Day 12 - Grand Canyon to Cortez

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The Grand Canyon to Cortez via Monument Valley - 38°c

Only just a little bit fragile from the night before, I woke up when my alarm went off at 7am and showered and packed ready for the coach departing at 7:45am. It was marginally comforting to see that the majority of the people attending the room parties last night were all feeling just as delicate as me this morning! And as I boarded the coach and noted the sea of heads peering above the seat in front each looking just as unenthusiastic about the early start as the next, I couldn’t help but smile!

About 45 minutes after leaving the lodge, we arrived at a tower just south of the Grand Canyon where once again we got off and were treated for further spectacular views of the canyon, the colours of the rocks just as bright this morning thanks to the clear blue cloudless sky as they have been every other day. It was an 86 step climb up to the top of the tower, which admittedly was a slight push this morning given our conditions, but hey, I must keep following the mantra of “carpé diem” and seize every opportunity that presents itself to me at every part of the trip!

After taking our final photos of the canyon, 30 minutes later it was soon time to leave and we boarded the coach headed in the direction of Monument Valley. En route we stopped off at a service station-style place with a supermarket and fast food restaurants where I picked up some lunch. We passed through the desert, through Arizona and Utah, and as I look out of the coach it still amazes every time we travel on to the next stop on the tour, the sheer vastness of everything. The land that just reaches far and wide until the horizon ends and the clear blue sky begins, in particular the arid yet beautiful desert unspoilt and untouched by humanity aside from the one road meandering through the centre of it. Even though we’re only 5 days into the Contiki tour, it’s yet to get boring on the coach, staring out the windows and seeing America as it’s meant to be seen. - Driven through, taken in and absorbed, rather than being flown over at 30,000 or so feet above the clouds. This is the REAL America and it’s just amazing and everything I ever imagined and hoped it would be and so infinitely much more.

It took a further two hours to reach Monument Valley, but it was worth it once we did. The views were once again stunning, spoilt only by the fact that we’d been seeing the Grand Canyon for the past two days and such rock formations have become an everyday occurrence rather than as special as they should be. We got off the Contiki bus and into the 40°c plus heat, and headed for 3 separate smaller buses, driven by Native Americans who took us around Monument Valley and pointed out all of the highlights of the rock formations and shared their ancient history of which they’re fiercely proud. Also interesting was the number of movies that have been made out here. Hundreds of westerns have been shot out here in the ‘wild west’, especially John Wayne’s movies, and he’s quite an icon out here with the Natives! - I’m sure my Dad could have chatted for a good while with some of these guys out here about their stories of Mr Wayne, being the massive fan that he is! And Dad if you’re reading this, I got loads of good pics you’ll love and hopefully recognise from all the western movies that Mum’s always having a go at you for continuously watching night after night!!

After a 90 minute drive around and through Monument Valley by our local tour guides, we boarded our coach on our continuing journey across to Cortez, but 20 minutes into the journey we made a surprise stop by the side of the road, where Kristina our tour guide told us that if we were to look back from where we’d just driven, we’d be standing in the exact same spot as where ‘Forrest Gump’ did when we was running and all of a sudden decided to turn back! Very cool and the backdrop was truly beautiful, cue more photos!

Once back on the coach, we continued driving for another couple of hours while Kristina put ‘Forrest Gump’ on the onboard coach DVD player system. We later arrived at our hotel for he night in Cortez, a fairly small town with not a whole lot going on. We had another Contiki-included dinner at ‘La Fiesta Mexicana’, a Mexican restaurant near the hotel. The décor inside was very Mexican, with bright colours everywhere and mismatching and clashing furniture and seat, quite authentic! I had a massive portion of nachos for my meal which was very nice, and definitely could have been halved and still been enough.

After dinner I headed down to Wal-Mart with Nathan, Tim, (UK) Michelle and Carissa. It was only 10-minute walk away, and it was of course just another regular enormous place with everything under the sun available. Amongst a few snacks, I bought a new wallet since mine has completely fallen apart and I’ve been losing coins everywhere I go! Nothing particularly fancy, but it will do the job for the remainder of the tour!

Once back at the hotel, I sat in the hotel room with Scott who’d stayed behind to chill out for a while, and Nathan who came along to join us. We sat and watched ‘Sex and the City’, and when some of the girls joined us mid-way through, they made big mention of the hilarity of seeing 3 guys watching ‘Sex and the City’ together!

Following that, ‘Sister Act’ came on and more and more people came in to watch it with us which was cool, in the background of the movie I seemed to be running a free internet café with everybody wanting to use my laptop and the hotel’s free wi-fi to update their Facebook pages and keep in touch with people back home with email! With one of the girls exchanging some of her ice cream for the use of my laptop, which was so sweet!

Eventually I closed my little self-made (non-profit!) business for the night and headed to bed around 1am.

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