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Published: July 29th 2009
Cortez to Albuquerque - 34°c
We all had to be up, ready and at the coach for 7:45am this morning, and although a free breakfast was included today, I both couldn’t be bothered to get up even earlier than I had to already, and also wasn’t hungry enough to warrant having it anyway. At the moment, I seem to be eating when I’m told to and not necessarily when I’m hungry, and when it’s as hot outside as it has been at the moment every day, my appetite has been severally decreased anyway and all I truly crave is ice cold water! - I can’t remember the last time I bought so many bottles of water!
Once aboard the coach, we headed a good hour and a half in the direction of Albuquerque to Durango, where we stopped off and met up with a photographer for our Contiki group photo, with the far-off mountains as our background. It was quite a feat for the poor guy to arrange 51 of us (49 plus Kristina our tour guide and Jerry our driver), but somehow he managed to and took some shots for us to then get a copy of later in the tour.
From there, we drove into another part of Durango for our optional excursions. Some of the tour had opted for the jeep rides through the Rocky Mountains (which seemed fairly tame in comparison!), whilst the main bulk of us (including me) had opted for white water rafting! Having never done rafting before, when the option sheet came around to sign, it was a healthy combination of peer pressure and my own manta of seizing the moment that made me sign up for it! But I’m so glad I did!
We had to pack a change of clothes with us in our day bags this morning ‘in case’ we got wet, so I changed into those when we arrived since I didn’t want to be wearing those for the group photo where everyone would be paying for a decent shot of us all!
We met up with the crew who would be attempting to get us down the rapids safely, and admittedly their joke-y but good natured humoured comments of “you’ll get soaked”, “we lost a guy yesterday” and “mind out for the piranhas” did fairly little to settle my nerves! We boarded another bus with them and headed down to the rapids where we separated into 5 groups of 6, put on our lifejackets and got aboard our inflatable raft. No sooner had we got in and each grabbed a paddle, everyone on the other rafts decided it would be an hilarious idea to soak everyone on other rafts, and massive waves of water came our way from other people’s paddles and buckets that were conveniently located on board! Within minutes of boarding the raft, I, like everyone else was drenched through, right down to my underwear!
The first part of the rapids was a very gentle ride, just slowly paddling down the Colorado river and taking in the beautiful landscapes either side and ahead. The scenery truly was stunning and very picturesque, and it was a great shame that I was unable to take my digital camera, but since it isn’t waterproof, two minutes in when I got soaked through I was glad I hadn’t brought it! Thankfully (Aussie) Michelle brought her camera, which was waterproof, and managed to get some good shots of us all looking like drowned rats as we paddled along!
It took a good 2 hours to get down the river, the current at the latter part being somewhat stronger and creating a few drops and spins in amongst the large rocks sticking out of the riverbed. It was a great thing to do, and once we’d finished I wished that the current had have been stronger throughout and made it even more exciting!
Drenched, we caught the shuttle back to where we parked the Contiki coach, where we had an hour to explore the area and pick up some lunch. I grabbed a few things from the supermarket and sat out in the sun to eat, dry off and work on my tan some more!
We headed back to the coach for another 2-hour trip to a small town called Cuba here in the state of New Mexico (which is actually the USA not Mexico!) where we had a quick stop off before getting back on the coach for another 2-hour trip to Albuquerque.
After a bit of sleeping and a bit of listening to my iPod, we arrived in Albuquerque and checked into our very Mexican-looking hotel! It’s yet another beautiful hotel, and so far each hotel we arrive at is outdoing the one we’ve just left each and every time! We had about an hour and a half to get freshened up before we headed out to dinner, and it was so funny to note that within minutes of arriving there was a mass of Facebook status updates from everyone on the Facebook homepage! - There’s actually now a challenge between us all to be the first to get into our rooms, boot up the free Internet and update our Facebook statuses! I won today by 30 seconds!
We had dinner in another Mexican restaurant inside the hotel. I had chicken enchiladas, which were really good! I sat with the guys, Nathan, Tim and Scott and we had a real good laugh about the rafts earlier on over our meals.
After dinner we walked out of the restaurant and straight into the hotel bar, where everybody else seemed to be congregating too. It was a great little bar and the barmaid was incredibly generous with her shots! Every time anyone ordered a mixer-drink, she’d just hold the bottle up above the glass and just stand there with it pouring out! I kept ordering Malibu and cranberry, and no word of a lie they were three quarters Malibu, one-quarter cranberry every single time!
We had such a laugh in the bar, especially with Kristina our tour guide and Jerry our bus driver who had joined us too. (Jerry for only one drink thankfully!) Unfortunately the hotel bar was only open until 10pm, so after it closed everyone was in such high spirits that we walked the 5-minute trip down the road to a bar called ‘Neds’. Oh my god was this bar good! Not only was it free entry, there a DJ playing great songs to which I continuously dragged some of the girls up to dance with me, but also it was ‘$2 Tuesday’! Every drink was just $2 all night and boy did we all make good use of it! We were there until around 1:30am and everyone was so drunk and was laughing about things until we were crying! (British) Danielle was keeping us all in hysterics with her very vivid stories about her sex life, and was telling the stories so well that everyone agreed she could be a stand-up comedian! Eventually some of the group left in waves, and I left with the second wave of Scott, Andre and Naman, the hysterical laughing continuing right back to the hotel and to mine and Scott’s hotel room long after we’d switched the lights off! - Definitely, for me at least, the best night of the tour so far!
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Sarah
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Albert's cookies!
Do you remember that song?! "Hot dog, jumping frog, Aaaalllbert's cookies" ??? AAAlbuquerque! xxx