I woke up long after everyone else, they had been awoken by marg to see a sunrise - without the clouds and apparently it was amazing....... Yippee!!!!!!!
This was the morning Amy decided to be in the foulest mood ever, for know reason other than cos she could be. Talk about being awkward!!!! Anyway after a breakfast of eggs in blankets we set off for Monument Valley. On the way we stopped off to take pictures of an apparent famous view..... clearly i aint watched enough cowboy and indian films., though it was a cool sight.
We reached the Navajo Reservation and stopped off at a garage for the essential wee stop and a talking to about native american cultures and all the dos and donts for the day. We then drove to the place where the days activities were starting from dropping off onroute Sarah and Andy as they didnt wanna play.... They were left in the most rundown roadside market in the world ever and told we would be picking them up in a couple of hours!
Anyway once we parked up it was over to the Navajo.... who we had been warned had there own way of doing things and boy did they deliver........ everything took hours.... we must have waited for 90 mins for them to find the dozen horses and couple of jeeps we requested. Me and ames took the jeep ride..... 35 bucks for a couple of hours whizzing around native american desert with a couple of navajo indians! And they could certainly go, the 4-6 miles to monument valley tribal park was an adventure in itself with the boiling desert air rushing past our faces at 60 mph it was difficult to breath at times.
Upon entering the park we stopped off at a raised platau where there were several natives selling jewellery. Are guide introduced himself in his native language and talked about his people and the tribal park before repeating himself in english. The views were amazing.... these huge raised platforms which the natives refer to as big and little tables. We carried on around the park looking at huge monuments.... 3 tall monoliths that looked like a w the natives called the 3 sisters that welcomed them to the park..... an indian and an eagle etched into the humungous cliff..... tall totem like rock structures and a sleeping dragon.
As we were driven around the park we stopped regularly to be told how the indians live today, how they use the desert plants and how each winter the valley floods and forms huge lakes. Our final stop was another film set.... this one being the snake pit from Indiana Jones. We were told to sit down and look up at the open hole above us as you could see an eagles head etched in the rock....... Our guide then got out several native flute like instruments which he proceded to play such mystical music from.
We returned to the bus to find sarah and Andy had been picked up and apparently ended up being left with no food and water for 4 hours...... they were not best pleased to say the least!!!!!!
The next stop of the day was to be Lake Powell, a man made lake of an enormous scale said to have been created by flooding a valley more beautiful than Yosemite...... Vegas has gotta get its water somehow!!!!!!
(Neil says i apparantly have to write this bit....why im not sure!)
At the lake we parked at the top, miles from the actual water, seems a little unfair as we were so damn hot! Set off to find the lovely refreshing water, but there seemed to be no path down there. Took the route which seemed to be the least scary, we were at the top of rocks! Problem was it was the wrong way to go....and we got stuck....me being just stupid me and my new friend Vicky. Hiked for what seemed like forever, through all the Yahoos broken glass...and eventually found all the other guys spashing about in the river!!!! mmm....water was nice....so refreshing and clear. Sat on a huge rock. Everyone was playing their usual game of dunking. Jimmy especially seemed intent on drowning Tom, who had made us late buying a watch in a dodgy shop! Not sure he won though. Thought i would join in and got neil good and proper....was so funny!!!!!
Hiked back to the top - man im sick of all these bloody hills (has no-one here heard of a digger? Send in Bob the Builder!), and rejoined the stinky old bus!
Next it was time for a night out in a Cowboy town and the promise of Karioke!
I'll pass back to Neil now, cause i really can't be bothered to type all of the remaining complicated story!!!
Yeehah!! our first Yahoo town and boy was it fun!!!! We set off for the italian we'd been recommended and the promise of calzones as big as our heads..... We were all starving and ended up waiting for ages as they processed us all as a large group.... they get a big compulsary tip that way! After ages our food turned up, ours was a delicious bbq chicken calzone but not everyone else was so lucky..... Torston and sarahs pasta was cold and even when sent back it took half an hour to reappear obviously microwaved but still cold!!!! and then there was the other table.... the orders all got mixed up and the waitress proceded to move the food around with her hands.... not surprisingly there were not impressed. When the bills came ours was massively wrong so after discussing protocol with our driver we requested the manager who after much annoyence gave us about 14 bucks off. It didnt stop there tho as jimmy had left and as we were leaving they acused him of not paying which we knew he had.
All this aside we decided to head off to the karioke bar for a few nice beers and some very ott songs.
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