apparently the birds always build alongside a wasps nest for protection from predators that might try to steal eggs or chicks. The birds can whistle like a builder who's eyed up a pretty girl! Then back to Misahualli, the humidity pressing around us and the horrid aranillas making a nuisance of themselves.
Mitad del Mundo Mon 14th
We waited until after the rush hour was over and then headed North through Quito to the Mitad del Mundo, an ancient indigenous town on the equator that translates to Middle of the World. About 50 years ago some French Scientists used triangulation methods to determine that the ancient claim was true and that the town did indeed sit on the equator. They built a monument which now houses a museum that shows the costumes and some of the customs of the many indigenous tribes in Ecuador. We spent about 1.5 hours there and then went to have a snack of Humitas (a minced maize type of cake wrapped in Maize leaves and boiled) and an Empanada, a type of pastry with cheese in that is then deep fried (but you can get bread ones too). We then made our way about 150m to the North from the monument to, what is now known to be, the real equator as measured by GPS. Here there is another museum where they tell you about the indigenous cultures and do some experiments to demonstrate some of the oddities that occur at the equator.
1. About 2m south of the equator when the water goes down the plug hole it turns clockwise, about 2m North it turns anticlockwise, directly on the equator the water went straight down the plughole with no turning at all. This is all to do with the Coreolis Effect (not sure how that is spelt).
2. If you stand about 2m away from the equator and hold your thumb and forefinger together to form a ring then it is very difficult for another person to pull them apart, but if you do the same on the equator then it is very easy for another person to pull them apart. I don't really know why and it wasn't explained.
3. You can balance an egg on its end on top of a nail on the equator. I did it and so did another girl but neither my mum nor Tristan could do it.
It was a hot, hot day but both entertaining and informative. In the evening we went out to buy a couple of Budgies to take to Carmen in Misahualli.
Tues 15th
Mum and I went on the trolley (tram) to the local shopping centre where there was a DHL office to send some Guayasamin posters to Marios in New York. I left my mum in a queue whilst I went and bought a tube and some paper to wrap it in. When I returned the queue had hardly gone down at all, so by the time it was our turn we had waited for nearly an hour, only to find that the DHL system wasn't working.... another wasted time... back to the house we went and into the car for the journey to Misahualli. Tristan was in the back with two bags, the ducks and the budgies on top, it was all a little bit cramped, but at least this time we knew exactly where we were going and door to door the journey took 5 hours. We were all glad to get there, including the ducks who took to their new night time shed with gusto. The budgies were a little more subdued even though they have a large cage with lots of space to fly and loads of perches.
Wed 16th
We awoke to rain which battered down on the corrugated iron roof of the room at the back of the house we are staying in. I let the ducks out and they loved it out in the rain and the mud. Once the rain had stopped we managed to take mum on a tour of the garden, the village and the beach. We watched the monkeys in the square playing with some dogs, took photos of butterflies and flowers in the garden and generally relaxed after our busy days.
Thursday 17th
It was hot, hot , hot today. Celso, mum, Tristan and I went for a walk to the next village, Pununo, and then over the bridge and back down the other side of the river. The bridge is the 'Tina Tina', that is what Tris called it when he was little when we lived here before. It is a suspension bridge that hangs and sways, with no proper connection at ground level. It has a series of metal beams on which lie metal plates, there are several holes, some of which have been patched and some which have not. (The name 'Tina Tina' comes from the sound made when you walk across the metal plates.) The sides of the bridge have chicken wire to prevent you falling over the edge but it is missing, or not connected securely, in lots of places; it made me very nervous years ago and it was no different today. It was about a 3 hour walk with loads to see, we collected some Bread Fruit to take back home, Tristan carried the bag made from leaves and vines over his shoulder. We saw loads of beetles, butterflies, ants, termites, grasshoppers, spiders and strange plants and fruits. We stopped to pick some Cacoa (the pod that contains the seeds from which chocolate comes), the pith has a refreshing lemon taste that alleviates thirst and was very much needed. In Pununo we got a few cold drinks from the shop and then, having passed the bridge, we stopped at the huge Sabor (Kapok) tree, which is a very active ecosystem all on its own. We passed an indigenous house on stilts with banana trees all around, a host of chickens and a few pineapple bushes before we managed to find a path that would take us along to a hotel on the far side of the river from the beach at Misahualli. Mum must have taken around 100 photos, we will have to take a look later and see!
After eating some lunch, mum and I went to an internet cafe to check our emails and then we took two inner tubes that Celso's brother Filemon has stored beneath the house and went back towards Pununo to get into the river and float down to the beach. There are two rapids on the way and mum and I flew over the first on our tyre followed by Tristan and Celso on theirs. Then for some reason mum and I got stuck and Tris and Celso moved ahead of us. Mum and I started paddling and swimming to try to move out of our slow bit of water, mum lost her shoe and then, just as we hit another rapid, she leant over to try and get it as it floated behind us. The tyre tipped and in she went. She was pulled under and past me on the tyre and then up she popped on the other side still gripping on to her shoe! She was a bit shocked and had swallowed a bit of water but she managed to grab onto the tyre and we swam to shore. Poor mum, she has now had a couple of incidents in only a few days.
Friday 18th
Another frustrating day trying to get all the papers for the car done. We found out that we had to get yet another paper - some sort of road tax- and then when went to get the car checked. This included a quick check of the lights on the car and a check that the motor and chassis numbers matched the documentation. However we couldn't pass the test until we had bought some triangles, a fire extinguisher and a first aid kit, so back into Tena to buy them, and then back to finish the check. All well this time, we went into the office to get the registration document. It was all going smoothly, if a little slowly; after half an hour it seemed like we had finally got to the end of the nonsense beauracracy, but then it turned out that we couldn't get the final paper because my passport number was not in their system. Back into Tena to another police office to get my passport number onto the system but the office was empty apart from one woman who told us that there would be nobody working until 3pm. It was just after 12 and we couldn't be bothered to wait around for 3 hours so we returned to Misahualli and we shall leave this for next week.
We spent the rest of the day relaxing. It was really hot and humid, the ducks even had to stop and sit under a tree in the shade. Later we went down to have a swim on the beach only for it to start raining, the wind was really nice though.
Saturday 19th
We (Tristan, Mum, Carmen (my mother-in-law) and I ) set off at about 9am in the pouring rain to go to Banos. It used to take about 6 or 7 hours to get there but now with the paved road and several tunnels that cut off scary drives along the cliff on the edge of a river we got there in 4. Just as we arrived the rain dried up and we stopped and found a hotel. At the first one I tried we were offered a suite with sitting room, kitchen, bathroom and 2 bedrooms, and a locked driveway into which we put the car - perfect. We dumped our bags and made our way one block to visit the church. Inside are paintings which tell the story of all the miracles that the Virgin of the Sainted Waters has performed. Some were from the 15th century and the latest in 1987. The stories always start with some sort of disaster (e.g. a car going over a cliff), then the people cry out to the Virgin of the Sainted Waters, and then they are saved (without a scratch on them)! Then on to the Thermal Baths that sit under a waterfall that falls some 50ft from one of the mountains that surround the town. We sat in the hot waters and just watched the people, there were lots of indigenous families in their traditional clothes, some had never been to a swimming bath before and were so excited. It was a very relaxing hour or so. Afterwards we went to wander the streets and look in the hundreds of tiny little shops filled with Traditional handicrafts, leather bags, bals wood carvings, alpaca or llama wool jumpers and jackets, embroidered shirts, jewelery made out of seeds, wood and all sorts of natural fibres, shells, feathers, stones etc. It is just incredible how much work goes into all the products. We left mum after a couple of hours and went back to the hotel to relax. After a couple more hours we started to get a bit worried that she hadn't returned.. I wandered the streets for nearly and hour looking for her... it was getting dark.... I even asked some policemen to check with the local hospital if any tourists had been brought in, and then at about 7pm i found her, still looking in every shop she passed and having a great time! We went out to eat in an Italian restaurant and Mum and Carmen had a couple of Cubra Libres (Rum and Cokes), just medicinal - you understand! Then we watched several Wallace and Gromit films in Spanish on the telly and fell asleep.
Sunday 20th
We ate yoghurt and cereal in our room and then mum and I set off to visit a waterfall just north of the town whilst Carmen went back to the thermal baths and Tristan slept! The waterfall is part of the Pastaza rver that has cut a thin gorge only about 5m wide through the mountain. It is probably nearly 50m deep the gorge, sort of like the one we walked up from Death Valley in California with smoothed walls from the torrent of water that passes carrying grit. The water was a muddy brown from all the rian and at one point the water falls about 10m into a large pool that seethes like a saucepan of boiling hot chocolate, this was the waterfall we had come to see. Mum was brave enough to go in an very open sided (but with bars) cable car over the river to the other side and back again, but it was far too high for me. Then we walked back to the hotel through the town and passed a colourful Sunday fruit market full of locals going about their business.
We packed all our stuff into the car and started our journey back to Misahualli. This time without the rain we were able to stop and enjoy some of the sights along the way. The first was some bungee jumping from one of the bridges that we crossed, then we stopped to visit a waterfall. We walked about 1km down into the valley through jungle to a wobbly wooden swing bridge with the sign ' Danger - no more than 5 people'... it inspires such confidence!! From the bridge we could see the water fall, it wasn't really spectacular but the best part was that there were so many Ecuadorians making the walk down to see it. Before when I have been here it was only foreign tourists that I had seen enjoying all that the country has to offer, but this time there have been masses of local tourists and they are really showing an appreciation of their country.... not so much rubbish just dropped in the streets, better signage to area of interest and more effort made to keep things looking good.
Closer to Misahualli we started to see lots of hanging nests in trees that had a wasps nest at the centre. Apparently the birds always build alongside a wasps nest for protection from predators that might try to steal eggs or chicks. The birds can whistle like a builder who's eyed up a pretty girl! Then back to Misahualli, the humidity pressing around us and the horrid aranillas making a nuisance of themselves.
Monday, 14 December 2009
Exploring North Ecuador 7-13 Dec
Back to Quito 7 Dec
Tristan and I successfully navigated our way back to Fabiola, Rebecca and Karina’s house in the South of Quito, with only one error that took us through the centre of the city instead of going round the edge, but Tristan is getting very good at map reading!
It is so noticeable how dry the air is in Quito, and I really noticed the altitude this time when climbing the two flights of stairs to the flat. That evening Tristan got locked into the bedroom, the door handle turned but did not pull the catch open so in the end we had to break the door handle off with a hammer!
It rained and rained on the 8th, we replaced the door handle, took Omara (the dog) for a walk and pumped up the air bed for Tristan and me to sleep on. When we went to pick up mum from the airport at around 11pm it was chucking it down. The bureaucracy at the airport was the same as ever so it took mum at least an hour and a quarter to get through passport control and get her bags and finally appear through the gates. Then we had to brave the rain to get to the car and then find our way back to the South of Quito with very poor visibility. Luckily Karina had agreed to come with us to help us find our way back to the flat.
Wednesday the 9th was a frustrating, frustrating, frustrating day. When we bought the car we paid the dealership to sort out all the papers (or so we thought), and today was the day that we needed to go and pick them up and then go and get some stamp from another office. NO, NO, NO, it can never be THAT simple in Ecuador. First to an office with the notarised (authenticated by a solicitor) contract of sale (this is what the dealership had got done for us), so that they could tell us how much tax we had to pay. Then to a bank to actually pay that amount. Then to another type of bank called a ServiPago (basically you can pay all your bills there, e.g. electric, water etc) to pay to have a Revision (like an MOT) only to find that we needed to have had the car booked into a computer, so to another office to get it booked in, only to find that, because of the type of car we have bought (a Vitara) that a Revision is not necessary as it has already had one in the last 12 months. Then to the Transit Police to get the car registration changed over into my name, called Matriculation, but there was a power cut so they were not working. However we did manage to ask a couple of questions and find out that 1) I needed to get the compulsory Ecuadorian Insurance document changed into my name, and 2) that I needed to bring the car with me in order to get the registration document in my name and that they were open at 8:30 am the next morning. So off we went to get the insurance changed over.
This whole process had taken over 5 hours as we had to drive from place to place and at each queue or fill in forms etc. Poor mum and Tris had been very patient just looking at what was going on, but we did drop them off for about 1.5 hours in a big shopping centre whilst we tried to go to the police. We returned to the house with me a great deal frustrated by the whole experience, how can they make it so complicated and have no list of things that need to be done. Each of the offices seems to work completely oblivious of what the other offices do so they are unable to tell you what documents you need or where you need to go next.... and worst of all these offices are situated all over the place so you have to negotiate your way around Quito with its incredibly poor signage.
At 6am on Thursday 10th I set off back to the Transport Police. There was a huge queue of cars outside and I asked what this was a queue for. I was told by a policeman that it was for the Revision (the MOT thing), I told him that I was here for Matriculation and that my car already had a Revision so he told me to join a queue of people waiting on the pavement. I parked the car and waited in a long queue of people at the gate. Finally we were allowed in and I got myself in the queue for the Matriculation. After about ½ an hour a man came along the queue checking that everyone waiting had all the documentation that was needed, he told me that all my documents were in order and asked which was my car, pointing down to the cars that had been brought in for the Revision. I told him that my car was parked outside and he wagged his finger at me and told me that I needed to bring it in so that they could check the Chassis number matched my documentation before they would give me the new document. Well, fuming, but what could I do but go and join the queue of cars that now stretched around 3 sides of a 200m or so block. We sat and sat and eventually I went to ask how long it usually takes to see the cars and was told that probably I wouldn’t be seen today but I could wait if I wanted to.
So back to the flat I went and was there by 10.30am so that at least I wouldn’t waste another whole day.
Tris, mum and I set out on a Quito sightseeing tour. We went by Trolley (tram) to the old centre, to the old colonial style squares and the churches. Outside one of the government offices were police with machine guns slung over their shoulders, the other police and many security guards carry pistols, but it was a little alarming to see the machine guns and made us feel that there must be some high alert security status. The churches are completely amazing with their intricate gold leaf, gaudy statues and amazingly detailed carving but at the same time incredibly ugly. The expense makes you feel sick when you see the poor who have nothing, and the shock tactics used in the paintings of sinners in hell are really quite awful. We started a slow walk up to another church, The Basilica which stands on the top of a high hill in the centre of the old town. You are allowed to climb up into the bell towers and then you have a view across the old city to the south towards the Panecillo, another hill with what looks to me like an angel on the top, but apparently it is the Virgin! Also you can look north to the new city with its modern high rise buildings and wide streets. As we approached the front of the church we had to descend a very steep one way street with the cars coming up towards us. Mum was taking a picture of the church when two boys on a motorbike going the wrong way down the street whizzed past and ripped the camera out of her hands. It gave mum a real shock and it was so sad that she lost all the photos she had taken. After climbing to the bell tower (which is absolutely exhausting at this altitude (2800m or so) and taking in the sights, including the fabulous Galapagos animal gargoyles, we went to the Basilica Police station just outside the church to report the theft (we had tried before but the door was locked, I presume because they had all gone to lunch!).
We were taken by 3 police in their pick-up truck down to the Tourist Police office, occasionally when the traffic was too slow they blasted their siren but it made little difference. After waiting another half hour for this lot to come back from lunch, we filled out a form that was officially stamped and signed so that mum can claim on her insurance.
We caught a bus to the North side of town and ate some lunch in a shopping centre with marble floors and sparkling windows, Christmas decorations and clean loos! It is such a contrast to the other parts of Quito with the rubbish, the uneven flooring and loos without seats and sometimes without doors where you have to pay for a small bit of loo paper before you go in!
Mum bought herself another camera very similar to the one she had just lost and then we caught a taxi up a steep hill to the Guayasamin Foundation. Oswaldo Guayasamin was a famous Ecuadorian painter something in the style of Picasso. Marios, who we had stayed with in New York, had asked if I could get him some paintings whilst I was in Quito so this was our chance to look through all the prints and find what he wanted. The foundation is housed in Guayasamin’s old home which was a charming walled villa with beautiful gardens dotted with great sculptures. Having found 2 that were on Marios’ list we took another taxi back to the flat in the south with a great taxi driver called Miguel who was very chatty and charming even though we were taking him away from the good rush hour fares in the North.
It was an exhausting day but 100 times better than yesterday!
Otavalo 11-13 Dec
At about 11am we (Tris, mum, Pablo (who was allowed to miss school to come with us) and I) packed into our little Vitara and set off North for Otavalo. We took the bypass road around Quito again and this time the signs to the Pan American Highway, which runs from Colombia right the way down to Chile, were not too bad at all. The road was really good and now has two toll gates where we paid 60c and $1. We were also stopped by some police who checked my vehicle documents and driving licence. The policeman accepted the old Matricula (vehicle registration document) and my contract of sale so at least I Know that all of that is in order!
We arrived in Otavalo at around 1:30pm and dropped off our bags in our hotel (that I had booked via the internet but who had absolutely no record of our arrival!) then we went to a local restaurant to have our lunch or almuerzo. The dish of the day was rice, chicken and lentils at $1.25 and it was delicious!
Next we drove out of Otavalo and up the mountains to Lake Cuicocha which sits in an enormous volcano crater, probably about a mile across. The huge eruption that made the crater occurred around 4000 years ago and then, about 2000 years ago, another smaller eruption formed two mounds in the centre of the original crater which are now islands in the middle of the lake. The water is a clear aquamarine but there are no fish in the lake as the only water that enters is either rain or seeps through the mountains.
We took a boat out to the islands, which Pablo and Tris loved, and our boat driver stopped at the point where bubbles of gas leak up through the lake showing us that the volcano is still active. However the water is not warm so I don’t think an eruption is anywhere near imminent. There didn’t appear to be much sign of life at all around the lake, we saw some moorhens, a few egrets and were told that there were Guinea Pigs and rabbits on the islands brought there by past inhabitants. There weren’t even any water boatmen or midges in the water – it was all very strange.
We climbed up onto the path that circumnavigates the crater, there were masses of different plants and flowers and fantastic views across the lake and also down over Otavalo and the surrounding mountains. We were now up at about 3100m so again it was very tiring but worth the effort.
We rolled back down into town and parked the car in the Municipal car park (that gets locked up at night) and then went to have showers. Just as mum was finishing her shower the electricity was cut, but luckily the hot water was from a tank so Tristan and I were able to shower in hot water by candle light! Afterwards we went out to find something to eat and had the most enormous amount of food in a local Chinese restaurant, about half of which we had to bring back to the hotel in a doggy bag, we intend to make it into soup tomorrow for lunch as the kitchen in the hotel is open for us to use after 2pm.
Saturday
We got up at 6am and made our way across town through streets of people setting up for the artisan market to the farmers market. Pigs were squealing, some were refusing to budge and were being pulled from one end and poked from the other, corals filled with guinea pigs seethed like a moving sea, kittens meowed, puppies barked, chicks were squawking, cows stood serenely and chewed the cud. We bought 4 ducklings, that we were assured were 3 females and 1 male, to take to Carmen in Misahualli and we have kept them in the bath most of the day. They were very hungry and thirsty but seemed quite happy to waddle up and down in the bath.
After a breakfast of fruit, muesli and yogurt in the hotel we went out to the artisan market and wandered around for over 4 hours browsing through the amazing stalls. The amount of work that goes into all the weaving and crocheting, jewellery and painting, basket work and carving is just incredible. Mum bought some gorgeous little alpaca hats for 2 neighbours that are going to give birth any time now, a fabulous alpaca jumper and Panama hat (which are actually an indigenous female hat from one of the tribes in Ecuador) for herself. We also wandered through the local produce market which was full of fruit and vedge stalls with neat little piles of fruits and an amazing variety of colours.
In the afternoon we walked along an old railway track to see the Peguche waterfall which was a real disappointment as it was really small and the road had been built right on top of the falls! However it did give us a chance to see the ´normal´side of Otavalo with loads of sports going on, young couples wandering the streets, cows, pigs and sheep tied up by the road or tended by young boys, the small fields of potato or maize crops and the general comings and goings of all the Otavalenians who were not interested in the Artesan market.
Sunday
A much more leisurely morning; we sat out in the hotel garden and ate yogurt and cereal and freshly baked bread. We set off to visit some pyramids near Tabacundo at the Cochasqui archeological site. I visited these about 14 years ago when I was first in Ecuador. Before the Incas came North to conquer the Ecuadorians there was a thriving matriarchal culture. The Queen of the Tigres ruled a huge area of northern Ecuador and there is evidence that they had trade routes to the coast and to the Amazon region. They built several pyramids (not the Egyptian pointy kind but more like the Aztec or Mayan ones) with long ceremonial walkways to the top platform. The pyramids are lined up with major constellations and had shadow sticks on the tops that were either designed to work with the moon or the sun. The shadows of the sticks would obviously move throughout the year and markings on the surface of the pyramid would be covered by the shadow indicating that crops should be planted, crops should be harvested, that it was a good time to get pregnant etc. We had a guide who was 70 years old and, although he had only primary schooling, was very knowledgeable about the site as he had worked there for over 20 years. He was very interested in teaching about all the indigenous knowledge that was being lost and told us about plants and their uses, about how many of the things they were discovering about the site were still in use by the indigenous people of today.
There is evidence that the area was very fertile, and our guide even remembers that as a child there were many more crops grown and the region was much wetter with huge forests covering the valley between the fields and houses. However in the 1950s an American firm stripped the valley of its trees and started a tea plantation. Once they had destroyed the soil with their over farming they planted Eucalyptus trees and left. Eucalyptus is a real pest, it is so thirsty and sucks all the water from the soil leaving it dry and susceptible to wind erosion.
Our guide was also very keen to let us know how easy it is to damage these archeological sites. There has been some robbing out of the pyramids and the surrounding tombs but the culture had no knowledge of gold or any other metals so the robbers smashed up the pottery and other finds because they thought them to be of little value.
We got to one part where a reconstruction of an indigenous house had been made and mum was particularly interested in the similarities between the beliefs here and those she has seen in Nepal. For instance, people were not invited into the house because they might bring in bad energy, so every house had a portion a bit like a porch where visitors could be entertained. Also Guinea Pigs and other plants were kept in the house because they absorbed bad energy. (Guinea pigs are also a staple in this area!) The cooking fire is surrounded by three stones and the stones used to grind foods are very similar.
It was a very interesting couple of hours and then we returned to Quito and this time managed not to get lost.
Tristan and I successfully navigated our way back to Fabiola, Rebecca and Karina’s house in the South of Quito, with only one error that took us through the centre of the city instead of going round the edge, but Tristan is getting very good at map reading!
It is so noticeable how dry the air is in Quito, and I really noticed the altitude this time when climbing the two flights of stairs to the flat. That evening Tristan got locked into the bedroom, the door handle turned but did not pull the catch open so in the end we had to break the door handle off with a hammer!
It rained and rained on the 8th, we replaced the door handle, took Omara (the dog) for a walk and pumped up the air bed for Tristan and me to sleep on. When we went to pick up mum from the airport at around 11pm it was chucking it down. The bureaucracy at the airport was the same as ever so it took mum at least an hour and a quarter to get through passport control and get her bags and finally appear through the gates. Then we had to brave the rain to get to the car and then find our way back to the South of Quito with very poor visibility. Luckily Karina had agreed to come with us to help us find our way back to the flat.
Wednesday the 9th was a frustrating, frustrating, frustrating day. When we bought the car we paid the dealership to sort out all the papers (or so we thought), and today was the day that we needed to go and pick them up and then go and get some stamp from another office. NO, NO, NO, it can never be THAT simple in Ecuador. First to an office with the notarised (authenticated by a solicitor) contract of sale (this is what the dealership had got done for us), so that they could tell us how much tax we had to pay. Then to a bank to actually pay that amount. Then to another type of bank called a ServiPago (basically you can pay all your bills there, e.g. electric, water etc) to pay to have a Revision (like an MOT) only to find that we needed to have had the car booked into a computer, so to another office to get it booked in, only to find that, because of the type of car we have bought (a Vitara) that a Revision is not necessary as it has already had one in the last 12 months. Then to the Transit Police to get the car registration changed over into my name, called Matriculation, but there was a power cut so they were not working. However we did manage to ask a couple of questions and find out that 1) I needed to get the compulsory Ecuadorian Insurance document changed into my name, and 2) that I needed to bring the car with me in order to get the registration document in my name and that they were open at 8:30 am the next morning. So off we went to get the insurance changed over.
This whole process had taken over 5 hours as we had to drive from place to place and at each queue or fill in forms etc. Poor mum and Tris had been very patient just looking at what was going on, but we did drop them off for about 1.5 hours in a big shopping centre whilst we tried to go to the police. We returned to the house with me a great deal frustrated by the whole experience, how can they make it so complicated and have no list of things that need to be done. Each of the offices seems to work completely oblivious of what the other offices do so they are unable to tell you what documents you need or where you need to go next.... and worst of all these offices are situated all over the place so you have to negotiate your way around Quito with its incredibly poor signage.
At 6am on Thursday 10th I set off back to the Transport Police. There was a huge queue of cars outside and I asked what this was a queue for. I was told by a policeman that it was for the Revision (the MOT thing), I told him that I was here for Matriculation and that my car already had a Revision so he told me to join a queue of people waiting on the pavement. I parked the car and waited in a long queue of people at the gate. Finally we were allowed in and I got myself in the queue for the Matriculation. After about ½ an hour a man came along the queue checking that everyone waiting had all the documentation that was needed, he told me that all my documents were in order and asked which was my car, pointing down to the cars that had been brought in for the Revision. I told him that my car was parked outside and he wagged his finger at me and told me that I needed to bring it in so that they could check the Chassis number matched my documentation before they would give me the new document. Well, fuming, but what could I do but go and join the queue of cars that now stretched around 3 sides of a 200m or so block. We sat and sat and eventually I went to ask how long it usually takes to see the cars and was told that probably I wouldn’t be seen today but I could wait if I wanted to.
So back to the flat I went and was there by 10.30am so that at least I wouldn’t waste another whole day.
Tris, mum and I set out on a Quito sightseeing tour. We went by Trolley (tram) to the old centre, to the old colonial style squares and the churches. Outside one of the government offices were police with machine guns slung over their shoulders, the other police and many security guards carry pistols, but it was a little alarming to see the machine guns and made us feel that there must be some high alert security status. The churches are completely amazing with their intricate gold leaf, gaudy statues and amazingly detailed carving but at the same time incredibly ugly. The expense makes you feel sick when you see the poor who have nothing, and the shock tactics used in the paintings of sinners in hell are really quite awful. We started a slow walk up to another church, The Basilica which stands on the top of a high hill in the centre of the old town. You are allowed to climb up into the bell towers and then you have a view across the old city to the south towards the Panecillo, another hill with what looks to me like an angel on the top, but apparently it is the Virgin! Also you can look north to the new city with its modern high rise buildings and wide streets. As we approached the front of the church we had to descend a very steep one way street with the cars coming up towards us. Mum was taking a picture of the church when two boys on a motorbike going the wrong way down the street whizzed past and ripped the camera out of her hands. It gave mum a real shock and it was so sad that she lost all the photos she had taken. After climbing to the bell tower (which is absolutely exhausting at this altitude (2800m or so) and taking in the sights, including the fabulous Galapagos animal gargoyles, we went to the Basilica Police station just outside the church to report the theft (we had tried before but the door was locked, I presume because they had all gone to lunch!).
We were taken by 3 police in their pick-up truck down to the Tourist Police office, occasionally when the traffic was too slow they blasted their siren but it made little difference. After waiting another half hour for this lot to come back from lunch, we filled out a form that was officially stamped and signed so that mum can claim on her insurance.
We caught a bus to the North side of town and ate some lunch in a shopping centre with marble floors and sparkling windows, Christmas decorations and clean loos! It is such a contrast to the other parts of Quito with the rubbish, the uneven flooring and loos without seats and sometimes without doors where you have to pay for a small bit of loo paper before you go in!
Mum bought herself another camera very similar to the one she had just lost and then we caught a taxi up a steep hill to the Guayasamin Foundation. Oswaldo Guayasamin was a famous Ecuadorian painter something in the style of Picasso. Marios, who we had stayed with in New York, had asked if I could get him some paintings whilst I was in Quito so this was our chance to look through all the prints and find what he wanted. The foundation is housed in Guayasamin’s old home which was a charming walled villa with beautiful gardens dotted with great sculptures. Having found 2 that were on Marios’ list we took another taxi back to the flat in the south with a great taxi driver called Miguel who was very chatty and charming even though we were taking him away from the good rush hour fares in the North.
It was an exhausting day but 100 times better than yesterday!
Otavalo 11-13 Dec
At about 11am we (Tris, mum, Pablo (who was allowed to miss school to come with us) and I) packed into our little Vitara and set off North for Otavalo. We took the bypass road around Quito again and this time the signs to the Pan American Highway, which runs from Colombia right the way down to Chile, were not too bad at all. The road was really good and now has two toll gates where we paid 60c and $1. We were also stopped by some police who checked my vehicle documents and driving licence. The policeman accepted the old Matricula (vehicle registration document) and my contract of sale so at least I Know that all of that is in order!
We arrived in Otavalo at around 1:30pm and dropped off our bags in our hotel (that I had booked via the internet but who had absolutely no record of our arrival!) then we went to a local restaurant to have our lunch or almuerzo. The dish of the day was rice, chicken and lentils at $1.25 and it was delicious!
Next we drove out of Otavalo and up the mountains to Lake Cuicocha which sits in an enormous volcano crater, probably about a mile across. The huge eruption that made the crater occurred around 4000 years ago and then, about 2000 years ago, another smaller eruption formed two mounds in the centre of the original crater which are now islands in the middle of the lake. The water is a clear aquamarine but there are no fish in the lake as the only water that enters is either rain or seeps through the mountains.
We took a boat out to the islands, which Pablo and Tris loved, and our boat driver stopped at the point where bubbles of gas leak up through the lake showing us that the volcano is still active. However the water is not warm so I don’t think an eruption is anywhere near imminent. There didn’t appear to be much sign of life at all around the lake, we saw some moorhens, a few egrets and were told that there were Guinea Pigs and rabbits on the islands brought there by past inhabitants. There weren’t even any water boatmen or midges in the water – it was all very strange.
We climbed up onto the path that circumnavigates the crater, there were masses of different plants and flowers and fantastic views across the lake and also down over Otavalo and the surrounding mountains. We were now up at about 3100m so again it was very tiring but worth the effort.
We rolled back down into town and parked the car in the Municipal car park (that gets locked up at night) and then went to have showers. Just as mum was finishing her shower the electricity was cut, but luckily the hot water was from a tank so Tristan and I were able to shower in hot water by candle light! Afterwards we went out to find something to eat and had the most enormous amount of food in a local Chinese restaurant, about half of which we had to bring back to the hotel in a doggy bag, we intend to make it into soup tomorrow for lunch as the kitchen in the hotel is open for us to use after 2pm.
Saturday
We got up at 6am and made our way across town through streets of people setting up for the artisan market to the farmers market. Pigs were squealing, some were refusing to budge and were being pulled from one end and poked from the other, corals filled with guinea pigs seethed like a moving sea, kittens meowed, puppies barked, chicks were squawking, cows stood serenely and chewed the cud. We bought 4 ducklings, that we were assured were 3 females and 1 male, to take to Carmen in Misahualli and we have kept them in the bath most of the day. They were very hungry and thirsty but seemed quite happy to waddle up and down in the bath.
After a breakfast of fruit, muesli and yogurt in the hotel we went out to the artisan market and wandered around for over 4 hours browsing through the amazing stalls. The amount of work that goes into all the weaving and crocheting, jewellery and painting, basket work and carving is just incredible. Mum bought some gorgeous little alpaca hats for 2 neighbours that are going to give birth any time now, a fabulous alpaca jumper and Panama hat (which are actually an indigenous female hat from one of the tribes in Ecuador) for herself. We also wandered through the local produce market which was full of fruit and vedge stalls with neat little piles of fruits and an amazing variety of colours.
In the afternoon we walked along an old railway track to see the Peguche waterfall which was a real disappointment as it was really small and the road had been built right on top of the falls! However it did give us a chance to see the ´normal´side of Otavalo with loads of sports going on, young couples wandering the streets, cows, pigs and sheep tied up by the road or tended by young boys, the small fields of potato or maize crops and the general comings and goings of all the Otavalenians who were not interested in the Artesan market.
Sunday
A much more leisurely morning; we sat out in the hotel garden and ate yogurt and cereal and freshly baked bread. We set off to visit some pyramids near Tabacundo at the Cochasqui archeological site. I visited these about 14 years ago when I was first in Ecuador. Before the Incas came North to conquer the Ecuadorians there was a thriving matriarchal culture. The Queen of the Tigres ruled a huge area of northern Ecuador and there is evidence that they had trade routes to the coast and to the Amazon region. They built several pyramids (not the Egyptian pointy kind but more like the Aztec or Mayan ones) with long ceremonial walkways to the top platform. The pyramids are lined up with major constellations and had shadow sticks on the tops that were either designed to work with the moon or the sun. The shadows of the sticks would obviously move throughout the year and markings on the surface of the pyramid would be covered by the shadow indicating that crops should be planted, crops should be harvested, that it was a good time to get pregnant etc. We had a guide who was 70 years old and, although he had only primary schooling, was very knowledgeable about the site as he had worked there for over 20 years. He was very interested in teaching about all the indigenous knowledge that was being lost and told us about plants and their uses, about how many of the things they were discovering about the site were still in use by the indigenous people of today.
There is evidence that the area was very fertile, and our guide even remembers that as a child there were many more crops grown and the region was much wetter with huge forests covering the valley between the fields and houses. However in the 1950s an American firm stripped the valley of its trees and started a tea plantation. Once they had destroyed the soil with their over farming they planted Eucalyptus trees and left. Eucalyptus is a real pest, it is so thirsty and sucks all the water from the soil leaving it dry and susceptible to wind erosion.
Our guide was also very keen to let us know how easy it is to damage these archeological sites. There has been some robbing out of the pyramids and the surrounding tombs but the culture had no knowledge of gold or any other metals so the robbers smashed up the pottery and other finds because they thought them to be of little value.
We got to one part where a reconstruction of an indigenous house had been made and mum was particularly interested in the similarities between the beliefs here and those she has seen in Nepal. For instance, people were not invited into the house because they might bring in bad energy, so every house had a portion a bit like a porch where visitors could be entertained. Also Guinea Pigs and other plants were kept in the house because they absorbed bad energy. (Guinea pigs are also a staple in this area!) The cooking fire is surrounded by three stones and the stones used to grind foods are very similar.
It was a very interesting couple of hours and then we returned to Quito and this time managed not to get lost.
Thursday, 10 December 2009
Misualli 3-7th Dec
Our car did well on the journey up over the Andes and down to the amazon region of Ecuador, to Misahualli. We stopped quite a few times on our way out of Quito to check that we were on the right route (and we were) because there were virtually no signs that meant anything to us. The journey took us about 5 hours (better than the 9 hours by bus), on the newly paved road which suprised me by how well it had been done. There was only one, about 1 mile long, section of unpaved road, and several tiny 50m stretches, a couple of dodgy bridges and not as many potholes as I expected! The last bit of road into Misahualli from Tena, which used to take over 1.25 hours to cover, is now a lovely bit of smooth tarmac (the best we have seen) and it takes about 20 minutes. There were some fabulous views as we went through the mountains, completely different from the rocky type mountains in the US, these are lush and green. Up on the sides of the mountain you can see the little terraced fields that the idigenous people work. However, we didn't stop to take photos as we wanted to get to Misahualli before dark and we didn't start until about 2pm.
Celso's mum Carmen was down in the centre of the town, but we met Filemon, Celso's oldest brother at the house and we drove down and ate some supper in Carmen's friend Rosa's restaurant on the corner of the square whilst monkeys played in the street. After supper, Carmen enjoyed the novelty of being able to drive around the town square waving regally at all her friends.
The house that we have in Misahualli is looking really good. When the roof was redone some ceiling fans were put in which is bliss compared to when we lived here 10 years ago. The garden is absolutely amazing, in some of the photos it looks like jungle, there are some amazingly tall cactuses (that I wouldn't have imagined would grow well in these humid and wet conditions), also lots of flowering trees and lots of different fruit trees. Carmen has 2 chickens and a cockeral. One of the hens has 10 chicks that hatched just a few days ago, the other hen lays but has not been sitting on the eggs. The chicks are so beautiful but a couple are limping because the cockeral keeps rushing in to have his way with poor old mum and he steps on them in his eagerness! The cockeral also crows most of the night so he was a bit of a nuisance and on our third day there we had managed to persuade Carmen that he needed to be 'got rid of', so we ate him!
The 4 days we were there flew by. Poor Tristan got really badly bitten by the little black flies (Aranillas) that always irritate foreiners to these parts. I remember how they used to bother me 10 years ago, but strangely, this time, although they still bit me, I did not react to them and get the same huge red lumps that Tristan got. On Saturday we went into Tena to go to the market where the indigenous people are meant to sell loads of wild meet, like Armadillo, but there wasn't much available, however we did manage to buy a really good mosquito net, like fine nylon stockings, that did not allow the Aranillas through (the one we had bought from England was useless against them).
Disappointed with not having been able to find meat at the market we went in search of Chonta Curos. These are large beatle larvae that live in the Chonta palm. We found an indigeous couple who had been out collecting them and we bought a couple for 25c each. They were gutted and then fried in their own juices! Tristan managed to take a taste but couldn't find anything really agreeable about the whole experience. So Celso ate the tow of them with glee!
There have been some really big changes in Misahualli since we were here. For one, with the road there is more tourism from Ecuadorians who come down to spend some time on the beach by the river bringing some well needed cash to the restaurants, boat drivers and shops. There is even an internet cafe which a guy called Eduardo has set up with his wife (from Germany I think). They are housed in a new building that has been made possible because of a new wall that has been built at the marina, so now instead of a rocky path from the square down to the beach there is a large paved area that prevents any floods coming up into the square, and then there is a slope and some steps down onto the beach. The monkeys are a great tourist attraction and they have left a boat up at the back of the beach which collects water and the monkeys all go there to have a wash, they are so human like, they scoop up the water and wash their legs and arms, I haven't managed to catch it on film yet but I shall be trying again. There is also a new bridge over one of the 2 rivers that meet at Misahualli so that you can get to the other side without taking a boat, a real novelty!
We used the new bridge to go on a search for Guavas. This is a long (about 50cm), broad bean like fruit that you open up and take out the 2cm long beans with their covering of pith, and then you eat the pith and chuck away the bean. It is very difficult to describe what the Guava is like, it is just juicy, sweet and very nice. We found some kids who agreed to go up into a tree for us that hung out over the river and throw some of the fruits down. They climbed up like they belonged there, and weren't at all concerned about the river below. We ended up taking 10 for $1.
We went for a night walk along a path in the jungle at the back of the beach and saw huge bats flying around. There was also an enormous spider and a millipede, but then we got a little lost (things have changed in 10 years) so we decided to turn back. We were visited by plenty of bugs in the house though, including a medium sized (about 10cm across) tarantula that appeared on the bedroom wall.
All this stuff is out of order. I have found it difficult to find time to write with so much going on. I might remember more later and add it in!
Celso's mum Carmen was down in the centre of the town, but we met Filemon, Celso's oldest brother at the house and we drove down and ate some supper in Carmen's friend Rosa's restaurant on the corner of the square whilst monkeys played in the street. After supper, Carmen enjoyed the novelty of being able to drive around the town square waving regally at all her friends.
The house that we have in Misahualli is looking really good. When the roof was redone some ceiling fans were put in which is bliss compared to when we lived here 10 years ago. The garden is absolutely amazing, in some of the photos it looks like jungle, there are some amazingly tall cactuses (that I wouldn't have imagined would grow well in these humid and wet conditions), also lots of flowering trees and lots of different fruit trees. Carmen has 2 chickens and a cockeral. One of the hens has 10 chicks that hatched just a few days ago, the other hen lays but has not been sitting on the eggs. The chicks are so beautiful but a couple are limping because the cockeral keeps rushing in to have his way with poor old mum and he steps on them in his eagerness! The cockeral also crows most of the night so he was a bit of a nuisance and on our third day there we had managed to persuade Carmen that he needed to be 'got rid of', so we ate him!
The 4 days we were there flew by. Poor Tristan got really badly bitten by the little black flies (Aranillas) that always irritate foreiners to these parts. I remember how they used to bother me 10 years ago, but strangely, this time, although they still bit me, I did not react to them and get the same huge red lumps that Tristan got. On Saturday we went into Tena to go to the market where the indigenous people are meant to sell loads of wild meet, like Armadillo, but there wasn't much available, however we did manage to buy a really good mosquito net, like fine nylon stockings, that did not allow the Aranillas through (the one we had bought from England was useless against them).
Disappointed with not having been able to find meat at the market we went in search of Chonta Curos. These are large beatle larvae that live in the Chonta palm. We found an indigeous couple who had been out collecting them and we bought a couple for 25c each. They were gutted and then fried in their own juices! Tristan managed to take a taste but couldn't find anything really agreeable about the whole experience. So Celso ate the tow of them with glee!
There have been some really big changes in Misahualli since we were here. For one, with the road there is more tourism from Ecuadorians who come down to spend some time on the beach by the river bringing some well needed cash to the restaurants, boat drivers and shops. There is even an internet cafe which a guy called Eduardo has set up with his wife (from Germany I think). They are housed in a new building that has been made possible because of a new wall that has been built at the marina, so now instead of a rocky path from the square down to the beach there is a large paved area that prevents any floods coming up into the square, and then there is a slope and some steps down onto the beach. The monkeys are a great tourist attraction and they have left a boat up at the back of the beach which collects water and the monkeys all go there to have a wash, they are so human like, they scoop up the water and wash their legs and arms, I haven't managed to catch it on film yet but I shall be trying again. There is also a new bridge over one of the 2 rivers that meet at Misahualli so that you can get to the other side without taking a boat, a real novelty!
We used the new bridge to go on a search for Guavas. This is a long (about 50cm), broad bean like fruit that you open up and take out the 2cm long beans with their covering of pith, and then you eat the pith and chuck away the bean. It is very difficult to describe what the Guava is like, it is just juicy, sweet and very nice. We found some kids who agreed to go up into a tree for us that hung out over the river and throw some of the fruits down. They climbed up like they belonged there, and weren't at all concerned about the river below. We ended up taking 10 for $1.
We went for a night walk along a path in the jungle at the back of the beach and saw huge bats flying around. There was also an enormous spider and a millipede, but then we got a little lost (things have changed in 10 years) so we decided to turn back. We were visited by plenty of bugs in the house though, including a medium sized (about 10cm across) tarantula that appeared on the bedroom wall.
All this stuff is out of order. I have found it difficult to find time to write with so much going on. I might remember more later and add it in!
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
we are safe and well
Hi all, just to let you know that we arrived safely in Quito, Ecuador on a flight from Houston on the 28th November and we are now staying with Celso´s sister Fabiola, her son, Pablo, and my sister in law Cuma´s two daughters, Rebeca and Karina, who live in the South of Quito.
We managed to find and buy a 4 wheel drive car to take us down to Chile, a 1999 Chevrolet Vitara.
Today we spent 3 hours queuing to get our Cedulas (the Ecuadorian identity document) only to find that I was not in the system and will have to return to Puyo (in the South East of the country) where I got my first cedula. Celso couldn´t get his because apparently the computer did not show our marriage even though we had to get it put onto the system in order for me to get my first cedula back in 1998! The system here is such rubbish. I asked if , because I wasn´t in the system, they could just give me a new number and put that in the system, but they said no they had to find the original documentation even though I had copies of all of them with me - so infuriating. The only reason that I want my new cedula is because it means I can get into all the tourist places at local prices (about 1/20th or less of the tourist price) and also they let you go to some places that tourists are not allowed to go to at all. Ah well!
So we have spent the last few days covering miles and miles in Quito looking for the car and yet again tomorrow we have to take the 2 buses and travel about 1.5 hours to go back to where we got the car because they forgot to get us to sign one of the documents that is needed to get the registration documents into our name. Everything here is so complicated, when we took the money out of the bank to buy the car it took 3 different people 20 minutes just to fill in the paperwork and they wanted to know things like how many children I had, for what reason I can´t even imagine!
We will probably go to Misahualli (where we lived when Tristan was a baby and where Celso´s mum lives) tomorrow after signing the document for the car, then I will be returning to Quito to meet my mum at the airport who arrives next Tuesday to stay with us for Christmas and explore Ecuador with us. It´s all go for us but not very interesting to write about!!
We managed to find and buy a 4 wheel drive car to take us down to Chile, a 1999 Chevrolet Vitara.
Today we spent 3 hours queuing to get our Cedulas (the Ecuadorian identity document) only to find that I was not in the system and will have to return to Puyo (in the South East of the country) where I got my first cedula. Celso couldn´t get his because apparently the computer did not show our marriage even though we had to get it put onto the system in order for me to get my first cedula back in 1998! The system here is such rubbish. I asked if , because I wasn´t in the system, they could just give me a new number and put that in the system, but they said no they had to find the original documentation even though I had copies of all of them with me - so infuriating. The only reason that I want my new cedula is because it means I can get into all the tourist places at local prices (about 1/20th or less of the tourist price) and also they let you go to some places that tourists are not allowed to go to at all. Ah well!
So we have spent the last few days covering miles and miles in Quito looking for the car and yet again tomorrow we have to take the 2 buses and travel about 1.5 hours to go back to where we got the car because they forgot to get us to sign one of the documents that is needed to get the registration documents into our name. Everything here is so complicated, when we took the money out of the bank to buy the car it took 3 different people 20 minutes just to fill in the paperwork and they wanted to know things like how many children I had, for what reason I can´t even imagine!
We will probably go to Misahualli (where we lived when Tristan was a baby and where Celso´s mum lives) tomorrow after signing the document for the car, then I will be returning to Quito to meet my mum at the airport who arrives next Tuesday to stay with us for Christmas and explore Ecuador with us. It´s all go for us but not very interesting to write about!!
Friday, 27 November 2009
Goodbye to the US 25-27 Nov
Wed 25th
Today we got up and drove a few miles to a Hertz rental place to pick up our hire car, then with me and Tris in the van and Celso following in the car we went to drop off the van. We had only done 1700 miles more than we had originally guesstimated we would do!! So in total we have covered 9800 miles of the United States, it has been great but I'm quite looking forward to moving on now. (It will be over 10,000 by the time we have gone south to Houston)
We drove the hire car down to Galveston, on the Gulf of Mexico about 30 miles South of Houston. It was strange to be in a car, nippy and manouverable, but no loo or fridge full of food and drink!!
In Galveston we checked into a motel and watched telly which is quite a novelty for us, but there is a whole load of rubbish on the TV here.
26th Nov - Thanksgiving
We slept in until around 10am and then went to a place called Moody Gardens in Galveston. We visited an excellent small aquarium which had above ground and underwater viewing areas for seals and penguins, and excellent walk through tunnel with an amazing variety of fish, sharks and a huge sea turtle. We watched Scrooge in 3D which is a really fun film and then learnt a bit about the history of Galveston. It was a major immigration point in the late 1800's when Texas wanted 1,000,000 immigrants per year to populate and develop the state, it was also a place where 1000s of slaves were shipped from the East Coast. But then with segregation and the start of large scale immigration from Eastern Europe there started to be a lot of racial tension and the port was closed.
Celso and Tristan had a Thanksgiving Buffet lunch with roast turkey and beef, mashed potato, pumpkin and artichokes followed by cheesecake and chocolate nut cake, then we drove around to try and find a couple of last minute things (some new shoes for Tris, a fishing rod container etc) but found that all the shops were closed, so it was into another motel close to a fishing shop.
27th November
Today is known as Black Friday (I don't know why) and apparently it is the busiest shopping day of the year. The sales are on and the bargain hunters have been out since the early hours. Last year there was at least one fatality in the crush. We again slept quite late (for us) until 9am and then we went out to join the shoppers. We didn't find many, a few more in Walmart than we have ever seen before and a few irate customers who couldn't find the things they had seen in the ads, but not nearly as many as we had been expecting after what we had seen on the TV. We got all that we needed and then drove to the airport to return our hire car. On the way we were stopped at one set of traffic lights next to a small canal in which we saw several water rats, a couple swimming another sitting, chewing on something, oblivious to the traffic whizzing by. Afterwards we went to our hotel via a mall to have another look around, we could walk back to our motel but there were absolutely no pavements (sidewalks) to walk on making it all quite dangerous; it just shows how little the people around here walk.
In the hotel we spent a couple of hours ironing all our patches (from all the places we have been) onto our Tshirts in preparation for wearing them tomorrow on the next leg of our journey. And having repacked our bags a couple of times we now have our luggage sorted with the correct weight in each bag and no items that might get confiscated in our hand luggage.
Today we got up and drove a few miles to a Hertz rental place to pick up our hire car, then with me and Tris in the van and Celso following in the car we went to drop off the van. We had only done 1700 miles more than we had originally guesstimated we would do!! So in total we have covered 9800 miles of the United States, it has been great but I'm quite looking forward to moving on now. (It will be over 10,000 by the time we have gone south to Houston)
We drove the hire car down to Galveston, on the Gulf of Mexico about 30 miles South of Houston. It was strange to be in a car, nippy and manouverable, but no loo or fridge full of food and drink!!
In Galveston we checked into a motel and watched telly which is quite a novelty for us, but there is a whole load of rubbish on the TV here.
26th Nov - Thanksgiving
We slept in until around 10am and then went to a place called Moody Gardens in Galveston. We visited an excellent small aquarium which had above ground and underwater viewing areas for seals and penguins, and excellent walk through tunnel with an amazing variety of fish, sharks and a huge sea turtle. We watched Scrooge in 3D which is a really fun film and then learnt a bit about the history of Galveston. It was a major immigration point in the late 1800's when Texas wanted 1,000,000 immigrants per year to populate and develop the state, it was also a place where 1000s of slaves were shipped from the East Coast. But then with segregation and the start of large scale immigration from Eastern Europe there started to be a lot of racial tension and the port was closed.
Celso and Tristan had a Thanksgiving Buffet lunch with roast turkey and beef, mashed potato, pumpkin and artichokes followed by cheesecake and chocolate nut cake, then we drove around to try and find a couple of last minute things (some new shoes for Tris, a fishing rod container etc) but found that all the shops were closed, so it was into another motel close to a fishing shop.
27th November
Today is known as Black Friday (I don't know why) and apparently it is the busiest shopping day of the year. The sales are on and the bargain hunters have been out since the early hours. Last year there was at least one fatality in the crush. We again slept quite late (for us) until 9am and then we went out to join the shoppers. We didn't find many, a few more in Walmart than we have ever seen before and a few irate customers who couldn't find the things they had seen in the ads, but not nearly as many as we had been expecting after what we had seen on the TV. We got all that we needed and then drove to the airport to return our hire car. On the way we were stopped at one set of traffic lights next to a small canal in which we saw several water rats, a couple swimming another sitting, chewing on something, oblivious to the traffic whizzing by. Afterwards we went to our hotel via a mall to have another look around, we could walk back to our motel but there were absolutely no pavements (sidewalks) to walk on making it all quite dangerous; it just shows how little the people around here walk.
In the hotel we spent a couple of hours ironing all our patches (from all the places we have been) onto our Tshirts in preparation for wearing them tomorrow on the next leg of our journey. And having repacked our bags a couple of times we now have our luggage sorted with the correct weight in each bag and no items that might get confiscated in our hand luggage.
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Carlsbad and into Texas 22-24 Nov
Sunday 22
Up early we drove 20 miles or so south through more desert to Carlsbad Caverns. This is not the largest nor the deepest nor the longest cave in the world but it is certainly one of the most amazing places I have ever been. The caves were not formed by water but by acidic erosion. Water leaching through the rocks met the Hydrogen Sulphide gas that was formed from petroleum deposits in the area. The water and Hydrogen Sulphide formed Sulphuric Acid which then dissolved the limestone forming huge chambers. Uplift then pushed the caves up above the water table and then the creative processes began where water, carbon dioxide and dissolved limestone slowly, drop by drop, caused the formation of the amazing features of the cave.
It is home to several hundred thousand bats and another several tens of thousand swallows, both of which have now, unfortunately, flown south for the winter. We walked down through the natural entrance to the cave (which was once a steep drop only accessible by ladder) down a steep switchback path, past the twilight zone and into the darkness. Small dim lights lit the path and some of the features of the cave. Amazing formations, stalagmites; stalactites; soda straws; popcorn; slimy flowstones and grand pillars; mirror surfaced cave pools that occasionally are disturbed by a drip from overhead; cave pearls and crystals; brought out oohs and ahs from all of us as we wandered for 2.5 miles through and around the entrance and through another cave called 'the big room'. Our photos could not do the incredible features justice and so we have bought a book to remind ourselves of what we have seen when we get back to the UK.
The first man known to come down into the cave was a teenager called Jim White back in the late 1890s and then in the early 1900s bat guano was collected here and sent to California as fertilizer for the fruit orchards that were set up there. In 1915, after the first photos of some of the formations were shown in the local town, many people wanted to see inside the cave and so they were lowered over 170ft in a bucket used to haul bat guano from the cave! In 1923 the cave was declared a National Monument, it was explored by members of the National Geographic Society and then declared a National Park in 1930. In 1995 the cave was declared a World Heritage Site and now the park has expanded to include 100 other local caves.
One of the most amazing things that we learnt in the cave is that in some of the cave pools there is more biodiversity than in the rain forest. Scientists have also discovered some bacteria that produce an enzyme to kill competitors in the pools, one of these enzymes is being studied because in tests it kills cancer cells whilst appearing to leave healthy cells alone!
Our caving hours at an end we started our journey to Dallas to return the van, we passed masses of mini oil rigs (but have so far failed to take any photos of them) and horizon to horizon wind turbines (the most I have ever seen in one place). The landscape slowly became more lush, from wispy, dry, yellowish brown grasses and desert shrubs to green grass, oak trees and rivers with a decent flow of water in them. More natural water than we have seen since the Hoover Dam clogged the Colorado river! So we spent the rest of Sunday and then Monday driving over 500 miles. Tuesday was spent cleaning, washing clothes and bedding and packing. Not very interesting!!!
Up early we drove 20 miles or so south through more desert to Carlsbad Caverns. This is not the largest nor the deepest nor the longest cave in the world but it is certainly one of the most amazing places I have ever been. The caves were not formed by water but by acidic erosion. Water leaching through the rocks met the Hydrogen Sulphide gas that was formed from petroleum deposits in the area. The water and Hydrogen Sulphide formed Sulphuric Acid which then dissolved the limestone forming huge chambers. Uplift then pushed the caves up above the water table and then the creative processes began where water, carbon dioxide and dissolved limestone slowly, drop by drop, caused the formation of the amazing features of the cave.
It is home to several hundred thousand bats and another several tens of thousand swallows, both of which have now, unfortunately, flown south for the winter. We walked down through the natural entrance to the cave (which was once a steep drop only accessible by ladder) down a steep switchback path, past the twilight zone and into the darkness. Small dim lights lit the path and some of the features of the cave. Amazing formations, stalagmites; stalactites; soda straws; popcorn; slimy flowstones and grand pillars; mirror surfaced cave pools that occasionally are disturbed by a drip from overhead; cave pearls and crystals; brought out oohs and ahs from all of us as we wandered for 2.5 miles through and around the entrance and through another cave called 'the big room'. Our photos could not do the incredible features justice and so we have bought a book to remind ourselves of what we have seen when we get back to the UK.
The first man known to come down into the cave was a teenager called Jim White back in the late 1890s and then in the early 1900s bat guano was collected here and sent to California as fertilizer for the fruit orchards that were set up there. In 1915, after the first photos of some of the formations were shown in the local town, many people wanted to see inside the cave and so they were lowered over 170ft in a bucket used to haul bat guano from the cave! In 1923 the cave was declared a National Monument, it was explored by members of the National Geographic Society and then declared a National Park in 1930. In 1995 the cave was declared a World Heritage Site and now the park has expanded to include 100 other local caves.
One of the most amazing things that we learnt in the cave is that in some of the cave pools there is more biodiversity than in the rain forest. Scientists have also discovered some bacteria that produce an enzyme to kill competitors in the pools, one of these enzymes is being studied because in tests it kills cancer cells whilst appearing to leave healthy cells alone!
Our caving hours at an end we started our journey to Dallas to return the van, we passed masses of mini oil rigs (but have so far failed to take any photos of them) and horizon to horizon wind turbines (the most I have ever seen in one place). The landscape slowly became more lush, from wispy, dry, yellowish brown grasses and desert shrubs to green grass, oak trees and rivers with a decent flow of water in them. More natural water than we have seen since the Hoover Dam clogged the Colorado river! So we spent the rest of Sunday and then Monday driving over 500 miles. Tuesday was spent cleaning, washing clothes and bedding and packing. Not very interesting!!!
Saturday, 21 November 2009
East through New Mexico 20-21 Nov
Friday 20th
From Alamagordo we drove South West about 13 miles to visit White Sands National Monument, it is a part of the Chihuahuan desert which is the largest desert in North America (incl Mexico) and also the highest. That means that we have visited the lowest (Death Valley) and the highest deserts (White Sands) in the US!
The place well deserves its name, it looks just like there has been a heavy snowfall. The sand was so white and felt really cold! At the entrance we hired a couple of circular sledges and went in search of a large steep sand dune.
We found a perfect place with the sun on our backs (or our fronts when we fell off at the bottom of the slope usually gong backwards!) and no huge bumps to force us to 'take air'; we had been warned at the hire place that this can be very painful.
We could hear jet planes in the distance (we had passed an AFB on the way) and also just to the south of us is the White Sands Missile Range where they tested captured Nazi rockets after the war and still test new inventions now. Apparently the road south through the missile range is closed a couple of times a week for a few hours as new machines are tested. (Bits of both Transformers films were filmed here in the white sands (if you're interested, I'm not!))
After a couple of hours in which we established that Tristan was the champion sledger; that sand can get everywhere; that Celso was getting a mark where his Tshirt was (horror of horrors, he likes to have 'the perfect tan) and that we were all extremely hungry; we returned to the van and ate sandwiches and drank cold ginger ale. Then we set of North Eastwards to the centre of Lincoln County where Billy the Kid had made his name.
On our journey Tristan and I spotted a road runner on the side of the road, it was tiny, not at all what I had expected from the Loony Tunes road runner! We also passed through Apache land which was completely different from both the Navajo and Ashiwi lands we have passed through. There was no rubbish, no stray dogs, there was beautiful graffiti along the roads saying things like 'Honour your people', 'Respect' and beautifully intricate native designs. I wonder why there is such a difference?
At the small town of Lincoln, that used to be the county seat and was once described as the most dangerous place in America by one of the presidents (whose name escapes me as I have never heard of him before!), we stopped to see what the Billy the Kid story was all about. The town is said to be the best preserved town in America, of course the road has been tarmacked and some modernisation was done to the buildings in the early 1900s when electricity and water arrived in the town, but the shops, some houses and the courthouse at the centre of the story are still standing and you are able to go in and have a look around. If you're not interested in the story then skip the next paragraph.
'The company', (Murphy, Dolan and Co) had a monopoly on the government contracts in Lincoln county to supply Beef to Fort Sumner, they were squeezing all the other ranchers out of business, buying up their lands and had the local lawmen and politicians in their pocket. Tunstall, a young, rich Englishman, came to Lincoln and set up a new business in direct competition to 'The Company'. Dolan trumped up charges of an unpaid debt by Tunstall and then sent a group of men with the sheriff to collect... Tunstall was murdered. The teenager Billy the kid worked for Tunstall (Tunstall was kind of the father he had never known) and he vowed revenge. The whole area took sides either with the company or with Tunstall and The Lincoln County War started, the year was 1876. Billy and co set up a group of vigilantes (spelling) called The Regulators and killed several of The Company's men including the Sheriff. It all got out of hand until the Governor of New Mexico sent in the cavalry to sort things out. They burnt a house that the Regulators were hiding in and shot them as they came out surrendering but Billy escaped. Pat Garret was made the new sheriff and all went quiet for a while, but Garret was determined to get Billy and he hunted him down. He was tried by a jury selected by The Company, found guilty of the murder of the sheriff and sentenced to hang. Whilst awaiting sentence in the courthouse in Lincoln, he managed to shoot a guard whilst on a trip to the privy, shot another that came to find out what the noise was all about and then escaped. His leg irons were removed by one of the many friends who supported The Regulators. But Billy didn't leave the area and after a couple of months Garret hunted him down again and this time he shot him dead.
We drove East to Roswell with another of those colourful sunsets behind us and our eyes open for any UFOs. (For those of you that don't know, Roswell is the place where a UFO is supposed to have crashed in 1947 and has been followed by a series of cover ups by the military and government.)
Sat 21st
We were not abducted in the night, or I think we weren't, but after visiting the UFO museum and research centre this morning I am a believer. There are so many convincing testimonies from so many different people giving such similar stories and descriptions of events. We spent a couple of hours in the museum looking at documents and photos of the 'Roswell incident' and other sightings and encounters.
We drove south towards Carlsbad and went to the Living Desert State Park in the afternoon where there were hundreds of desert plants and a small zoo with desert animals; Prairie dogs; Javelina (collared Peccary, like a wild boar); rattlesnakes; deer; mountain lions; a bobcat; a grey fox; horned owls; golden and bald eagles; tortoises; scorpions and tarantulas; centipedes and lots of birds. It was a fabulous place.
We are camped just south of Carlsbad ready to go to the caverns tomorrow. We have had a swim and a shower and are feeling warm and cosy.
From Alamagordo we drove South West about 13 miles to visit White Sands National Monument, it is a part of the Chihuahuan desert which is the largest desert in North America (incl Mexico) and also the highest. That means that we have visited the lowest (Death Valley) and the highest deserts (White Sands) in the US!
The place well deserves its name, it looks just like there has been a heavy snowfall. The sand was so white and felt really cold! At the entrance we hired a couple of circular sledges and went in search of a large steep sand dune.
We found a perfect place with the sun on our backs (or our fronts when we fell off at the bottom of the slope usually gong backwards!) and no huge bumps to force us to 'take air'; we had been warned at the hire place that this can be very painful.
We could hear jet planes in the distance (we had passed an AFB on the way) and also just to the south of us is the White Sands Missile Range where they tested captured Nazi rockets after the war and still test new inventions now. Apparently the road south through the missile range is closed a couple of times a week for a few hours as new machines are tested. (Bits of both Transformers films were filmed here in the white sands (if you're interested, I'm not!))
After a couple of hours in which we established that Tristan was the champion sledger; that sand can get everywhere; that Celso was getting a mark where his Tshirt was (horror of horrors, he likes to have 'the perfect tan) and that we were all extremely hungry; we returned to the van and ate sandwiches and drank cold ginger ale. Then we set of North Eastwards to the centre of Lincoln County where Billy the Kid had made his name.
On our journey Tristan and I spotted a road runner on the side of the road, it was tiny, not at all what I had expected from the Loony Tunes road runner! We also passed through Apache land which was completely different from both the Navajo and Ashiwi lands we have passed through. There was no rubbish, no stray dogs, there was beautiful graffiti along the roads saying things like 'Honour your people', 'Respect' and beautifully intricate native designs. I wonder why there is such a difference?
At the small town of Lincoln, that used to be the county seat and was once described as the most dangerous place in America by one of the presidents (whose name escapes me as I have never heard of him before!), we stopped to see what the Billy the Kid story was all about. The town is said to be the best preserved town in America, of course the road has been tarmacked and some modernisation was done to the buildings in the early 1900s when electricity and water arrived in the town, but the shops, some houses and the courthouse at the centre of the story are still standing and you are able to go in and have a look around. If you're not interested in the story then skip the next paragraph.
'The company', (Murphy, Dolan and Co) had a monopoly on the government contracts in Lincoln county to supply Beef to Fort Sumner, they were squeezing all the other ranchers out of business, buying up their lands and had the local lawmen and politicians in their pocket. Tunstall, a young, rich Englishman, came to Lincoln and set up a new business in direct competition to 'The Company'. Dolan trumped up charges of an unpaid debt by Tunstall and then sent a group of men with the sheriff to collect... Tunstall was murdered. The teenager Billy the kid worked for Tunstall (Tunstall was kind of the father he had never known) and he vowed revenge. The whole area took sides either with the company or with Tunstall and The Lincoln County War started, the year was 1876. Billy and co set up a group of vigilantes (spelling) called The Regulators and killed several of The Company's men including the Sheriff. It all got out of hand until the Governor of New Mexico sent in the cavalry to sort things out. They burnt a house that the Regulators were hiding in and shot them as they came out surrendering but Billy escaped. Pat Garret was made the new sheriff and all went quiet for a while, but Garret was determined to get Billy and he hunted him down. He was tried by a jury selected by The Company, found guilty of the murder of the sheriff and sentenced to hang. Whilst awaiting sentence in the courthouse in Lincoln, he managed to shoot a guard whilst on a trip to the privy, shot another that came to find out what the noise was all about and then escaped. His leg irons were removed by one of the many friends who supported The Regulators. But Billy didn't leave the area and after a couple of months Garret hunted him down again and this time he shot him dead.
We drove East to Roswell with another of those colourful sunsets behind us and our eyes open for any UFOs. (For those of you that don't know, Roswell is the place where a UFO is supposed to have crashed in 1947 and has been followed by a series of cover ups by the military and government.)
Sat 21st
We were not abducted in the night, or I think we weren't, but after visiting the UFO museum and research centre this morning I am a believer. There are so many convincing testimonies from so many different people giving such similar stories and descriptions of events. We spent a couple of hours in the museum looking at documents and photos of the 'Roswell incident' and other sightings and encounters.
We drove south towards Carlsbad and went to the Living Desert State Park in the afternoon where there were hundreds of desert plants and a small zoo with desert animals; Prairie dogs; Javelina (collared Peccary, like a wild boar); rattlesnakes; deer; mountain lions; a bobcat; a grey fox; horned owls; golden and bald eagles; tortoises; scorpions and tarantulas; centipedes and lots of birds. It was a fabulous place.
We are camped just south of Carlsbad ready to go to the caverns tomorrow. We have had a swim and a shower and are feeling warm and cosy.
Thursday, 19 November 2009
Travelling South into New Mexico 17-19 Nov
Tues 17th
We basically spent 5 hours driving south and east (with various stops along the way) into New Mexico. Of course there were fabulous views along the way, some huge red cliffs that, from a distance, looked like a huge city with sky scrapers towering up out of the desert with the sun behind them. Then, as you got closer, they turned that deep shade of red that is now so familiar to us and the intricate carving that only nature's erosion could do becomes visible. So beautiful, and yet we are all big rocked out so we hardly took any photos. We also stopped at several roadside Navajo stalls to admire their weaving, pottery and jewellery. Tristan and Celso bought a pair of earrings with dangly Kokopeli statues so that they can turn them into necklaces, should be good if Celso's other creations are anything to go by.
As we passed into New Mexico through Navajo land the poverty all around was evident. The roads were badly maintained, the houses seemed to have their rooves held on by the addition of several car tyres, dogs roamed the litter strewn streets and the cars on the roads were more battered than any we have seen so far. We got to Gallop in New Mexico as the sun went down and found a campsite with lovely indigenous statues all the way down the drive. Such a contrast to the poverty that we had just driven through.
Wed 18th
We drove south from Gallop to go to Zuni, a pueblo that still uses the houses, or parts of the houses, built around a mission in the 1600s. The Ashiwi (or Zuni) people call this place the Middle Place of the World. As it is still very much a residential area you need to have a photo permit to even wander around with a camera, so we stopped and paid $10 then walked along the streets to the tiny museum. There are bread ovens everywhere and in the museum we watched an old black and white silent film showing two Ashiwi women first making an oven and then baking in one. As we stepped out of the museum again there was one of the ovens with flames streaming out of its front; first they burn wood in the stone and adobe covered, half spherical structure; then they sweep out all the ashes; put the bread in and seal the door with wood and cloth. Further along the street we could smell bread being baked and we saw two or three other ovens in use and one being built.
We visited several stalls with locally produced crafts, some beautiful carvings in stone and antler (beyond our price range), pottery (too fragile) and jewelery and rugs. We bought some more pinyons (should have a Spanish ny letter there but I can't find one!), the cooked and salted pine nuts (Yum) and tried some sunflower seeds soaked in lime and salt (Yuk!). We then went to visit the bakery but only found a large number of dogs with several tiny puppies amongst their number. And so we left Zuni, very disappointed at not being able to try their bread.
We drove west along route 53 to visit a wolf sanctuary. We were taken around to visit all the rescued wolves and wolf dogs that they have. The cages are good and large and most of the animals are kept in pairs. There are some really awful stories as to how some of them arrived at the place but they seem to be well cared for here. A few facts we learnt:- wolves have amber eyes; they only have black noses (never with pink bits); they have scent glands in their paws (apparently that is why dogs often scratch the ground as a hang over from leaving the scent, but dogs don't have these glands anymore). Whilst we were there a couple of the wolves had a small fight, they had just been put together the day before and were still sorting out the pecking order, this caused a whole load of howling around the park as the gossip spread. It was fantastic to see the wolves sitting with their throats extended to the sky and singing their hearts out. According to the guy who took us round he can recognise many different types of howl and this was definitely a gossip howl, rather than a ' I am here and this is my plot' howl or a 'keep out' howl.
Soon we were on our way again and we stopped in Grants for the night.
Thu 19th
Today was another travelling day through more desert, (it is quite beautiful when I think about it, but during driving it just seems like one endless expanse of dry nothingness). This time we passed a famous bit of desert where the first ever atomic bomb was exploded which is now a missile range! We were heading for the centre of New Mexico to Billy the Kid Country and we will be visiting 'his' museum tomorrow.
We stopped in a shopping mall to alleviate the monotony of the drive and Celso went in search of a video that he would like to take to Ecuador. It is called 'The Gods must be crazy', and he asked the women near the videos to look in the computer to see if they had it in stock. First she wrote 'The Goats must be Crazy',
'No, no', said Celso, 'not goats - God'.
So this time she wrote 'The gold must be crazy',
'No,' says Celso again, 'Not gold, - God.'
Her next attempt was 'The Good must be Crazy'.
Celso was getting a bit anxious by now. 'No', he said, 'Not good, God. You know, Jesus!'
The woman turned to him and said 'Jesus is good?'.
Celso, by now very frustrated, pointed to the heavens and said 'Jesus, God, you know the almighty!'.
'Oh!' says the woman, 'you mean Gad!'
The problem was solved but Celso had a very difficult time keeping a straight face through the rest of their dealings!
This encounter kept us giggling for the rest of the day.
We are now holed up in a town called Alamogordo and it is warm, warm, beautifully warm. I think we shall sleep well tonight.
We basically spent 5 hours driving south and east (with various stops along the way) into New Mexico. Of course there were fabulous views along the way, some huge red cliffs that, from a distance, looked like a huge city with sky scrapers towering up out of the desert with the sun behind them. Then, as you got closer, they turned that deep shade of red that is now so familiar to us and the intricate carving that only nature's erosion could do becomes visible. So beautiful, and yet we are all big rocked out so we hardly took any photos. We also stopped at several roadside Navajo stalls to admire their weaving, pottery and jewellery. Tristan and Celso bought a pair of earrings with dangly Kokopeli statues so that they can turn them into necklaces, should be good if Celso's other creations are anything to go by.
As we passed into New Mexico through Navajo land the poverty all around was evident. The roads were badly maintained, the houses seemed to have their rooves held on by the addition of several car tyres, dogs roamed the litter strewn streets and the cars on the roads were more battered than any we have seen so far. We got to Gallop in New Mexico as the sun went down and found a campsite with lovely indigenous statues all the way down the drive. Such a contrast to the poverty that we had just driven through.
Wed 18th
We drove south from Gallop to go to Zuni, a pueblo that still uses the houses, or parts of the houses, built around a mission in the 1600s. The Ashiwi (or Zuni) people call this place the Middle Place of the World. As it is still very much a residential area you need to have a photo permit to even wander around with a camera, so we stopped and paid $10 then walked along the streets to the tiny museum. There are bread ovens everywhere and in the museum we watched an old black and white silent film showing two Ashiwi women first making an oven and then baking in one. As we stepped out of the museum again there was one of the ovens with flames streaming out of its front; first they burn wood in the stone and adobe covered, half spherical structure; then they sweep out all the ashes; put the bread in and seal the door with wood and cloth. Further along the street we could smell bread being baked and we saw two or three other ovens in use and one being built.
We visited several stalls with locally produced crafts, some beautiful carvings in stone and antler (beyond our price range), pottery (too fragile) and jewelery and rugs. We bought some more pinyons (should have a Spanish ny letter there but I can't find one!), the cooked and salted pine nuts (Yum) and tried some sunflower seeds soaked in lime and salt (Yuk!). We then went to visit the bakery but only found a large number of dogs with several tiny puppies amongst their number. And so we left Zuni, very disappointed at not being able to try their bread.
We drove west along route 53 to visit a wolf sanctuary. We were taken around to visit all the rescued wolves and wolf dogs that they have. The cages are good and large and most of the animals are kept in pairs. There are some really awful stories as to how some of them arrived at the place but they seem to be well cared for here. A few facts we learnt:- wolves have amber eyes; they only have black noses (never with pink bits); they have scent glands in their paws (apparently that is why dogs often scratch the ground as a hang over from leaving the scent, but dogs don't have these glands anymore). Whilst we were there a couple of the wolves had a small fight, they had just been put together the day before and were still sorting out the pecking order, this caused a whole load of howling around the park as the gossip spread. It was fantastic to see the wolves sitting with their throats extended to the sky and singing their hearts out. According to the guy who took us round he can recognise many different types of howl and this was definitely a gossip howl, rather than a ' I am here and this is my plot' howl or a 'keep out' howl.
Soon we were on our way again and we stopped in Grants for the night.
Thu 19th
Today was another travelling day through more desert, (it is quite beautiful when I think about it, but during driving it just seems like one endless expanse of dry nothingness). This time we passed a famous bit of desert where the first ever atomic bomb was exploded which is now a missile range! We were heading for the centre of New Mexico to Billy the Kid Country and we will be visiting 'his' museum tomorrow.
We stopped in a shopping mall to alleviate the monotony of the drive and Celso went in search of a video that he would like to take to Ecuador. It is called 'The Gods must be crazy', and he asked the women near the videos to look in the computer to see if they had it in stock. First she wrote 'The Goats must be Crazy',
'No, no', said Celso, 'not goats - God'.
So this time she wrote 'The gold must be crazy',
'No,' says Celso again, 'Not gold, - God.'
Her next attempt was 'The Good must be Crazy'.
Celso was getting a bit anxious by now. 'No', he said, 'Not good, God. You know, Jesus!'
The woman turned to him and said 'Jesus is good?'.
Celso, by now very frustrated, pointed to the heavens and said 'Jesus, God, you know the almighty!'.
'Oh!' says the woman, 'you mean Gad!'
The problem was solved but Celso had a very difficult time keeping a straight face through the rest of their dealings!
This encounter kept us giggling for the rest of the day.
We are now holed up in a town called Alamogordo and it is warm, warm, beautifully warm. I think we shall sleep well tonight.
Monday, 16 November 2009
Arches National Park 16 Nov
We awoke in our warm, cozy motel room and got up in comfort! After breakfast we went out to the cold van and started the short journey south to Arches National Park. There was snow on the ground in all the shaded parts and more incredible views through extraordinary red rock formations. We took a walk to try to climb on top of Skyline Arch which looked like quite a low arch from the road; only to find the climb impossible with the slippery snow on the rocks below it. Then a walk up to Landscape Arch took us through many shaded areas where the snow was lying quite deep and the desert shrubs and twisted trees looked glorious with their sprinkling of icing on top. Tristan collected enough snow to make a very solid palm sized snowball and to repay Celso for the couple of snowballs that had been lobbed in his direction!
It was so cold when we weren't in the sun and we finally made the decision to miss out on some of the places we had planned to see in Colorado and to whizz southwards to the sun. After a brief stop in Moab, which had an amazing variety of Kokapelli statues around its streets, we sped 100 miles south to a little town called Bliss that was about 2000ft lower in altitude and hopefully not sooooo cold! We arrived after a sunset that seemed to last for over an hour with the western sky glowing; I assume that it lasted so long as we came out from behind mountains.
It was so cold when we weren't in the sun and we finally made the decision to miss out on some of the places we had planned to see in Colorado and to whizz southwards to the sun. After a brief stop in Moab, which had an amazing variety of Kokapelli statues around its streets, we sped 100 miles south to a little town called Bliss that was about 2000ft lower in altitude and hopefully not sooooo cold! We arrived after a sunset that seemed to last for over an hour with the western sky glowing; I assume that it lasted so long as we came out from behind mountains.
Sunday, 15 November 2009
Bryce, Kodachrome and Route 12 through Capitol Reef 14 & 15 Nov
Sat 14
We woke up this morning to ice on the inside of the windows! We were snug in bed and so the blinds (and the towels we had put up over the top to stop the dawn waking us up) had done their job at keeping out the cold. We got up slowly to allow the sun to melt any ice on the road before starting off to travel about 20 miles to Bryce Canyon. Even before we got to the canyon the sights were amazing, salmon pink sandstone had been carved into a series of pinnacles and we even had to drive through two tunnels carved through the sandstone. Then on into the park itself and amazing views over a huge valley full of these multi-layered strawberry cheesecake pinnacles. We went for a hike down through some of the formations and it began to snow, great big, dry, dollops of white. It was breathtakingly beautiful down there and quite extraordinary that some trees had managed to take route in this incredibly dry place. After a fabulous walk, we drove on down the park to have a look at some more views always keeping one eye on the weather just in case in turned really nasty. We met a very disabled Spanish guy who had come over on his own and was driving around but he didn't want to make the effort of getting out of the car if the view was covered in the clouds that kept rolling in. He had an amazing pair of cameras that Celso took photos with and became very jealous and convinced that we need to buy a better camera. I think our camera is doing a good job!
As the snow came down again we left the park and moved further east. We saw a sign for Kodachrome Park 9 miles off our road so we decided to go and take a look. We found a little state park with amazing sandstone formations in reds, pinks and cream; tall sedimentary pipes (formed when ancient springs clogged with silt which formed more erosion resistant rock); and a large number of enormous hares! We also found that the campsite was open so we decided to stay the night and see if the park looked as good and colourful in the morning.
Sunday 15
Again we woke to ice on the windows and also to 3 large hares and a bunny nibbling at the grass around the van. Again we took our time getting up to allow any ice on the roads to thaw and then we had another look around the park before setting out to drive the nearly 100 miles along Scenic Route 12 that winds through the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument (a 91,000 acre piece of public land that protects the main watershed of the Colorado River) and ends after passing through Capitol Reef National Park. It was the most glorious drive with towering cliffs sometimes in the salmon pink; sometimes looking like huge piles of dried up concrete; some with multi coloured stripes like brown mint humbugs; and some with amazing sculpted shapes. On parts of the drive we were up above 8000 ft with snow on the ground and the view of snow topped mountains in the distance, at one point the whole mountainside was covered in silver birch trees, then fir trees covered in a sprinkling of snow with a frozen stream tumbling over rocks next to the road. At one high point the road passed along a ridge that was no wider than the road itself so there were huge drops on both sides. At many of the high points the ground was covered in football sized volcanic rock like it had just been sprinkled onto the land from the sky - perhaps it did right after an eruption though I don't know where the volcano is!?
When we were at the lower levels (below 6000 ft) the terrain was mainly desertlike but at times, when we were alongside a river, there were trees in amazing autumn browns, yellows and golds.
Every corner we turned there was yet another amazing view, so much so that we got a little blazee (how do you spell that?), it was a big case of senses overload!
In Capitol Reef National Park there is a beautiful valley that was inhabited by an early indigenous community that have been called the Fremont people after the river in the valley. They have left petroglyphs on the walls of the canyon, strange human figures plus deer and some beetles. More recently in the early 1800s a Mormon community settled here starting a town they called Fruita for fruit they grew (apples, peaches and pears) as the valley has a milder climate than the surrounding area and year round water. After the 1940s when the paved road came through the community scattered and the park was made.
Finally we turned north through the pink sanded San Rafael Desert that was punctuated with huge pink pinnacled cliffs and as the sun went down red cliffs were glowing in the distance. Wow.
We have given in to the cold weather and checked in to a motel. After a steak in a local restaurant we are now washed and warm in our room. However we wouldn't have missed all these amazing panoramas for anything... I think we can put up with a bit of cold for this, any day.
We woke up this morning to ice on the inside of the windows! We were snug in bed and so the blinds (and the towels we had put up over the top to stop the dawn waking us up) had done their job at keeping out the cold. We got up slowly to allow the sun to melt any ice on the road before starting off to travel about 20 miles to Bryce Canyon. Even before we got to the canyon the sights were amazing, salmon pink sandstone had been carved into a series of pinnacles and we even had to drive through two tunnels carved through the sandstone. Then on into the park itself and amazing views over a huge valley full of these multi-layered strawberry cheesecake pinnacles. We went for a hike down through some of the formations and it began to snow, great big, dry, dollops of white. It was breathtakingly beautiful down there and quite extraordinary that some trees had managed to take route in this incredibly dry place. After a fabulous walk, we drove on down the park to have a look at some more views always keeping one eye on the weather just in case in turned really nasty. We met a very disabled Spanish guy who had come over on his own and was driving around but he didn't want to make the effort of getting out of the car if the view was covered in the clouds that kept rolling in. He had an amazing pair of cameras that Celso took photos with and became very jealous and convinced that we need to buy a better camera. I think our camera is doing a good job!
As the snow came down again we left the park and moved further east. We saw a sign for Kodachrome Park 9 miles off our road so we decided to go and take a look. We found a little state park with amazing sandstone formations in reds, pinks and cream; tall sedimentary pipes (formed when ancient springs clogged with silt which formed more erosion resistant rock); and a large number of enormous hares! We also found that the campsite was open so we decided to stay the night and see if the park looked as good and colourful in the morning.
Sunday 15
Again we woke to ice on the windows and also to 3 large hares and a bunny nibbling at the grass around the van. Again we took our time getting up to allow any ice on the roads to thaw and then we had another look around the park before setting out to drive the nearly 100 miles along Scenic Route 12 that winds through the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument (a 91,000 acre piece of public land that protects the main watershed of the Colorado River) and ends after passing through Capitol Reef National Park. It was the most glorious drive with towering cliffs sometimes in the salmon pink; sometimes looking like huge piles of dried up concrete; some with multi coloured stripes like brown mint humbugs; and some with amazing sculpted shapes. On parts of the drive we were up above 8000 ft with snow on the ground and the view of snow topped mountains in the distance, at one point the whole mountainside was covered in silver birch trees, then fir trees covered in a sprinkling of snow with a frozen stream tumbling over rocks next to the road. At one high point the road passed along a ridge that was no wider than the road itself so there were huge drops on both sides. At many of the high points the ground was covered in football sized volcanic rock like it had just been sprinkled onto the land from the sky - perhaps it did right after an eruption though I don't know where the volcano is!?
When we were at the lower levels (below 6000 ft) the terrain was mainly desertlike but at times, when we were alongside a river, there were trees in amazing autumn browns, yellows and golds.
Every corner we turned there was yet another amazing view, so much so that we got a little blazee (how do you spell that?), it was a big case of senses overload!
In Capitol Reef National Park there is a beautiful valley that was inhabited by an early indigenous community that have been called the Fremont people after the river in the valley. They have left petroglyphs on the walls of the canyon, strange human figures plus deer and some beetles. More recently in the early 1800s a Mormon community settled here starting a town they called Fruita for fruit they grew (apples, peaches and pears) as the valley has a milder climate than the surrounding area and year round water. After the 1940s when the paved road came through the community scattered and the park was made.
Finally we turned north through the pink sanded San Rafael Desert that was punctuated with huge pink pinnacled cliffs and as the sun went down red cliffs were glowing in the distance. Wow.
We have given in to the cold weather and checked in to a motel. After a steak in a local restaurant we are now washed and warm in our room. However we wouldn't have missed all these amazing panoramas for anything... I think we can put up with a bit of cold for this, any day.
Saturday, 14 November 2009
Zion Park 13 Nov
What can I say, amazing, beautiful, breathtaking. You can see it all in the photos.
The first few photos were taken before a tunnel that takes you 1 mile through a mountain to get into the valley. These are all old sand dunes that were covered in a deposit of wet mud and then buried for millions of years in which time they turned to stone. Down in the valley most of the sandstone and limestone was formed under an ancient sea.
It rained in the morning for the first time in months so we were lucky enough to see waterfalls in the park as we hiked up to the lower and middle emerald pools, but the dry, desert land soon sucked up all the water and the streams and waterfalls that we saw in the morning were gone.
Absolutely incredible, I can't say more.
We camped on a high plateau on the way to Bryce Canyon with the threat of snow all around, we will have to check the conditions in the morning to see if we can continue or have to wait a day for the snow to pass.
The first few photos were taken before a tunnel that takes you 1 mile through a mountain to get into the valley. These are all old sand dunes that were covered in a deposit of wet mud and then buried for millions of years in which time they turned to stone. Down in the valley most of the sandstone and limestone was formed under an ancient sea.
It rained in the morning for the first time in months so we were lucky enough to see waterfalls in the park as we hiked up to the lower and middle emerald pools, but the dry, desert land soon sucked up all the water and the streams and waterfalls that we saw in the morning were gone.
Absolutely incredible, I can't say more.
We camped on a high plateau on the way to Bryce Canyon with the threat of snow all around, we will have to check the conditions in the morning to see if we can continue or have to wait a day for the snow to pass.
Thursday, 12 November 2009
Meteor crater, Winslow, Petrified Forest and Canyon de Chelly 10-12 Nov
Tue 10
After a lie in (since we were up so early yesterday) we made our way nearly 40 miles out of Flagstaff to visit the Meteor Crater. It is supposed to be the best preserved meteor crater in the world, not because of any human intervention or anything but because it is fairly recent and hasn't eroded. About 50,000 years ago a meteor the size of a house (perhaps 30 to 40m across) crashed into the earth on the unbroken Arizona plain at 26,000 miles per hour, that's about 7 miles per second. It is estimated to have had a mass of several hundred thousand tons and consisted of mainly iron with some nickel and traces of diamond, gold and titanium (as I said yesterday about the part of it on display in the Lowell Observatory). The explosion was equivalent to about 20 million tons of TNT and was so hot that the meteorite vaporised except for the few chunks that have been found; these chunks must have broken off the main meteor before the impact. The crater is 700 feet deep (about 200m) and 4000 feet across ( about 1250m). About 175 million tons of earth (mainly limestone and sandstone) were ejected to form the crater rim and was littered for over a mile around the impact site. A shock wave raced across the plain and devastated/flattened everything for several miles. The vaporised meteorite rose up in a hot cloud above the impact and as the cloud cooled they formed tiny spherical balls of iron and nickel that can be found all around the crater for several miles. To give you an idea of the size, the crater could hold 20 or so full sized football pitches and two million spectators could observe from the sloping sides. In the bottom of the crater we could spot a mine shaft, this is where digging took place in the 1920s in an unfruitful attempt to find the meteorite. However the drill got stuck at 1376 feet deep without anything found except for oxidized fragments of iron and nickel. We gawped at the crater for a while and then went inside where Tristan destroyed the world, then the United States and then various other places on earth on a meteor simulator where you chose the properties of the meteorite, such as speed, density, angle of impact, size etc.
A short film on meteors and impacts made Tristan even more enthusiastic about the possibilities of earth annihilation and we spent the next 20 mins on the road talking about aliens and all things spacey......... until we reached Winslow. We had to go and stand on the corner in Winslow Arizona, such a fine sight to see, there's a girl, my Lord, in a flat bed Ford slowing down to take a look at me. If you haven't a clue what I'm talking about then don't worry. But for those of you who like The Eagles (Take it Easy) you will be very jealous!!!!!! Another 40 minutes on from Winslow took us to the Petrified Forest where we walked amongst the stone tree trunks and admired the beauty of the colours that appeared as they petrified. The trees are thought to be a relative of the Monkey Puzzle Tree that grew in the warm tropical climates on Pangea some 225 million years ago. It is thought that a huge storm felled many of the trees that fell into rivers and streams and were transported to a flood plain where, waterlogged, they sank to the bottom of the slower moving waters. A volcanic eruption then covered the sunken logs in huge amounts of ash and silica which prevented the rotting process. The silica slowly replaced the cellulose in the plant cells and the other elements released from the cells caused the amazing variety of colours that we see in the stone today. The plain was uplifted by tectonic activity and now these ancient stone trees lie on the surface, some as entire trunks but normally broken into 2 or 3 foot chunks. On some the bark is clearly visible - amazing. We drove on through the park to to the North to the Painted Desert where Badlands' type formations are covered in brightly coloured layers. The sun was going down and the shadows were great but it was not the best time for taking photos, except of the setting sun which formed a huge red splodge across the Western Horizon. Finally we drove North, in the fading light and then complete darkness of this unpopulated region, some 100 miles to reach Canyon de Chelly (pronounced Chey) to be ready for out 8:30am start tomorrow around the park.
Wed 11
By 8:30 we were in the gift shop awaiting our transport and guide to go into the canyon. In order to drive in the canyon you must have a Navajo guide as this is all Navajo land. There is only one trail down which you can walk without a guide and we wanted to see more of the cliff dwellings and the ancient rock art. We had a fantastic day driven by a Navajo called Johnson in a 1952 ex army truck with a modified back to fit seating. Our fellow travellers were a group of 60 or 70 something Americans who all found the experience very cold; whilst Tristan sat in a shirt they were in layers of coats and scarves and covered in blankets! We spent 7.5 hours travelling up the various canyons and stopping at various points for our guide to explain some of the sites and the history of the area. In brief there are 3 known civilizations that have, at various times, inhabited these canyons. The first for which there is evidence (though they believe that there must have been people here before that) was the Anasazi from 300 to 1300AD. They are responsible for the cliff cave dwellings that are made out of fallen stone fitted together with a mud mortar, with some wooden beams driven into holes in the cliff face. The main structures that have survived where built after 1200AD but a few simpler / cruder structures do remain from before that time. The second civilization was the Hopi people, there is no evidence that they fought with the Anasazi for the territory, therefore it is believed that the Anasazi abandoned the canyon, perhaps after several years of drought, and, after a resumption of a wetter climate, the Hopi just moved in. The final civilization was the Navajo, who arrived in about 1400 and fought the Hopi and ejected them, and here they are still but after a fraught time during the early years of the United States. During the 1800s some Mexicans and Spaniards came into the valley looking for gold, they didn't find any but did find the Navajo elderly, women and children alone in their settlements as the young men were out hunting. The women and children were taken and sold into slavery in Mexico. When the men folk returned they found there families gone and, assuming it was the work of other tribes outside the canyon, they started searching amongst their neighbours lands and sometimes stole stock. The neighbours complained to the government that the Navajo were causing unrest and so in came the cavalry. Many Navajo hid out in the rocks for weeks but many others were rounded up and crops and livestock were destroyed. The captured, mainly the elderly, women and children, were taken on 'The Long Walk', a 300 mile walk in search of a settlement for the Navajo on which many of them died. Eventually after 3 years they were allowed to return to the Canyon and have been farming and raising livestock here ever since. There was rock art from all three cultures on the rocks, some carved into the rock and some drawn on the rock. The rocks themselves are sandstone, some of it very pale cream in colour and other reddish. There are dark streaks down the rocks where the water pours. In the canyon trees planted by the Civilian Corps in the early part of the 20th Century are now being removed slowly but surely by slash and burn, the trees are actually huge water users and a huge menace, but they looked beautiful in their Autumn colours. There are free roaming horses and cattle that look really fat and healthy so there must be something good to eat out there amongst the scrubby plants and cacti. There can be up to 3 feet of floodwater in the spring so I guess we are just seeing it at the driest and brownest time of year. The Anasazi grew corn, watermelon, cotton and squash here and the Navajo grow the same (except cotton), using some of the old Anasazi buildings as stores; there is no evidence for the Hopi but it is assumed that they grew similar crops. At one of the stops we made there were Navajo craftsmen with their wares, since there are only 2 tours that pass that spot it must be worth their while (we came back the same way about 1 hour later and you wouldn't have known that anyone had been there!) We tried Navajo fry bread which was like a tortilla that Cuma makes (a bread made of self raising flour and water and then fried), and Pinons which are Pine Nuts that are collected, washed and then boiled, dried and sprinkled with salt - delicious. Tristan bought a dream catcher made from deer hide and a small piece of rock art of an Anasazi fertility symbol that we have seen in lots of places. It is a small bent over man playing a flute with a corn stalk and the sun, he is called Kokopelli. He is still influential, to many pueblo peoples, in fertility and abundance, whether it be the hunt, the fields or human reproduction. It was a thrilling day with lots of rocking and rolling over the rough terrain, fabulous scenery and awesome historical sites and information. We returned windswept, happy and gasping for a cup of tea!!
Thu 12
Today we made the long journey up into Utah over some fantastic terrain. We could see the grand, towering cliffs of Monument Valley in the distance and had some close up encounters with rocks and cliffs ourselves. We crossed over windswept, high plains through the Navajo land with loose horses and cattle everywhere, and we crossed another dam across the Colorado River at Powell Lake. We are now camped in a little town called Kanab, ready for our assault on Zyon tomorrow.
After a lie in (since we were up so early yesterday) we made our way nearly 40 miles out of Flagstaff to visit the Meteor Crater. It is supposed to be the best preserved meteor crater in the world, not because of any human intervention or anything but because it is fairly recent and hasn't eroded. About 50,000 years ago a meteor the size of a house (perhaps 30 to 40m across) crashed into the earth on the unbroken Arizona plain at 26,000 miles per hour, that's about 7 miles per second. It is estimated to have had a mass of several hundred thousand tons and consisted of mainly iron with some nickel and traces of diamond, gold and titanium (as I said yesterday about the part of it on display in the Lowell Observatory). The explosion was equivalent to about 20 million tons of TNT and was so hot that the meteorite vaporised except for the few chunks that have been found; these chunks must have broken off the main meteor before the impact. The crater is 700 feet deep (about 200m) and 4000 feet across ( about 1250m). About 175 million tons of earth (mainly limestone and sandstone) were ejected to form the crater rim and was littered for over a mile around the impact site. A shock wave raced across the plain and devastated/flattened everything for several miles. The vaporised meteorite rose up in a hot cloud above the impact and as the cloud cooled they formed tiny spherical balls of iron and nickel that can be found all around the crater for several miles. To give you an idea of the size, the crater could hold 20 or so full sized football pitches and two million spectators could observe from the sloping sides. In the bottom of the crater we could spot a mine shaft, this is where digging took place in the 1920s in an unfruitful attempt to find the meteorite. However the drill got stuck at 1376 feet deep without anything found except for oxidized fragments of iron and nickel. We gawped at the crater for a while and then went inside where Tristan destroyed the world, then the United States and then various other places on earth on a meteor simulator where you chose the properties of the meteorite, such as speed, density, angle of impact, size etc.
A short film on meteors and impacts made Tristan even more enthusiastic about the possibilities of earth annihilation and we spent the next 20 mins on the road talking about aliens and all things spacey......... until we reached Winslow. We had to go and stand on the corner in Winslow Arizona, such a fine sight to see, there's a girl, my Lord, in a flat bed Ford slowing down to take a look at me. If you haven't a clue what I'm talking about then don't worry. But for those of you who like The Eagles (Take it Easy) you will be very jealous!!!!!! Another 40 minutes on from Winslow took us to the Petrified Forest where we walked amongst the stone tree trunks and admired the beauty of the colours that appeared as they petrified. The trees are thought to be a relative of the Monkey Puzzle Tree that grew in the warm tropical climates on Pangea some 225 million years ago. It is thought that a huge storm felled many of the trees that fell into rivers and streams and were transported to a flood plain where, waterlogged, they sank to the bottom of the slower moving waters. A volcanic eruption then covered the sunken logs in huge amounts of ash and silica which prevented the rotting process. The silica slowly replaced the cellulose in the plant cells and the other elements released from the cells caused the amazing variety of colours that we see in the stone today. The plain was uplifted by tectonic activity and now these ancient stone trees lie on the surface, some as entire trunks but normally broken into 2 or 3 foot chunks. On some the bark is clearly visible - amazing. We drove on through the park to to the North to the Painted Desert where Badlands' type formations are covered in brightly coloured layers. The sun was going down and the shadows were great but it was not the best time for taking photos, except of the setting sun which formed a huge red splodge across the Western Horizon. Finally we drove North, in the fading light and then complete darkness of this unpopulated region, some 100 miles to reach Canyon de Chelly (pronounced Chey) to be ready for out 8:30am start tomorrow around the park.
Wed 11
By 8:30 we were in the gift shop awaiting our transport and guide to go into the canyon. In order to drive in the canyon you must have a Navajo guide as this is all Navajo land. There is only one trail down which you can walk without a guide and we wanted to see more of the cliff dwellings and the ancient rock art. We had a fantastic day driven by a Navajo called Johnson in a 1952 ex army truck with a modified back to fit seating. Our fellow travellers were a group of 60 or 70 something Americans who all found the experience very cold; whilst Tristan sat in a shirt they were in layers of coats and scarves and covered in blankets! We spent 7.5 hours travelling up the various canyons and stopping at various points for our guide to explain some of the sites and the history of the area. In brief there are 3 known civilizations that have, at various times, inhabited these canyons. The first for which there is evidence (though they believe that there must have been people here before that) was the Anasazi from 300 to 1300AD. They are responsible for the cliff cave dwellings that are made out of fallen stone fitted together with a mud mortar, with some wooden beams driven into holes in the cliff face. The main structures that have survived where built after 1200AD but a few simpler / cruder structures do remain from before that time. The second civilization was the Hopi people, there is no evidence that they fought with the Anasazi for the territory, therefore it is believed that the Anasazi abandoned the canyon, perhaps after several years of drought, and, after a resumption of a wetter climate, the Hopi just moved in. The final civilization was the Navajo, who arrived in about 1400 and fought the Hopi and ejected them, and here they are still but after a fraught time during the early years of the United States. During the 1800s some Mexicans and Spaniards came into the valley looking for gold, they didn't find any but did find the Navajo elderly, women and children alone in their settlements as the young men were out hunting. The women and children were taken and sold into slavery in Mexico. When the men folk returned they found there families gone and, assuming it was the work of other tribes outside the canyon, they started searching amongst their neighbours lands and sometimes stole stock. The neighbours complained to the government that the Navajo were causing unrest and so in came the cavalry. Many Navajo hid out in the rocks for weeks but many others were rounded up and crops and livestock were destroyed. The captured, mainly the elderly, women and children, were taken on 'The Long Walk', a 300 mile walk in search of a settlement for the Navajo on which many of them died. Eventually after 3 years they were allowed to return to the Canyon and have been farming and raising livestock here ever since. There was rock art from all three cultures on the rocks, some carved into the rock and some drawn on the rock. The rocks themselves are sandstone, some of it very pale cream in colour and other reddish. There are dark streaks down the rocks where the water pours. In the canyon trees planted by the Civilian Corps in the early part of the 20th Century are now being removed slowly but surely by slash and burn, the trees are actually huge water users and a huge menace, but they looked beautiful in their Autumn colours. There are free roaming horses and cattle that look really fat and healthy so there must be something good to eat out there amongst the scrubby plants and cacti. There can be up to 3 feet of floodwater in the spring so I guess we are just seeing it at the driest and brownest time of year. The Anasazi grew corn, watermelon, cotton and squash here and the Navajo grow the same (except cotton), using some of the old Anasazi buildings as stores; there is no evidence for the Hopi but it is assumed that they grew similar crops. At one of the stops we made there were Navajo craftsmen with their wares, since there are only 2 tours that pass that spot it must be worth their while (we came back the same way about 1 hour later and you wouldn't have known that anyone had been there!) We tried Navajo fry bread which was like a tortilla that Cuma makes (a bread made of self raising flour and water and then fried), and Pinons which are Pine Nuts that are collected, washed and then boiled, dried and sprinkled with salt - delicious. Tristan bought a dream catcher made from deer hide and a small piece of rock art of an Anasazi fertility symbol that we have seen in lots of places. It is a small bent over man playing a flute with a corn stalk and the sun, he is called Kokopelli. He is still influential, to many pueblo peoples, in fertility and abundance, whether it be the hunt, the fields or human reproduction. It was a thrilling day with lots of rocking and rolling over the rough terrain, fabulous scenery and awesome historical sites and information. We returned windswept, happy and gasping for a cup of tea!!
Thu 12
Today we made the long journey up into Utah over some fantastic terrain. We could see the grand, towering cliffs of Monument Valley in the distance and had some close up encounters with rocks and cliffs ourselves. We crossed over windswept, high plains through the Navajo land with loose horses and cattle everywhere, and we crossed another dam across the Colorado River at Powell Lake. We are now camped in a little town called Kanab, ready for our assault on Zyon tomorrow.
Monday, 9 November 2009
Hoover Dam & Grand Canyon 8,9 Nov
Sun 8
We decided as we left the campsite that, in fact, we didn't want to go back down The Strip and would prefer to spend our time elsewhere. So we whizzed out of town the 30 miles or so to The Hoover Dam. We went through a very superficial search, basically an officer looked through the door of our van and made us unlock 1 of the 4 outside lockers. If we had wanted to bring a bomb it would be the simplest thing - if that is what they were looking for. There is a huge construction project going on to build a by-pass to the dam and an incredible arch is already in place above the dam. We drove across the dam and then parked above it and walked back down to look at the amazing views and admire the incredible feat of construction. Of course, Celso and Tristan were trying to find the places where some of the Transformers film was shot, (I'm afraid I couldn't help them in the slightest!). It was very crowded with everybody out enjoying the sun so we walked out past the old visitor centre to try and find a quieter spot and there we were accosted by a type of tiny ground squirrel a bit like a chipmunk. As it runs about in the sun it curls its tail up over it back, the underside is white and so faces up to the sun and acts as some sort of sunshade. I was eating some crisps which one jumped up and I had to have a tug of war with. They are obviously very used to people as they just came running up but they were so fast we took about 30 photos to get just a few decent ones. SO cute!
The rest of our day was spent driving the 200 or so miles to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. We drove through desert and as the road slowly rose up it became more and more covered in plants, then bushes, then small round trees and finally big trees; it was nice to see them again! We seemed to spend the whole journey chasing or being chased by a huge lorry, we ended up waving and making signals to each other for about the last 50 miles and it passed the time as we looked out for him behind or tried to catch up with him.
Mon 9
Up at 5am we were at the edge of the Grand Canyon by 5:45 to see the sun rise. We were the first there but soon after 7am there were crowds, we were glad to have had the views to ourselves for over an hour. First an orange glow appeared over the rocks, and then, as the band of light got larger, it turned yellow, then green and finally blue. The colours in the canyon are amazing with stripes of red, pink, maroon, yellow, cream and brown. Th shadows played over the jagged landscape as the sun rose higher and higher. We took loads of photos and have left most of them to see later on the big screen. You can walk right along the rim with very little between you and an enormous drop. Of course, I was very nervous but Celso and Tristan did there mountain goat bit with me grabbing on to Tristan's shirt all the time (much to his annoyance). However, I did feel justified in my caution later when we went to the visitor centre and we found on display a book about all the fatalities at the canyon, mainly from people falling off the edge.
We drove East along the rim stopping to gawp some more at all that the Canyon had to offer and then all of a sudden the road turned south and we had to say goodbye. We passed through Navajo Tribal Lands with loads of native stalls set up on the edge of the road selling pottery and jewelery. Smaller canyons dotted the very flat landscape until everything just seemed to flatten out and fade away.
Soon we turned off the main road to take a detour through two National Monuments. The first was Wupatki which is the site of some 800 year old Anasazi ruins in at least 8 different pueblos scattered across the area. These people lived here during a time with a very similar climate to today, the land was arid and covered in volcanic pumice like rocks and red sedimentary plates of rock, that looked like paving slabs, so it is hard to believe that they cultivated the land. The buildings were made from the two types of rock perfectly slotted together with a mud, water and mystery ingredient mortar (they are still trying to work out what the 3rd ingredient was, or how it was made, though they have made a synthetic version to enable them to stabalise some of the structures). No one knows why the sites were abandoned and as yet no proper excavations have taken place, only surface finds of pottery and tools have been catalogued.
Next we drove on to Sunset Crater Volcano surrounded by the desert landscape with the dark grey of ash between the scrubby low shrubs, we drove past a small lava field with its jagged grey rocks just like in Craters of Moon National Park; then past the perfect cone of the volcano with barren grey ash sides.
We reached Flagstaff and found a campsite and then after dark we drove to the Lowell Observatory where Pluto was discovered and evidence that the Universe was expanding (red shift) was first recorded. We used the very same telescope that discovered Pluto to view Jupiter which is hugely bright in the sky at the moment. We could see 4 of its moons and the swirling brown stripey clouds on its surface - incredible. Through two smaller telescopes we also viewed a group of young stars called 'the owl' and a globular cluster of stars. Great exhibits and a shop kept us occupied for 3/4 of an hour and then a half hour film about anything and everything spacey finished our visit.
I took a photo of a 242kg meteorite that was part of the meteor which fell near Flagstaff about 50,000 years ago (and we are going to go and see the crater tomorrow). The meteor is 92% iron, 8% Nickle with traces of gold, silver, platinum and diamond!
We decided as we left the campsite that, in fact, we didn't want to go back down The Strip and would prefer to spend our time elsewhere. So we whizzed out of town the 30 miles or so to The Hoover Dam. We went through a very superficial search, basically an officer looked through the door of our van and made us unlock 1 of the 4 outside lockers. If we had wanted to bring a bomb it would be the simplest thing - if that is what they were looking for. There is a huge construction project going on to build a by-pass to the dam and an incredible arch is already in place above the dam. We drove across the dam and then parked above it and walked back down to look at the amazing views and admire the incredible feat of construction. Of course, Celso and Tristan were trying to find the places where some of the Transformers film was shot, (I'm afraid I couldn't help them in the slightest!). It was very crowded with everybody out enjoying the sun so we walked out past the old visitor centre to try and find a quieter spot and there we were accosted by a type of tiny ground squirrel a bit like a chipmunk. As it runs about in the sun it curls its tail up over it back, the underside is white and so faces up to the sun and acts as some sort of sunshade. I was eating some crisps which one jumped up and I had to have a tug of war with. They are obviously very used to people as they just came running up but they were so fast we took about 30 photos to get just a few decent ones. SO cute!
The rest of our day was spent driving the 200 or so miles to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. We drove through desert and as the road slowly rose up it became more and more covered in plants, then bushes, then small round trees and finally big trees; it was nice to see them again! We seemed to spend the whole journey chasing or being chased by a huge lorry, we ended up waving and making signals to each other for about the last 50 miles and it passed the time as we looked out for him behind or tried to catch up with him.
Mon 9
Up at 5am we were at the edge of the Grand Canyon by 5:45 to see the sun rise. We were the first there but soon after 7am there were crowds, we were glad to have had the views to ourselves for over an hour. First an orange glow appeared over the rocks, and then, as the band of light got larger, it turned yellow, then green and finally blue. The colours in the canyon are amazing with stripes of red, pink, maroon, yellow, cream and brown. Th shadows played over the jagged landscape as the sun rose higher and higher. We took loads of photos and have left most of them to see later on the big screen. You can walk right along the rim with very little between you and an enormous drop. Of course, I was very nervous but Celso and Tristan did there mountain goat bit with me grabbing on to Tristan's shirt all the time (much to his annoyance). However, I did feel justified in my caution later when we went to the visitor centre and we found on display a book about all the fatalities at the canyon, mainly from people falling off the edge.
We drove East along the rim stopping to gawp some more at all that the Canyon had to offer and then all of a sudden the road turned south and we had to say goodbye. We passed through Navajo Tribal Lands with loads of native stalls set up on the edge of the road selling pottery and jewelery. Smaller canyons dotted the very flat landscape until everything just seemed to flatten out and fade away.
Soon we turned off the main road to take a detour through two National Monuments. The first was Wupatki which is the site of some 800 year old Anasazi ruins in at least 8 different pueblos scattered across the area. These people lived here during a time with a very similar climate to today, the land was arid and covered in volcanic pumice like rocks and red sedimentary plates of rock, that looked like paving slabs, so it is hard to believe that they cultivated the land. The buildings were made from the two types of rock perfectly slotted together with a mud, water and mystery ingredient mortar (they are still trying to work out what the 3rd ingredient was, or how it was made, though they have made a synthetic version to enable them to stabalise some of the structures). No one knows why the sites were abandoned and as yet no proper excavations have taken place, only surface finds of pottery and tools have been catalogued.
Next we drove on to Sunset Crater Volcano surrounded by the desert landscape with the dark grey of ash between the scrubby low shrubs, we drove past a small lava field with its jagged grey rocks just like in Craters of Moon National Park; then past the perfect cone of the volcano with barren grey ash sides.
We reached Flagstaff and found a campsite and then after dark we drove to the Lowell Observatory where Pluto was discovered and evidence that the Universe was expanding (red shift) was first recorded. We used the very same telescope that discovered Pluto to view Jupiter which is hugely bright in the sky at the moment. We could see 4 of its moons and the swirling brown stripey clouds on its surface - incredible. Through two smaller telescopes we also viewed a group of young stars called 'the owl' and a globular cluster of stars. Great exhibits and a shop kept us occupied for 3/4 of an hour and then a half hour film about anything and everything spacey finished our visit.
I took a photo of a 242kg meteorite that was part of the meteor which fell near Flagstaff about 50,000 years ago (and we are going to go and see the crater tomorrow). The meteor is 92% iron, 8% Nickle with traces of gold, silver, platinum and diamond!
Death Valley & LA 5-7 Nov
Thurs 5th
Today was a day in which we did practically nothing except to relax and recharge our batteries. We have seen so many amazing things we are feeling quite exhausted. So we only drove 30 miles closer to Death Valley to give us a better start tomorrow and then after a little bit of shopping we did very little!!
Fri 6th
Up early, we drove the 30 miles or so to the start of the Death Valley National Park. The road took us past the nearly dried up Owens Lake. Apparently it used to be a great lake for wildlife but, in the early 1900s when the mining claims round the area started failing, a man from LA conned two local land owners into selling him their water rights on the Owens River. He then built a huge pipe that transferred most of the water from the river to LA over 200 miles away to help him sell land down that way with plenty of water. Apparently there are still cases going on in the courts about the water that is still diverted to LA from the river. You can see from the photos the autumn trees around Lone Pine (where we started), they are Aspen and in the background is the Sierra Nevada Mountains (where Sequoia and Yosemite NP are). As we drove east the road become more and more desertified, with volcanic pumice boulders and course bushes. Along the edge of the road a grass with the appearance of having a yellow fluffy head (like a feather duster) grows, it billows gracefully in the wind. Soon we started to climb into some mountains and then, one by one, and then slowly more frequently, the odd shape of Joshua trees started to dot the landscape, and then all at once they were gone and we descended down into the Panamint valley and the start of the park. We crossed the 5 miles or so of the Panamint valley on a road that followed the rolling landscape, it was rather like being on a fairground ride that took you up and down and up and down. Sometimes the changes in direction were enough to make you leave your seat, it was quite fun!! We climbed the Panamint mountains, the 4th mountain range between Death Valley and the sea, which is why it hardly rains in the valley because the clouds have shed their load at each of the mountain ranges on their way in land, and then down the other side. We could see sand dunes in the distance and the terrain became incredibly flat.
We turned off the main road onto a 2 mile dirt track to go to Mosaic Canyon, a thin, winding slice through the mountains that has been carved by flash flood water. The road's wave like surface caused us to slow to around 10 mph and the van rattled and shook, we thought we might fall apart, but eventually we crawled to a halt at the exit from the canyon. A walk up the canyon showed us the power of the water; white marble (that looks like snow in some of the photos), conglomerate and other rocks had been smoothed to a shine. The walls were gracefully curved and the ground littered with smooth gravel and pebbles like on a pebbly beach in Britain. It was quite hard going on the gravel with a continuous uphill climb and the heat started to get to us quite soon, so knowing that we had more to see and do, we turned back after about 40 mins. We stopped to watch a lizard and a few crickets but other than that we saw no sign of life. The return journey was much less arduous and only took us about 20 mins
After a quick stop at the ranger station to pay the park fee and pick up the free newspaper about the park, we drove a couple of miles to stop in a huge car park by the sand dunes. As we prepared to go out into the dunes (hats, water etc) a workman approached to tell us we were the first ever people into the car park. He had been working with a crew for 3 months to build the car park and we were the first vehicle to turn in after they removed the cones. So we have named the car park 'Robayo's Place' in honour of our great achievement and it will forever be part of our empire!
The dunes were hot, too hot. We tried to do some surfing on a seat cushion from the van but it didn't work and I ended up with sand in my shirt, shoes, trousers and worse. Between the dunes were areas with a crusty, cracked layer of salt and only spiny bushes grew. We could see hundreds of tiny tracks attesting to the abundance of wildlife in the area, they were mostly lizard and scorpion tracks, but some looked like a small rodent and others a coyote (that apparently are common in the area, though we haven't seen or heard any yet). The heat got the better of Tris and I and we returned to Robayo's place, left a small pile of sand on the roadside as we emptied out our shoes and clothes and then sat and drank ice cold coke... one of the benefits of having a van over a car is the presence of the fridge and freezer. We then ate cheese and biscuits, carrots and cucumber and ate a few crisps to replace our salt loss. Celso, on the other hand, was determined to get to the top of the tallest dunes we could see about a 1/2 mile from the van. He returned about a half hour later drenched in sweat, (it was even hot for him!) and very annoyed that he had a mark (tan line)from the vest shirt he was wearing.
At our next stop, Salt Creek, Celso refused to wear a shirt to try to get rid of his tan line, we walked along a boardwalk that traversed the salty surface of the desert. This area is below sea level and used to be a huge lake several thousand years ago. It is now the site of a creek, that has a variable level of water depending on the season, that flows along ancient paths and then just disappears into the sand. As the water flows it evaporates and gets more and more saline, at some times it has a salinity 5 times that of sea water but around the edges plants grow in their hundreds. Amazingly a species of fish called Pupfish, about an inch long, survive in this creek and have done so since the lakes that used to cover the area disappeared. There are about 11 different subspecies of Pupfish that survive in several different creeks, each subspecies is slightly different as they have adapted to the varying conditions in their particular creek, some are endangered, all are protected. We were lucky enough to see a large shoal (probably 30 individuals) in the higher reaches of the creek, as well as the huge footprints of one of their enemies in the crusty bottom of the stream - an egret or heron. It was really strange to see such an oasis of life in the hottest (on average over a year) place on earth.
Next stop was at the ruins of an old Borax mine, apparently the dried up lake is full of the stuff. The mine functioned for only 5 years in the 1880's and since it was such a long distance to the nearest railroad the raw materials were processed on site and only the pure Borax hauled out of Death Valley by wagons pulled by 20 mules. They hauled the Borax out and fresh water in, each return journey taking about 30 days so that several teams were required. Mainly Chinese workers, brought in from San Francisco, dug the raw material from the lake, poured it into large vats that were heated to dissolve the Borax and let all the other materials settle out. Then the liquid was poured into huge vats and the Borax crystallised out. Horrid, hot work for which they were paid $1.30 per day, but board was deducted and they had to buy their own food. Finally we drove on to visit the park's visitor centre only to find it full to the brim with folks visiting some sort of art festival... strange place to hold it, you would have thought, in the middle of Death Valley.
So instead we went immediately to a campsite and investigated a spot where we could go for a night walk to look for critters. After a fantastic steak (that has been marinating since yesterday in a wonderful concoction that Celso makes) with baked potatoes cooked on/in a wood fire with veggies and a cold beer, we sat out admiring the stars. I got my first view of the milky way (amazing) and so many stars that it makes the mind boggle. Then we went for a walk up into the hill with torches and a UV light, we spotted a couple of scorpions which glow in UV but very little else. We will be trying again later.
No luck with an y critters later and the moon came out
Sat 7
We got up early to do some more exploring before the sun got too hot. Our first stop was 17 miles to the south and 295ft below sea level at Badwater, so called because a man trying to get across death valley in the 1800's could not get his mule to take a drink from the water, he called the spring bad water and the name stuck. In fact the water is just extremely saline. Over the millenia salts have been washed down into the valley from the surrounding hills, but then the water evaporates. Water in the aquifer below the park feeds the Badwater spring and it bubbles up into the salt. At times throughout the year there are flash floods which then evaporate leaving amazing salt crystal formations. At the Devil's Golf Course (our second stop) we managed to walk amongst these amazing salt crystal shapes which were sculpted into sharp spikes so that only the Devil would play golf there. Next we drove the 4 mile loop road 'The Artist's Drive' along the base of the cliffs that enclose Death Valley, they are sculpted into the weirdest shapes and have the most amazing pastel colours from all the different salts, reds, pinks, maroons, blues, greens, yellows, whites and creams.
A quick stop at the visitor centre explained why Death Valley is so hot, told the story of how it got its name etc.
A 30 mile trip over the mountains that form the East wall of the valley took us to Rhyolite, a ghost town, once inhabited by 10000. It was a booming town during the time that silver was found in the hills around the valley, it had 3 banks, 3 railroads, a school, about 16 stores, a post office, a jail and a brothel. Many of the buildings were erected during the period 1905 - 1907 and were posh for their time with electricity, steam heating and some were multi storied. One of the strangest houses we saw was a house built in 1906 out of bottles, it was raffled off by the builder. Another building that remains largely in tact was one of the railroad offices, that after the town was abandoned in 1920 was also used as a casino. All of the wooden houses have been robbed out because wood is such a scarce commodity around those parts, some moved in their entirety to the nearest town of Beatty. The Rhyolite population since 1920 has stayed around about 20.
We then drove for about 2.5 hours through yet another valley of desertish terrain to get to Las Vegas. The valley had much more vegetation showing that it was not nearly as hot and dry as Death Valley (perhaps because it was much higher; around 2000ft; or perhaps because the mountain chains along its edges were more broken) but it was a harsh environment none the less. The ground was full of stones and sand, and the scrubby dry bushes grew in clumps occasionally interrupted by a Joshua tree or, what I like to call, a pineapple tree - a stumpy scaly type of palm with a top knot. We passed 2 of the most enormous prisons, and a sign that advised us that it was illegal to pick up hitch hikers! As we passed the road up to one prison the sign said 'Correctional Facility' and underneath 'Wildlife Viewing', with a big arrow - we thought that was quite appropriate.
Finally Las Vegas loomed out of the desert, it had lush green grass and a ridiculous array of electronic signs. We drove down The Strip to take a look at some of the casinos - they are completely crazy, out of one came a roller coaster, others have huge statues or waterfalls, it is like being in a great big theme park with immaculate buildings in gaudy colours. When we returned having parked up the van there was even piped music playing along most of the pavements. We watched people being punted around in gondolas at the Venetian, one guy singing opera to his passengers, we walked amongst flamingos, swans, guinea fowl and other birds in a huge garden at the Flamingo casino, walked through shopping centres in which none of the shops had any prices on the merchandise in the windows and generally watched the people become more and more drunk as night fell (it gets dark around 5pm here at the moment as the clocks have just gone back). More and more lights came on as it got darker and we found ourselves, instead of admiring the lights, thinking of the cost to the environment! At one point we were walking along the pavement behind a dancer dressed up in a bright red outfit, they looked like a Cancan dancer in frilly dress and high heels. An old woman with a walking stick poked the dancer's bottom on the left and right cheeks with the end of her cane, I looked at her and giggled. She was giggling too and said, 'He's so cute!', and I replied, 'I think it's a woman!' We walked on a bit and I was right, she was a female dancer, but she must be used to it as she didn't turn or react at all to the prodding. Nice to find a crazy old bat in a place like this, that old lady has some get up ad go!
The amount of porn around is quite incredible and fairly grotesque, not really our scene, but we had to try out a casino so we went into one where Tris could play games in an arcade. Tris is allowed to walk through any of the casinos as long as he is with an adult!! I tried my hands at craps, didn't have a clue what I was doing and gave up having lost $10 which was the stake I was prepared to lose. Tris spent $10 fighting monsters and people, riding motorbike and racing cars, playing air hockey, shooting aliens and having a great time in the arcade. Celso watched and spent nothing! I suppose we should have 'done' a show or gone to one of the museums or something, but we really didn't fancy it so we were back at the van by 8pm!! That's enough of Las Vegas for us, we shall drive round the rest of The Strip tomorrow to take some photos in the daylight but then we are out of here.
Today was a day in which we did practically nothing except to relax and recharge our batteries. We have seen so many amazing things we are feeling quite exhausted. So we only drove 30 miles closer to Death Valley to give us a better start tomorrow and then after a little bit of shopping we did very little!!
Fri 6th
Up early, we drove the 30 miles or so to the start of the Death Valley National Park. The road took us past the nearly dried up Owens Lake. Apparently it used to be a great lake for wildlife but, in the early 1900s when the mining claims round the area started failing, a man from LA conned two local land owners into selling him their water rights on the Owens River. He then built a huge pipe that transferred most of the water from the river to LA over 200 miles away to help him sell land down that way with plenty of water. Apparently there are still cases going on in the courts about the water that is still diverted to LA from the river. You can see from the photos the autumn trees around Lone Pine (where we started), they are Aspen and in the background is the Sierra Nevada Mountains (where Sequoia and Yosemite NP are). As we drove east the road become more and more desertified, with volcanic pumice boulders and course bushes. Along the edge of the road a grass with the appearance of having a yellow fluffy head (like a feather duster) grows, it billows gracefully in the wind. Soon we started to climb into some mountains and then, one by one, and then slowly more frequently, the odd shape of Joshua trees started to dot the landscape, and then all at once they were gone and we descended down into the Panamint valley and the start of the park. We crossed the 5 miles or so of the Panamint valley on a road that followed the rolling landscape, it was rather like being on a fairground ride that took you up and down and up and down. Sometimes the changes in direction were enough to make you leave your seat, it was quite fun!! We climbed the Panamint mountains, the 4th mountain range between Death Valley and the sea, which is why it hardly rains in the valley because the clouds have shed their load at each of the mountain ranges on their way in land, and then down the other side. We could see sand dunes in the distance and the terrain became incredibly flat.
We turned off the main road onto a 2 mile dirt track to go to Mosaic Canyon, a thin, winding slice through the mountains that has been carved by flash flood water. The road's wave like surface caused us to slow to around 10 mph and the van rattled and shook, we thought we might fall apart, but eventually we crawled to a halt at the exit from the canyon. A walk up the canyon showed us the power of the water; white marble (that looks like snow in some of the photos), conglomerate and other rocks had been smoothed to a shine. The walls were gracefully curved and the ground littered with smooth gravel and pebbles like on a pebbly beach in Britain. It was quite hard going on the gravel with a continuous uphill climb and the heat started to get to us quite soon, so knowing that we had more to see and do, we turned back after about 40 mins. We stopped to watch a lizard and a few crickets but other than that we saw no sign of life. The return journey was much less arduous and only took us about 20 mins
After a quick stop at the ranger station to pay the park fee and pick up the free newspaper about the park, we drove a couple of miles to stop in a huge car park by the sand dunes. As we prepared to go out into the dunes (hats, water etc) a workman approached to tell us we were the first ever people into the car park. He had been working with a crew for 3 months to build the car park and we were the first vehicle to turn in after they removed the cones. So we have named the car park 'Robayo's Place' in honour of our great achievement and it will forever be part of our empire!
The dunes were hot, too hot. We tried to do some surfing on a seat cushion from the van but it didn't work and I ended up with sand in my shirt, shoes, trousers and worse. Between the dunes were areas with a crusty, cracked layer of salt and only spiny bushes grew. We could see hundreds of tiny tracks attesting to the abundance of wildlife in the area, they were mostly lizard and scorpion tracks, but some looked like a small rodent and others a coyote (that apparently are common in the area, though we haven't seen or heard any yet). The heat got the better of Tris and I and we returned to Robayo's place, left a small pile of sand on the roadside as we emptied out our shoes and clothes and then sat and drank ice cold coke... one of the benefits of having a van over a car is the presence of the fridge and freezer. We then ate cheese and biscuits, carrots and cucumber and ate a few crisps to replace our salt loss. Celso, on the other hand, was determined to get to the top of the tallest dunes we could see about a 1/2 mile from the van. He returned about a half hour later drenched in sweat, (it was even hot for him!) and very annoyed that he had a mark (tan line)from the vest shirt he was wearing.
At our next stop, Salt Creek, Celso refused to wear a shirt to try to get rid of his tan line, we walked along a boardwalk that traversed the salty surface of the desert. This area is below sea level and used to be a huge lake several thousand years ago. It is now the site of a creek, that has a variable level of water depending on the season, that flows along ancient paths and then just disappears into the sand. As the water flows it evaporates and gets more and more saline, at some times it has a salinity 5 times that of sea water but around the edges plants grow in their hundreds. Amazingly a species of fish called Pupfish, about an inch long, survive in this creek and have done so since the lakes that used to cover the area disappeared. There are about 11 different subspecies of Pupfish that survive in several different creeks, each subspecies is slightly different as they have adapted to the varying conditions in their particular creek, some are endangered, all are protected. We were lucky enough to see a large shoal (probably 30 individuals) in the higher reaches of the creek, as well as the huge footprints of one of their enemies in the crusty bottom of the stream - an egret or heron. It was really strange to see such an oasis of life in the hottest (on average over a year) place on earth.
Next stop was at the ruins of an old Borax mine, apparently the dried up lake is full of the stuff. The mine functioned for only 5 years in the 1880's and since it was such a long distance to the nearest railroad the raw materials were processed on site and only the pure Borax hauled out of Death Valley by wagons pulled by 20 mules. They hauled the Borax out and fresh water in, each return journey taking about 30 days so that several teams were required. Mainly Chinese workers, brought in from San Francisco, dug the raw material from the lake, poured it into large vats that were heated to dissolve the Borax and let all the other materials settle out. Then the liquid was poured into huge vats and the Borax crystallised out. Horrid, hot work for which they were paid $1.30 per day, but board was deducted and they had to buy their own food. Finally we drove on to visit the park's visitor centre only to find it full to the brim with folks visiting some sort of art festival... strange place to hold it, you would have thought, in the middle of Death Valley.
So instead we went immediately to a campsite and investigated a spot where we could go for a night walk to look for critters. After a fantastic steak (that has been marinating since yesterday in a wonderful concoction that Celso makes) with baked potatoes cooked on/in a wood fire with veggies and a cold beer, we sat out admiring the stars. I got my first view of the milky way (amazing) and so many stars that it makes the mind boggle. Then we went for a walk up into the hill with torches and a UV light, we spotted a couple of scorpions which glow in UV but very little else. We will be trying again later.
No luck with an y critters later and the moon came out
Sat 7
We got up early to do some more exploring before the sun got too hot. Our first stop was 17 miles to the south and 295ft below sea level at Badwater, so called because a man trying to get across death valley in the 1800's could not get his mule to take a drink from the water, he called the spring bad water and the name stuck. In fact the water is just extremely saline. Over the millenia salts have been washed down into the valley from the surrounding hills, but then the water evaporates. Water in the aquifer below the park feeds the Badwater spring and it bubbles up into the salt. At times throughout the year there are flash floods which then evaporate leaving amazing salt crystal formations. At the Devil's Golf Course (our second stop) we managed to walk amongst these amazing salt crystal shapes which were sculpted into sharp spikes so that only the Devil would play golf there. Next we drove the 4 mile loop road 'The Artist's Drive' along the base of the cliffs that enclose Death Valley, they are sculpted into the weirdest shapes and have the most amazing pastel colours from all the different salts, reds, pinks, maroons, blues, greens, yellows, whites and creams.
A quick stop at the visitor centre explained why Death Valley is so hot, told the story of how it got its name etc.
A 30 mile trip over the mountains that form the East wall of the valley took us to Rhyolite, a ghost town, once inhabited by 10000. It was a booming town during the time that silver was found in the hills around the valley, it had 3 banks, 3 railroads, a school, about 16 stores, a post office, a jail and a brothel. Many of the buildings were erected during the period 1905 - 1907 and were posh for their time with electricity, steam heating and some were multi storied. One of the strangest houses we saw was a house built in 1906 out of bottles, it was raffled off by the builder. Another building that remains largely in tact was one of the railroad offices, that after the town was abandoned in 1920 was also used as a casino. All of the wooden houses have been robbed out because wood is such a scarce commodity around those parts, some moved in their entirety to the nearest town of Beatty. The Rhyolite population since 1920 has stayed around about 20.
We then drove for about 2.5 hours through yet another valley of desertish terrain to get to Las Vegas. The valley had much more vegetation showing that it was not nearly as hot and dry as Death Valley (perhaps because it was much higher; around 2000ft; or perhaps because the mountain chains along its edges were more broken) but it was a harsh environment none the less. The ground was full of stones and sand, and the scrubby dry bushes grew in clumps occasionally interrupted by a Joshua tree or, what I like to call, a pineapple tree - a stumpy scaly type of palm with a top knot. We passed 2 of the most enormous prisons, and a sign that advised us that it was illegal to pick up hitch hikers! As we passed the road up to one prison the sign said 'Correctional Facility' and underneath 'Wildlife Viewing', with a big arrow - we thought that was quite appropriate.
Finally Las Vegas loomed out of the desert, it had lush green grass and a ridiculous array of electronic signs. We drove down The Strip to take a look at some of the casinos - they are completely crazy, out of one came a roller coaster, others have huge statues or waterfalls, it is like being in a great big theme park with immaculate buildings in gaudy colours. When we returned having parked up the van there was even piped music playing along most of the pavements. We watched people being punted around in gondolas at the Venetian, one guy singing opera to his passengers, we walked amongst flamingos, swans, guinea fowl and other birds in a huge garden at the Flamingo casino, walked through shopping centres in which none of the shops had any prices on the merchandise in the windows and generally watched the people become more and more drunk as night fell (it gets dark around 5pm here at the moment as the clocks have just gone back). More and more lights came on as it got darker and we found ourselves, instead of admiring the lights, thinking of the cost to the environment! At one point we were walking along the pavement behind a dancer dressed up in a bright red outfit, they looked like a Cancan dancer in frilly dress and high heels. An old woman with a walking stick poked the dancer's bottom on the left and right cheeks with the end of her cane, I looked at her and giggled. She was giggling too and said, 'He's so cute!', and I replied, 'I think it's a woman!' We walked on a bit and I was right, she was a female dancer, but she must be used to it as she didn't turn or react at all to the prodding. Nice to find a crazy old bat in a place like this, that old lady has some get up ad go!
The amount of porn around is quite incredible and fairly grotesque, not really our scene, but we had to try out a casino so we went into one where Tris could play games in an arcade. Tris is allowed to walk through any of the casinos as long as he is with an adult!! I tried my hands at craps, didn't have a clue what I was doing and gave up having lost $10 which was the stake I was prepared to lose. Tris spent $10 fighting monsters and people, riding motorbike and racing cars, playing air hockey, shooting aliens and having a great time in the arcade. Celso watched and spent nothing! I suppose we should have 'done' a show or gone to one of the museums or something, but we really didn't fancy it so we were back at the van by 8pm!! That's enough of Las Vegas for us, we shall drive round the rest of The Strip tomorrow to take some photos in the daylight but then we are out of here.
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Yosemite 3 - 4 Nov
Tue Nov 3
After refilling our Propane Gas (that we use for cooking, hot water (very rarely) and for the fridge when we are not plugged into an electricity supply), we set off 36 miles to the entrance of Yosemite National Park. We followed the path of the Merced river weaving along a valley, at one point a landslide had completely covered the road in boulders of all sizes, and we had to take a detour on a single lane stretch over two temporary bridges, waiting first for traffic coming the other way. The dry shrub covered hills started to give way to more sheer granite cliffs but the Merced river was a constant bubbling, fast flowing body of water through rocks of all sizes at our side. The Merced actually has its watershed in Yosemite and we were to follow it all the way into the Yosemite valley and we are now camped only a couple of hundred metres from it. From its banks you can see down into deep pools through the crystal clear water, and we watched trout swimming lazily in its current. After entering the park we had to pass through a narrow one way section of road that passed between two huge granite rocks; a very dramatic entrance(!); and then we continued, following the river, as the surrounding cliffs got higher and higher and slowly the slim, V shaped river valley we had been travelling along opened out into a wide, deep U shaped valley of glacial beginnings.
We passed a spring where clear, cold water was bubbling up out of the ground and then lazily winding its way down a short stream to join the Merced. All around it was now more lush, but the trees were showing their autumn colours and the road was just one breathtaking view after the other. We turned to the South and then West to make our way up to Tunnel view, from this point (right beside a 400m long tunnel dug through the granite to allow visitors in from the South West) you can look down the whole valley to the East; the green valley floor; the white, bare, granite expanse of El Capitan rising vertically up on the North side; the snow capped Clouds Rest and darker granite mound of Half Dome straight ahead, above the valley to the East; the jagged grey Sentinel Rock and towering spires of Cathedral Rocks to the South; and, from below Cathedral Rocks, the wispy white trail of water spilling down the vertical cliff face - Bridalveil falls. Everything was so dramatic and the sky above was so blue, the sun was shining from the South and casting dramatic shadows of Half Dome, Sentinel Rock and Cathedral Rocks over the valley, we sat and ate watermelon and stared, the only interruption was from some very bold ground squirrels who decided they wanted some of our fruit! Of course, having spent so much time trying to get close to ground squirrels the other day, it was infuriating that the ground squirrels came so close (within one metre) and we had left the camera back in the van while we ate!
We then drove back down the hill into the valley stopping to take a short walk up to the base of the Bridalveil Falls where we got some excellent photos in the mist of the falls. The rocks were incredibly smooth and slippery, even the dry ones, but the mountain goat footed Celso and Tristan managed to clamber up quite high.
Then we drove along the valley floor, stopping to admire the dramatically contrasting views of stark rock, blue sky, rounded boulders in the Merced River and the autumn colours of the vegetation. We spent so much time getting to the end of the valley (about 5 or 6 miles from the Bridalveil falls) that when we got there the whole valley was already in shadow, we got a campsite and then left the van to go for a two mile walk to the visitor centre and museum. At the entrance to the campsite we were given a talk on bear safety as, already this week, there have been two sitings in the campsite, one where a pizza was taken as it waited on the table to be eaten, and the second for a pie. On our hike we tried to keep off the main paths, following some hiking trails that stayed away from both bike and pavemented trails. We met an English couple who warned us that they had just met two black bears further up the path we were just about to take, he showed us some photos of a big male (complete with tracking tags and collar) and told us that the other one was even bigger, but they had been too busy getting out of its way to take any photos; we decided to take another route even though we are dying to see a bear. On our walk under El Capitan we could see huge white granite boulders, that had fallen down from the cliffs, dotted amongst the trees, apparently this is perfect mountain lion country, but as opposed to bears, with mountain lions you should stand and face them, shout and wave your arms as they are pretty shy and should run. Mountain lion encounters are much rarer than bear encounters.
At the museum we watched an Indian woman weaving a traditional basket, they also had an Indian village with signs that told you how the Indians used to live here. Their history goes back 4000 years, their staple diet was a mush made from acorns that were pounded in pestle and mortars made out of the granite rocks and the resultant 'flour' was then soaked for hours to get rid of the bitter tasting Tannins. There was a huge rock in the centre of the village that was an original site for such preparation with smooth round hollows in it up to 6 inches deep. Most of the houses were made from Sequoia bark that resisted fire, fungus etc just like the trees do, and in the village there is a ceremonial round house and sweat lodge that are still used by the local Indian community.
In the visitor centre we watched a film showing Yosemite in all seasons and informed us about the history of the making of the National Park. The first part of it (the valley and its immediate surrounds) was declared by Lincoln during the Civil War and then the rest by Roosevelt after a chap called John Muir realised that without protecting the watersheds of the rivers then really they were only doing half the job. Now the park encompasses 1200 square miles of mountain and valley, we will be crossing over the highest road part tomorrow, the Tioga Pass, at just under 10,000ft.
Wed 4th
No bears visited us in the night nor did we see any today, in fact the road we took was very devoid of animal and bird life, everything has gone to lower altitudes for the winter I think... but what an amazing drive.
We started up through a part of the upper valley that had been gutted by fire earlier this year, it was a barren and horrific view until you stopped to look closely and then you could see new green shoots poking their heads up through the ash - amazing how fire is so important in many plant life cycles in this region.
We had amazing views of mountains in the distance and eventually got to a spot where we were looking out over the end of Yosemite Valley from a smooth rock with just a couple of trees stuck on the top. The wind was blowing in gusts but the sun was also blazing, we were over 8000ft and we could tell from our shortness of breath.
A sign informed us that at that point the snow could reach 9m in depth, the road is closed for 9 months of the year, and usually takes about 4 weeks to clear of snow because of frequent rocks that fall with the ice and snow melt onto the road.
From that point we could see the bright blue of Tenaya lake further down the road. We stopped at the lake and it was at this point that we noticed the complete absence of any animal or bird life. The water was freezing but crystal clear and the rocks around the lake edge were smooth like ice from the endless cycles of snow, ice and melt.
Further on again we came to a meadow at 8600 ft. It was covered in brown grasses and small ground hugging plants interspersed with pine trees and small shrubs. On the shaded side there was a fair covering of snow; I presume left over from last year since we had been told there had been no snowfall for months when we enquired about the state of the road before we left the valley. There were also fantastic icicles where dripping water had formed stalactite formations.
We stopped to go for a walk across the meadow (this wasn't allowed just anywhere as they are trying to ensure that the alpine plants are not trampled), and we took a path that lead us over the Tuolumne River on a wooden bridge built in 1915 to visit what was called a Soda Spring, this was an area where water and bubbles were coming up through the ground leaving a red stain around where the tiny eruptions took place. A slight smell of sulphur was in the air but the water was freezing cold. Celso decided to taste the water and he said it was fine but with a slight sulphurous taste. You will see that all the views were just fantastic... I've run out of superlatives!
Not much further on we reached the highest point in our journey at the Tioga Pass at 9945ft, at this point we exited Yosemite and started to descend down into the High Valley between the Sierra Nevada Mountains (that contain the Sequoia, King's Canyon and Yosemite National Parks) and the White Mountains that separate California from Nevada. At Mono Lake, an enormous lake with islands in the middle in the centre of a completely dry and barren looking region, we turned south. We drove between the mountains with snow capped peaks to our left and right, the landscape changing dramatically between pine forest and open hillside with scrubby small bushes. We don't know why the trees grow in some places and not others... one theory is that the treeless places were logged long ago and have never recovered, but we don't know.
We have stopped for the night in a town called Bishop and plan to move on to Death Valley tomorrow.
After refilling our Propane Gas (that we use for cooking, hot water (very rarely) and for the fridge when we are not plugged into an electricity supply), we set off 36 miles to the entrance of Yosemite National Park. We followed the path of the Merced river weaving along a valley, at one point a landslide had completely covered the road in boulders of all sizes, and we had to take a detour on a single lane stretch over two temporary bridges, waiting first for traffic coming the other way. The dry shrub covered hills started to give way to more sheer granite cliffs but the Merced river was a constant bubbling, fast flowing body of water through rocks of all sizes at our side. The Merced actually has its watershed in Yosemite and we were to follow it all the way into the Yosemite valley and we are now camped only a couple of hundred metres from it. From its banks you can see down into deep pools through the crystal clear water, and we watched trout swimming lazily in its current. After entering the park we had to pass through a narrow one way section of road that passed between two huge granite rocks; a very dramatic entrance(!); and then we continued, following the river, as the surrounding cliffs got higher and higher and slowly the slim, V shaped river valley we had been travelling along opened out into a wide, deep U shaped valley of glacial beginnings.
We passed a spring where clear, cold water was bubbling up out of the ground and then lazily winding its way down a short stream to join the Merced. All around it was now more lush, but the trees were showing their autumn colours and the road was just one breathtaking view after the other. We turned to the South and then West to make our way up to Tunnel view, from this point (right beside a 400m long tunnel dug through the granite to allow visitors in from the South West) you can look down the whole valley to the East; the green valley floor; the white, bare, granite expanse of El Capitan rising vertically up on the North side; the snow capped Clouds Rest and darker granite mound of Half Dome straight ahead, above the valley to the East; the jagged grey Sentinel Rock and towering spires of Cathedral Rocks to the South; and, from below Cathedral Rocks, the wispy white trail of water spilling down the vertical cliff face - Bridalveil falls. Everything was so dramatic and the sky above was so blue, the sun was shining from the South and casting dramatic shadows of Half Dome, Sentinel Rock and Cathedral Rocks over the valley, we sat and ate watermelon and stared, the only interruption was from some very bold ground squirrels who decided they wanted some of our fruit! Of course, having spent so much time trying to get close to ground squirrels the other day, it was infuriating that the ground squirrels came so close (within one metre) and we had left the camera back in the van while we ate!
We then drove back down the hill into the valley stopping to take a short walk up to the base of the Bridalveil Falls where we got some excellent photos in the mist of the falls. The rocks were incredibly smooth and slippery, even the dry ones, but the mountain goat footed Celso and Tristan managed to clamber up quite high.
Then we drove along the valley floor, stopping to admire the dramatically contrasting views of stark rock, blue sky, rounded boulders in the Merced River and the autumn colours of the vegetation. We spent so much time getting to the end of the valley (about 5 or 6 miles from the Bridalveil falls) that when we got there the whole valley was already in shadow, we got a campsite and then left the van to go for a two mile walk to the visitor centre and museum. At the entrance to the campsite we were given a talk on bear safety as, already this week, there have been two sitings in the campsite, one where a pizza was taken as it waited on the table to be eaten, and the second for a pie. On our hike we tried to keep off the main paths, following some hiking trails that stayed away from both bike and pavemented trails. We met an English couple who warned us that they had just met two black bears further up the path we were just about to take, he showed us some photos of a big male (complete with tracking tags and collar) and told us that the other one was even bigger, but they had been too busy getting out of its way to take any photos; we decided to take another route even though we are dying to see a bear. On our walk under El Capitan we could see huge white granite boulders, that had fallen down from the cliffs, dotted amongst the trees, apparently this is perfect mountain lion country, but as opposed to bears, with mountain lions you should stand and face them, shout and wave your arms as they are pretty shy and should run. Mountain lion encounters are much rarer than bear encounters.
At the museum we watched an Indian woman weaving a traditional basket, they also had an Indian village with signs that told you how the Indians used to live here. Their history goes back 4000 years, their staple diet was a mush made from acorns that were pounded in pestle and mortars made out of the granite rocks and the resultant 'flour' was then soaked for hours to get rid of the bitter tasting Tannins. There was a huge rock in the centre of the village that was an original site for such preparation with smooth round hollows in it up to 6 inches deep. Most of the houses were made from Sequoia bark that resisted fire, fungus etc just like the trees do, and in the village there is a ceremonial round house and sweat lodge that are still used by the local Indian community.
In the visitor centre we watched a film showing Yosemite in all seasons and informed us about the history of the making of the National Park. The first part of it (the valley and its immediate surrounds) was declared by Lincoln during the Civil War and then the rest by Roosevelt after a chap called John Muir realised that without protecting the watersheds of the rivers then really they were only doing half the job. Now the park encompasses 1200 square miles of mountain and valley, we will be crossing over the highest road part tomorrow, the Tioga Pass, at just under 10,000ft.
Wed 4th
No bears visited us in the night nor did we see any today, in fact the road we took was very devoid of animal and bird life, everything has gone to lower altitudes for the winter I think... but what an amazing drive.
We started up through a part of the upper valley that had been gutted by fire earlier this year, it was a barren and horrific view until you stopped to look closely and then you could see new green shoots poking their heads up through the ash - amazing how fire is so important in many plant life cycles in this region.
We had amazing views of mountains in the distance and eventually got to a spot where we were looking out over the end of Yosemite Valley from a smooth rock with just a couple of trees stuck on the top. The wind was blowing in gusts but the sun was also blazing, we were over 8000ft and we could tell from our shortness of breath.
A sign informed us that at that point the snow could reach 9m in depth, the road is closed for 9 months of the year, and usually takes about 4 weeks to clear of snow because of frequent rocks that fall with the ice and snow melt onto the road.
From that point we could see the bright blue of Tenaya lake further down the road. We stopped at the lake and it was at this point that we noticed the complete absence of any animal or bird life. The water was freezing but crystal clear and the rocks around the lake edge were smooth like ice from the endless cycles of snow, ice and melt.
Further on again we came to a meadow at 8600 ft. It was covered in brown grasses and small ground hugging plants interspersed with pine trees and small shrubs. On the shaded side there was a fair covering of snow; I presume left over from last year since we had been told there had been no snowfall for months when we enquired about the state of the road before we left the valley. There were also fantastic icicles where dripping water had formed stalactite formations.
We stopped to go for a walk across the meadow (this wasn't allowed just anywhere as they are trying to ensure that the alpine plants are not trampled), and we took a path that lead us over the Tuolumne River on a wooden bridge built in 1915 to visit what was called a Soda Spring, this was an area where water and bubbles were coming up through the ground leaving a red stain around where the tiny eruptions took place. A slight smell of sulphur was in the air but the water was freezing cold. Celso decided to taste the water and he said it was fine but with a slight sulphurous taste. You will see that all the views were just fantastic... I've run out of superlatives!
Not much further on we reached the highest point in our journey at the Tioga Pass at 9945ft, at this point we exited Yosemite and started to descend down into the High Valley between the Sierra Nevada Mountains (that contain the Sequoia, King's Canyon and Yosemite National Parks) and the White Mountains that separate California from Nevada. At Mono Lake, an enormous lake with islands in the middle in the centre of a completely dry and barren looking region, we turned south. We drove between the mountains with snow capped peaks to our left and right, the landscape changing dramatically between pine forest and open hillside with scrubby small bushes. We don't know why the trees grow in some places and not others... one theory is that the treeless places were logged long ago and have never recovered, but we don't know.
We have stopped for the night in a town called Bishop and plan to move on to Death Valley tomorrow.
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