...sorry for not updating more often, but I really have not felt in the mood to blog about this trip... I wasn't shy of talking about it before we departed but now we're on it I don't seem to want to shout about all the places we've been. It's actually difficult to believe people are that interested, even though they say are!
We're just coming to the end of a long pit stop in Seattle - we desperately needed a proper break after crossing the entire diagonal of the USA from the tip of Florida in the south-east to the very north-west of Washington State. Mostly we've done nothing while we are here - which is exactly what we needed (and wanted) to do. I haven't even got this blog up to date, but here's a chunk for the South and the South-West...
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Montserrat was a major disappointment. Kate's written about it elsewhere, and we'll add a co-written post about it, but the short version is - the island is dead on its feet, having barely recovered from Hurricane Hugo back in the Nineties before the volcano knocked the stuffing right out of it. It doesn't seem to realise it's dead yet, but it's a zombie economy, with little money circulating and even less of a viable future, as far as we could see. The guesthouse we stayed in was on its last legs too - the owner/operators are very nice but they are too old and frail for the job now - most entrepreneurial youngsters have left the island to live and work elsewhere, so no-one is there to step in - and with comparatively high prices for a distinctly non-luxury experience, in which we felt increasingly like we were being passed around her island acquaintances to spread some of our money, we were less than impressed. Sadly Kate couldn't find much in the way of Proustian moments to remind her of when she lived there as a child - amazingly the pool boy was still the same guy (an old man, now), as was the poolside furniture (it matches the photos from the 80s), but the rest had changed too much for the memories of a six-year-old to match up. Add to all that a week of rainstorms and cloud, with very little in the way of decent sunshine - but plenty of mosquitoes - and we actually tried to leave early, only to find changing our flights would be absurdly expensive... so we stayed put.
So as you can imagine at this point morale was not high among the troops - the first month had been not exactly miserable but certainly not how we had hoped. Fingers crossed for the next phase, eh?
There was no sudden change, that's for sure - the bad weather continued to plague us through southern and western Florida, tipping biblical rain on us at various points around Tampa. We did like the Gulf Coast a lot more though - it was greener, cleaner and less in-your-face commercialised than the Atlantic Coast. As we worked our way up around the panhandle area we came to like it more and more, with the state capital Tallahassee proving to be an unexpected little gem. The pretty little towns along the coast also charmed, although the preserved historic ones like Apalachicola were vastly preferable to the immaculately manicured rich vacationers' resorts like Sunshine, which was so 'perfect' it was used, almost unaltered, as the entirely artificial town in the Truman Show. Evidently the film's producers recognised the same slightly sinister effect of the gleaming suburban perfection on display, though it didn't seem to dampen the enthusiasm of the residents and holidaymakers.
After *finally* escaping Florida - felt like we'd been there for months - we crossed into Alabama & Mississippi. Keen to move inland for a change of scenery, we consulted Lonely Planet... which had very little to say! Quite rightly too, as it turned out - there was really not much to see. Curiously the most pleasing thing about southern Mississippi is how British the countryside looked - quite unexpected! For some reason the gently rolling landscape, grassy fields and patches of mixed woodland looked just like what you might see either side of the M4. Perhaps the colonists made it look that way intentionally to remind them of home. Either way it was pleasing to the eye after miles of sandy scrub, palm trees and pine forests.
The one place we did seek out, and enjoy, was Natchez, another historic town with well-preserved buildings, perched on the banks of the mighty Mississippi itself. We roughly followed the river downstream from there to New Orleans, taking a slightly circuitous route in order to visit the amazing Atchafalaya, a huge area of swampland where three rivers converge to create a vast flooded area home to alligators, crawfish and slightly eccentric Cajun people, one of whom took us out on a boat tour to admire the stunning scenery.
When we actually made it to the Big Easy, we were ready for some big city life - the South was interesting, but not somewhere we could feel at home. I wouldn't want to live in New Orleans either, but it's got much more to offer, even if it is ultimately doomed by rising sea levels. We had a nice couple of days poking around the French Quarter and nearby sights, eating at fancy restaurants (NOLA in particular was fantastic) and walking down Bourbon Street a couple of times, even if the neon-clad strip bars didn't actually draw us in any further... on the final night that we were there, we were sort-of tempted, but we had to get up early the next day to catch the train, and since that particular train only departs three times a week, we couldn't exactly just sleep in and get the next one. Maybe next time...
Said train was the Sunset Empire Amtrak service from New Orleans to Los Angeles, though we were only taking it as far as El Paso, at the far (western) end of Texas. I'd taken a long-distance train in America before, so I knew what to expect, but it was new for Kate. They never seem to go very fast, and they frequently stop to let freight trains cross in front, or simply end up halted in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason, but as long as you expect this and treat it as part of the adventure, they are fun. Your fellow passengers are usually an odd-but-engaging mix of long-distance travellers with plenty of stories to tell, and while the average speed may be low, they are persistent, and you end up covering huge distances. I'd say it's worth springing for your own (tiny) cabin, as the privacy and ability to sleep properly are valuable commodities when you're on a train for more than 24 hours...
Deposited in El Paso, with Ciudad Juarez lurking over the Rio Grande in Mexico like a disreputable uncle, we were quite suddenly in the West. Gone were the green woods, the swamps and the beaches - now we found ourselves in a world of dusty canyons, broad plains, jagged peaks and exposed rock. We were to see a lot of that - particularly the exposed rock - over the next few weeks!
We started our next epic drive by heading up through New Mexico, visiting White Sands National Monument (no trouble with whatever the US equivalent of the Trades Descriptions Act is there...) before some epic driving across the valleys and up into the mountains. Kate understandably gets a little nervous when I take the car swooping around long, winding roads (particularly when there are deep and steep drop-offs ready to welcome careless drivers), but I was really enjoying it - it's certainly a change from learner-driving around the streets of Acton and Ealing... as is whipping along dead-straight roads for mile after mile with virtually no traffic in sight (I may have mentioned doing that in Florida too but the roads are really good in New Mexico!)
In northern New Mexico we enjoyed the rather glamorous Santa Fe (peculiar in its wealthy isolation from the often dirt poor surroundings), visited the interesting Los Alamos (legitimately proud of its nuclear exploits) and whizzed through the hot-dog-jumpin'-frog Albuquerque. There was a lot of interesting information about the pre-USA history of the area, particularly the exploits of the Spanish, who were in charge (or at least attempted to be) for quite some time, and about the true Wild West era, brief as it was, with the Lincoln County wars, featuring, among others, the one-and-only Billy The Kid (who was basically an unpleasant thug who lived a deeply unglamorous life).
After that we headed due west into Arizona, where the rock-watching went to new heights... first up was Canyon de Chelly (pronounced 'du Shay', for no adequately explained reason) where we did proper hiking again. We hadn't laced up our boots in anger since North Carolina, so this ws a good opportunity to test our fitness for the Grand Canyon. We passed, though the heat was impressive, and we knew that it would only get hotter...
Next up was Monument Valley, where we got on horses for the first time in years - another test, in this case for the ranch in Wyoming. Neither of us fell off, but we weren't filled with boundless confidence... in particular I was quite worried that I wouldn't be able to keep up and/or properly control my horse for anything other than a simple ride on the flat. More on that later... but in the mean time I was glad to have better weather than the last time I was here, so I could get some better pictures. It did cloud over later though, so the jeep tour after the horseriding was a bit lacklustre (and went on a bit too long!)
Before long we were in Flagstaff meeting our tour guide and our other hiking companion, Jayci (stripper's name, but in actual fact a good guy and an experienced canyon guide) and Kristen (really nice, even if she was an eeevil investment banker back in New York). After a slightly ropey start where the guide forgot which hotel we were staying in... and failed to pick us up on time... and then disappeared for an hour while we waited at the trailhead... and then turned up slightly bloodied but with no explanation for the delay, we had a great hike!
As expected it was brutally hot during the day, and didn't cool down all that much at night either, at least until the early hours, but we were well-prepared and expertly guided to our camps, and to water sources. Most days we started walking at sun-up or even before, using the shade of the canyon walls to our advantage, and we made the most of water-soaked head-coverings and sunhats. We were usually done hiking by mid-morning, so we could sit out the extreme heat of the afternoon, in shade or literally in the side creeks, which were flowing well with pleasantly cool water. I spent one afternoon sitting reading in a small pool I had scooped out and dammed, my water bottle chilling in the water flow flowing over the spillway - who says I never use my civil engineering degree?
The final hike out was always going to be the hardest bit, and despite a super-early start the final stages were punishing. Steep, boulder-strewn climbs, almost no shade from the blazing sun... I could feel myself running pretty low on battery by the time we reached the final stages. Rather alarmingly we met a group of lads at this point who were going the other way, without hats, without t-shirts, without enough water, and planning to head down to our camp and back up again that day... madness! We never did find out what happened to them - hopefully they won't end up in the next edition of the morbidly fascinating book we bought afterwards, titled 'Death In Grand Canyon' - a discussion of virtually all the fatal incidents and accidents there over the years, the majority of which boil down to poor decision making leading to death by extreme heat and/or drowning in the Colorado River. I recommend it!
Our last Arizona highlight was Page and the Glen Canyon dam - and my side-trip, without Kate, to Secret Canyon, one of the spectacular slot canyons found all round the area. I avoided the famous but overly-busy Antelope Canyon and had a great time taking dozens of photos of the incredibly eroded sandstone - plus a great fun journey there and back by Hummer. The tour company liked to say that they rescue poor unloved urban Hummers from their owners in LA and Vegas, and return them to the wild where they can roam over slickrock and through sandy washes like they were born to - and they have a point!
Next up: onward to Utah!
