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Published: March 27th 2011
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Hoover dam
We had to pass some dam police to get here and now we get here there are so many dam cars on it.
The dam is pretty dam big and the bridge dam high so all in all it was dam impressive :) El canyon grandes … was the last thing on my USA-to-do-list.
So after some research I found that doing the trip out from Vegas made more sense than to move to Flagstaff and do it from there so I booked a trip(the cheapest one I could find) for yesterday.
There was a bus-shuttle-pick-up-service which passed by at around 5h45 so ye I had to get up pretty early.
The shuttle brought us to a place where we got divided in people who were going to the south rim and those going to the west rim(which is actually also the south rim but the west part of that south rim)
I was going to the west rim, which is located in a big Indian reserve which was actually a nation.
Ye, although the people are subject to US military duty(if applied) and serious crimes are investigated by the almighty FBI, the reserve is a nation within the USA with their own laws, police and such things.
The 3hr ride over was OK since our driver was an amusing fellah who had a whole lot to say about pretty much anything we drove past.
The under way stop at Hoover dam was
also cool where we had access to a side-walk on a bridge not far from the dam with an awesome view of the entire hoover dam site.
After this quick side-stop we set course once more to the grand canyon's west rim.
At about half an hour drive from our final stop we pulled over again to switch to an older bus which would take us the final part of the trip over some dirt road(although the road is used a lot, the Americans don’t want to pave it since its Indian land and the Indians simply cant afford to do so.).
After a bumpy ride we got to a small airport where we could take a helicopter flight into the canyon or take a shuttle bus to one of the view-points, which I did.
And like in the old Indian movies, the land here is sacred, which meant we couldn’t remove anything(like rocks or plants) and were asked to show respect to nature like U would when in a church.
So I arrived at the first stop where you could enjoy a marvellous view if the canyon and … the skywalk.
The skywalk is pretty much a
Skywalk
Its here where Luke got his name... 2m wide walkpath which makes a loop, starting and ending at the edge of the canyon and reached about 7to10meters out from that edge.
Now this is already a quite impressive place to be, but what made the package complete is that the floor of that skywalk is made of glass.
Which, yes, meant that if U were to look down between your two big toes, U could see about 300meters down, which took some getting used too.
You weren’t allowed to make pictures there though, they did that for U and U could buy those pics afterwards.
Kay, after this first amazing spot where we checked out the canyon for the first time it was time to move on to the second, a 5min bus ride took us there.
This one was a place where we could eat our free meal included in the trip and a rather amazing ridge stretching about 100m into the canyon with a little hill at the end of it.
U can imagine the view from the top of that hill was beyond awesome, it was like a 300° view of the canyon and the Colorado river all the way down there.
On
Long way down
apparently if u jump off and dont hit anything till the bottom it takes about 9seconds to get there the way back I met a Hungarian girl who insisted on taking my picture and was pretty nice so I ended up spending the rest of the afternoon with her.
The third and last stop was a ranch. I figured since it was included in the trip it would be a cool place but it kinda turned out to be a cheesy remake of a cowboy ranch where U could eat, sit on a horse, take pictures with some authentic cowboy and that sort of stuff.
An hour later the bus was ready to leave for Vegas and so we did.
I arrived at Vegas pretty tired so I ended up taking it easy at night.
So now it is Sunday, I have checked out of my room and have nothing planned for today except doing some laundry and getting to the airport by midnight.
In the early morning of Monday I am flying to Cancun where I will arrive at around 2pm local time(the flight makes a stop at Atlanta).
I already found out that the weather is 'nice' in Yucatan, in the place where I will be staying the first 5nights, Merida, it currently is a whopping
Lunch
It wasnt so good but the view was awesome. 40°C.
They say that after two days or so it should settle at a good 30ish degrees when I guess I will start going to all the places I want to see in Yucatan.
Cheerios 😉
Pieje
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Marjolein
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Womanizer;-)