We Travel World

Aside from Belize with its strong Caribbean influence not a whole lot changes travelling from one Central American country to another. The attractive public spaces and town squares I couldn’t stop photographing when we first got to San Cristobal in Mexico with their pastel coloured colonial churches and buildings are to be found somewhere in every Central American country. As you cross borders the jungle scenery and with lives in there doesn’t change much from one country to the next. You could say the same about South East Asia but in SE Asia cultures do change markedly from one country to the next. For example Thailand and Cambobia share a land border yet the Thai people and the Khmer people of Cambodia look totally different and their cultures are seperate. You don’t really sense that all too much from one Central American country to the next.
We had planned to travel down to and maybe beyond Colombia in South America, but we had a change of plan and decided that after a beach holiday in Tulum, Mexico where we’d already made plans to meet up with my mum for two weeks we’d move on from this part of world.
Our round the world airline ticket is fixed so that we’d have to leave the Americas from Los Angeles after my mum’s holiday with us was over. So while I was looking at a map on the internet to see how far Tulum in Mexico might be from Los Angeles I noticed something, I noticed that the next state along from Southern California and LA is Arizona.

Arizona, the realization the some of the earths biggest draw geological wonders such as the Grand Canyon and Monument valley were on the way, sort of to LA made it just too impossible to resist going, what else can you do? you might never be back this way again. You have to do it.
When we arrived at Phoenix airport, Arizona I was feeling ill from something I ate in Mexico so I sat down and Lynn went to pick up the hire car. When she came back she told me that the guy behind the desk had given her a free upgrade from the compact car we had booked over the internet. The result was the metallic blue Chrysler PT Cruiser that’s in some of the photos shown here. I’m not not usually one to be over impressed by shallow materialistic things like nice shiny cars, but man I loved driving this one, see how quickly I sell out!
So we picked up the lovely car and drove to Sedona. Lynn went to check us in at the super 8 motel and returned telling me that again she’d been given a free room upgrade from the guy on the desk, and not only that but we’d only have to pay the weekday rate even though it was a weekend. I’m scratching my head here, just what can it be that women have that men don’t? when I do the check-in I get overcharged.

Sedona is understandably dwalfed by the international reputation of the Grand Canyon only an hour and a half away by car, but it’s a fantastic place it it’s own right. Set in a semi-arid desert landscape of red rock hills and escarpments Sedona sits in a picturesque valley. Any car journey or walk a few mins from the town centre reveals a landscape punctuated by these improbable looking red rock monoliths in the photos here. Monumental structures of red stone that seem to rise out of the earth of themselves and positively glow a burnt orange to deep red in the light of the sun. So many million years of erosion have shaped these individual formations leaving an other worldly landscape that leaves you standing, staring and wondering. Of course this is America and a few optomistic souls believe it all has to be the work of aliens from outer space. There is a tounge-in-cheek alien theme running through the town and on the back of this the whole might of the new-age merchandising machine is in full effect. Shops and businesses with names like ‘The Sedona Healing Garden’ and ‘The Mystical Bazaar’, selling overpriced new age kitsch like ‘healing crystals’ to people with more money than they deserve. You can even have your aura photographed in Sedona, is it possible to photograph something with no physical substance? you have to doubt it.

In one small way Sedona reminds me of Keswick in the lake district in that there are trails leading more or less out of the town centre and all of them are different and worthwhile walking. We only had a couple of days in Sedona and walked what we could, all the trails were different with fantastic views. One trail we did is called ‘The West Fork of Oak Creek’
As I was lacing up my boots the car thermometor read 80 degrees and it was only 9.15am. I was wondreing just how hot it would get over the six miles as the day progressed. But the fresh desert air and the dry Arizona heat makes walking a pleasure. Compared to the humidity of Tulum where we’d just come from on Caribbean side of the Mexican where walking just a mile in the afternoon heat made you feel like you might expire this was a breeze, literally as refreshing breezes do wash down out of the desert.