The End of the Roadtrip... and America

What do we spy upon entrance into the hostel in flagstaff? A grand canyon tour that costs $70! It occurred to us that we could get people there a lot cheaper. We had a look at the list. Unbelievably Hikmet Babayev was on it (the name of a friend of Matts from oxford). It then also occurred to us that this was not a common name. Within an hour, we had met and caught up, particularly talking about the size of the world and transferred Hik to the Stu and Steve Canyon Tour along with another girl called Abby. In the morning, with brimming car, we all sped north. The grand canyon is big. Very big. We walked down under the rim and then along the top (southern side) with jaws rubbing along the ground. It also has unimaginably beautiful sunsets. Go - ‘Nuff said. On the way back we also nipped out of the car in the middle of the arse end of the tip of isolation, middle of no-whereness, which was conveniently dark, to look at the stars. Properly saw the milky way and lots of other sparkly delights, which was an amazing way to finish the day. It’s worth mentioning that the organised tour fails to bring you this delight, nor sunset at the Grand Canyon, but it must also be admitted that Stu and Steve’s tour is prone to leaving an hour late when the leading pair don’t realise they have crossed a time zone and forget to put their watched forward…Ahem. The next day Hik joined us on the trip to Vegas. Since we were staying in separate paces we agreed to meet up and then completely failed to do so, which bemuses all concerned. We went on to have a fairly enjoyable stay however (see previous post).

After Vegas, with ever low energy levels we once again hit the road and this time reached Death Valley! We only really had time to see the sunset, so we popped up Dantes View and were once again treated to a beautiful show, with breathtaking scenery and twisted orange clouds. To maximise time, funds, and to ensure we had a really refreshing night we decided to sleep in the car in the visitor centre car park. Was lovely, if a bit chilly in the morning!! Not to worry, we had leftover Walmart monster uber sandwich and a packet of Pringles for breakfast!! We headed south through the park, taking in salt flats at Americas lowest point (about 85m below sea level) and more long straight roads with 360 panoramas, interspersed with mountain passes. This journey would take us all the way to LA, where driving is, well, bloody hard. We managed to navigate our way to our hostel however, right on Hollywood boulevard, and then to the basketball game we had booked that evening (still wide awake of course…).

The game was a classic, close till the end with the whole crowd on their feet, literally. We also had the added bonuses of gaining free t-shirts for filling out 400 ballot for the all star team (don’t ask, it took a while but was worth it) and once again sneaking to seats at least 10 times as expensive as ours (once again literally!!). Unfortunately our team (the Clippers) did not prevail, it appears they are at the lower end of the good-bad spectrum, and walking around in clippers tops the next day the LA public made this fact even more apparent by laughing in our general direction.

We had a flight to catch so only had time to fit in the rest of Hollywood boulevard, Beverly Hills, Bel Air and the beach, which also included Stu getting chased by Darth Vader, and me getting jumped on by Spiderman. One of the more quiet days on the world tour!!

We hit the airport in the afternoon, jumped on a plane, got ourselves to Lima and went to sleep… finally. We are now right in the heart of a colourful, throbbing, city and planning the next couple of months. We’ve got air back in the lungs and energy in the legs. Lets do it again!!!!!