A Hike to Paradise


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North America » United States » Arizona » Supai
July 4th 2007
Published: July 4th 2007
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The Havasupai Indian Tribe consists of 650 people and have lived in their remote village for over 700 years. They are very traditional in some senses: farming is still a dominant way of life, they prefer to speak in their own language, and you can't take their picture because they're afraid it will "steal their soul". Some of the luckier tribesmen, however, do enjoy modern amenities like television (Direct TV is the only signal that can reach out there) and get to tote around their dirt roads on golf carts. There wasn't any public access to phones (don't even bother bringing your cellular) and any major supplies had to be flown in by helicopter. Overall, their standard of living was very poor and simple, we could have been in a remote jungle village in Vietnam and it wouldn't have looked much different (minus Charlie everywhere). One thing that was glaringly apparent was that all of these Indians were morbidly obese! Either they were eating the travelers or the entire village had a major genetic glandular problem. I swear I saw one of their skinny, malnourished horses beg for mercy as it was being saddled.

Havasupai translates to People-Of-The-Blue-Green-Waters and that's what we were looking to find. After the 10 mile hike through the ravine to the village, there is another 3 mile hike to get to the first waterfall. We met a hiker in Sedona who swore it would be worth it to make the trek to a subsequent fall which was another 2 miles downstream. This hiker didn't give us very good information, he told us we could barter cigarettes and reefer with the Indians for an authentic Havasupai meal. Since we didn't have the latter, we bought some American Spirit cigarettes on the drive out to see if we could make a "good trade". It turned out we couldn't give those damn cigarettes away. We just hoped he was right about making the extra hike....



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