HOPI CEREMONY AFTER MOVING NORTH FROM PHOENIX

We stopped of at Prescott on our way north but were not impressed, lots of plaques describing empty sites which had been occupied by wooden structure long since burnt down. The shops were expensive and there was little innovation.

However our next stop at Jerome was much more interesting, this is an old mountain mining area and the modern day inhabitants are some what off the beaten track of mediocre America. We liked it, the shops were quirky, the shopkeepers friendly without being pushy and much of the merchandise interesting.

Sedona is a sort of US Burton on the Water, touristy and much visited. It has many art galleries and although we had done the rounds on our last visit we trawled the shops for anything eyecatching. We both bought Arizona Dirt shirts dyed with genuine local dirt.

Before we left Sedona we had to deal with the output from the heron nursery above the Trek. Boy o Boy these birds are real sh***hawks. I was scrubbing for an hour.






Our next stop was Flagstaff but on the way we stopped at a recently developed state park based on a 1908 homestead set up in Oak Creek Canyon. He used the river water to irrigate his fruit trees and had a successful business. The orchards are still there with one original tree still producing fruit. One of the main attractions in the park is a narrow chute between two pools in the canyon. As the rocks have been worn smooth it is an natural easy water slide, hence the parks name, Slide River. The toe test soon established why nobody was sliding today; too cold as we are in snow melt country.

As we get close to Flagstaff we start seeing piles of snow in corners where the ploughs had piled it up and our campsite was full of banks of snow.

HOPI INDIAN RESERVATION

North of Flagstaff we went looking for a Hopi indian experience. We knew that unlike the Navajo, who like to live separate from each other, the Hopi crowd together on a few mesas. I had the expectation of huddled pueblo style buildings but the reality was double wide trailers, cinder block shacks and a few buildings that might include some original pueblo walls all on dirt roads. So we were disappointed but it was what we had come to expect 'On the Res'.

However we pressed on. One of the things I knew I wanted to see if at all possible was the ceremonial dances that form part of their complex religious rites and I had looked at the schedule and one was on this weekend. We got lucky, the ceremony was on and e could enter the village to watch even though we were not Hopis. No cameras, sound recorders or even sketching is allowed but we could join the spectators. While we were waiting for the dancers it was good to see lots of healthy looking kids running around playing with what they had from their surroundings and not a game boy in sight even though there were satellite dishes on many of the houses.

The dancers appeared and it was obvious why this was the Cow dance. 32 dancers wearing similar masks with cow horns took their place in the dance arena. Another dancer wore a mask without horns but the muzzle and teeth of a wolf. He final dancer carried a bow and had a another kind of mask. They were all adorned with much turquoise jewelery. The only odd note was the man controlling the dance and sprinkling something, possibly corn pollen, over the dancers at regular intervals; he wore a plain shirt and slacks and of the dancers he was the only one not masked. The sole drummer called the cadence of the dance and the drumbeats were echoed by the turtle rattle each dancer wore strapped to his right leg.

The drum beats and the sense of antiquity attached to the rituals made me think of the years and years of dances that had taken place. For these are the oldest continuously inhabited town sites in the USA. The kivas have housed the masks, the shaman have lead the dances and the rituals have come down to the present day through 800 years. Have they changed? Who knows, but the sense of times past was really strong as the old men in the the ritual lead the the young boys in the same costumes through the steps that may have been heard in this place for 800 years.

Oh yes, the dancers also bought laundry baskets full of food which was handed out to the watchers at half time. Why I do not know. This was a dance for the village. There were us and another couple amongst hundreds of Hopis. We were offered food and accepted but felt a little uneasy about this. For there can not be much money on the res. Still to have refused would have been wrong, we are sure of this.


Carol is not sure if we should eat it or keep it. We both felt honored to be a small part of their ceremony

Looking for information on the internet did not turn up much. Well we were not expecting much as this is part of a religion that goes back a long way and is still alive today with a lot of secrecy sourrounding parts of the ceremonies especially in the Kivas. Still we think that the dancers were Wakaskatsina an animal Spirit that is a cow Kachina and is one of the Rain Gods Messengers.


Another special moment on our trip round North America.



CANYON de CHELLY

Our next step was the Canyon De Chelly. This is jointly administered by the Navajo and the Parks Service. We drove up to the overlook at the White House.



Here we saw why this site has been inhabited for thousands of years. Running water and flat fertile flood plains.

We also saw the local ravens putting on a show for the tourists - or maybe just flying for fun. An old argument amongst stiffie flyers.





We could walk down to the canyon floor from the White House overlook but as it was steep we decided to wimp out after coming through the tunnel at the cliff top.

The Navajo run jeep trips down to the Pueblo but as we have seen similar and got closer than we would be allowed to do here we skipped that as well.



We are now in Dolores still chasing our mail and John is looking forward to getting back on the boards at Telluride where the snow is still deep.

Travels in the Yucatan

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Carol's bit,

Cancun.

We had to leave the U.S because our 6 month visa had expired. So we went to Mexico to see the Mayan ruins. We arrived at Cancun airport and picked up the hire car. As we drove towards our hotel,
we passed one long road of hotels, and cheap shops. This is Costa del Yarmouth.





On the day going out again, we had a walk around the Artisans market, which was fun. If you have been to Morocco you know that you are going to be hassled by the vendors, and are expected to bargain with them. It was mostly cheap tat, but I managed to get a hand crocheted shoulder bag from $700 down to $550 ( pesos).

The Mayans are a quiet , friendly people, but obviously have a lot of anger towards the Spanish. The Mayan civilization was decimated with the Spanish invasion. Their buildings were built on top of ,and their books burned by a Spanish priest, who was trying to convert them to Christianity. The history is a bit sketchy because of that incident , the Mayans kept very good records, and were very advanced.

Whilst walking through the ruins at Uxmal I felt a light touch on my hand, when I looked down there was a skinny young bitch looking up at me. She was covered in mange and ticks. Somewhere she had puppies, or may be they were dead, she didn't look fit enough to look after babies. I had nothing to give her, but she appreciated the attention when I held her face in my hands. One of the other visitors had a plastic pot and gave her some water. Something needs to be done here, there is no animal welfare, and they have to fend for themselves. Other dogs at Ek Balam ( black panther) had made friends with one of the guides, and about 4 or 5 of them had established a nice life for themselves. They seemed happy and were fed every day. The guides were genuinely fond of them .

One of the places we stayed at was tucked into a jungle setting, and although basic, was very peaceful and comfortable, it would have been nice to have stayed longer here.
I found the roads here easy and pleasant to drive on, even if they did suddenly disappear into a ditch at the side.

We decided to have a meal at a roadside cafe called the Pickled onion.


The owner turned out to be British, from the north of England . She was in the process of setting up another business in holistic medicine, and had some of the locals coming in to do therapy work. Valerie herself was a Reflexologist and Reiki practitioner, I got a job offer. I think if I worked down here it would be animal rescue.

The ruins are fascinating and each one has a different Aura and feel to it. Apart from the poor little dog,I preferred Ek Balam. No one should go to Cancun and not see the ruins ( but they do)

CANCUN

We expected a cross between Blackpool and Benidorm and what we got was a little better but no much. The hotels are in a 20km long strip against the sea with lots of tshirts and other such tat on sale in little booths with aggressive vendors. It is a sign of the times and US big business that they have a new cry when they try to entice you into their shops, instead of “Lookee Lookee less than 1 dollah” they shout with pride “ Cheaper than Walmart”.

However the interior was better than we could have hoped for and the many Mayan people we met were unfailingly polite and helpful.

Our first stop on the interior was at Chichen Itza and the Mayaland Hotel where we had reserved a room at the extortionate rate of $165 a night. We had decided that one nights worth of luxury and to be next to the ruins made this worth while. But we got a lot more than we bargained for as they upgraded us to the Pavarotti suite, their most expensive at only $800 per night. The bed was about 8 foot wide, the ensuite jacuzzi had room for 3 and there was room for a cricket pitch in the room.


The grounds were fabulous, 3 swimming pools, several bars and restaurants and a variety of animals and birds wandering around.

[ YES Those are peacocks walking upstairs for the evening!]



We took in the sound and light show inside the ruins which was very atmospheric that evening and got an early start next day with the aim of seeing as much as we could before the tour buses arrived. The great pyramid greets
you first and you can only marvel at the industry required to build it and all the other structures.










The 1000 pillars might have been a market place. The Platform of the Eagles and the Jaguars are built in a combination Maya and Toltec styles. Each side has a staircase to the top. Carved into the sides are panels depicting eagles and jaguars consuming what appear to be human hearts.
Great Ball Court about 150 meters to the north-west of the Castillo is by far the most impressive. It is the largest ball court in ancient Mesoamerica. It measures 166 by 68 meters (545 by 232 feet). The imposing walls are 12 meters high, and in the center, high up on each of the long walls, are rings carved with intertwining serpents.



At the base of the high interior walls are slanted benches with sculpted panels of teams of ball players. In one panel, one of the players has been decapitated and from the wound emits seven streams of blood; six become wriggling serpents and the center becomes a winding plant.

We walked down a SacBe an old Mayan white road.

As well as being highways connecting their many centres together they have a religious significance to the Mayans and you sometimes see the locals utter a brief prayer before crossing a SacBe.


It led to the Cenote,
one of the two water sources for the site and home of many sacrifices.





These old time Mayans were a bloodthirsty lot.



Our next stop was Merida. We took a walk around the central plaza with a local guide, and learned that there had been 5 pyramids in Merida when the Spanish arrived. They enslaved the local mayans and forced them to tear down the pyramids and build churches on the flattened sites. They also burned all but three of their books. This was a thousand year old culture which had erected magnificent edifices, run a trading empire thousands of miles across and kept meticulous written records of their achievements.

We stayed at a little bed and breakfast run by a couple of cuban ladies and their cat named doggie. The outside street was pretty rough looking and Carols comment was “This is a right sh** heap”. But inside there was a tiny swimming pool and lovely little back yard that we could use, filled with plants. The owners were a goldmine of local information.

We visited Dzibilchaltun just north of Merida. As well as significant Maya ruins there was a museum full of Maya and Spanish artifacts including pirate memorabila. The deep cenote freshwater well
looked excellent for a cool swim but I did not bring my trunks.







Our next stop was Uxmal, much less visited than Chichen Itza but as impressive and perhaps of more archaeological significance.



Unlike Chichen Itza where a strict no climbing rule was applied we were allowed to walk and climb our way around and over much of the buildings except the roofs.


My calves are still aching from the climb up the pyramid and boy o boy were the steps narrow and steep.


Coming down was pretty scary and over the years several people have fallen and either died or been seriously injured. Some descended on their bottoms but Scottish machismo prevented me from doing this.






We stayed at a charming little place called Sacbe,
[Mayan for white road]




in a spotlessly clean little bungalow in grounds where a bewilderigly wide range of trees and plants were lovingly nurtured by the owner. Carol was in her element.

and ate at the Pickled Onion just down the road.


Carols Bit has covered the owner already, a Lancashire lass now living happily in Mexico.

We finished off our ruins tour next day at Ek Balam. This much smaller site was only recently discovered. Excavations and restoration is still going on but in some areas the degree of preservation is astounding. This giant idol was mostly intact when discovered.

The guide said only a small amount of restoration work had been done this area. It was all original stonework and only the stucco had needed some filling and retouching.






We are both more than a little skeptical about some of what we saw and read. Buildings were reconstructed from piles of bricks to some 1950s idea of what a Mayan temple looked like and explanations are little more than guesswork. But whatever the mistakes and misconceptions there are there remains an unmistakable truth, this was a complex, long lasting and successful civilisation.

Some Mayans still live in traditional oval houses with a thatched roof but here the wattle and daub wall looks like it might be cement to me.


The television screen was an anchronistic touch though!





After this we returned to Cancun where that peculiarly American College tradition “Spring Break” was in full swing.



We were lucky to find a quiet room and avoid the drunken mobs reeling from bar to bed to bar along the 20 kms of the hotel zone.



Amongst the memories we have of the Yucatan are
1 The enormous semi feral but friendly stray dog population
2 The crazy and scary bus drivers.
3 The even crazier and scarier taxi drivers. You would stop for a red light and the taxi behind you would take to the pavement, drive around you and run the red light.
4 The friendly and unfailingly polite Mayans.
5 The person who sat on the bonnet of our hire car in Merida, denting the bonnet.
6 Last but not least the "Get out of jail card" provided by the hire car company which we needed when John got stopped and accused of " Not respecting the red light" and not having a back number plate.

DOWN IN MEXICO

We are down in the Yucatan following the Mayan ruins trail. It seems that the border towns have lots of violence but not down here or so the locals claim. The only scary thing so far was the local buses in Merida - boy they are big fast and take no prisoners. his is very intimidating when you are trying to find your way home in a little hire car at night.

carol´s bit

lot of stray dogs down here, I am keeping some chicken in my pocket. There is no animal rescue here , and these dogs are not going to live very long. They are very submissive and friendly and look hopefully for just a little food and kindness. The Mayan people are very friendly and helpful, but they can´t feed themselves, let alone stray dogs. English dogs are very lucky in this respect, there are laws to protect them, here there is nothing, including hope.


More stories and pics to follow when we get home to the RV and find a good WIFI connection.

BISBEE, TOMBSTONE AND TUCSON DOG SHOW

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We realised we would probably like Bisbee when we were greeted by a sign that said “KEEP BISBEE WEIRD” and it surely is.





The town was a wealthy copper mining town in the 1890s and has evolved into a place where aging hippies run businesses extolling the benefits of Reduce Reuse Recycle and try and sell you magazines from the 1980’s. Coffee, pottery, and vegetarian shops compete with a shop selling laser cut sculpture based on skulls. I liked this one but would need to keep it in the garden to avoid nightmares.
Bisbee is also famous for "the Lavender Pit", one of the more famous of the American mines because Bisbee turquoise (also known as "Bisbee Blue" registered name) was one of the first put onto the market. The turquoise mine is part of the Bisbee copper mine The Copper Queen now operated as a tourist underground tour . Bisbee turquoise has developed a reputation as a hard, finely webbed or dendrite, high blue stone, known for its "chocolate brown" matrix. Bisbee Turquoise also comes in a beautiful dark green color.
While we were looking around the rock shops and jewelers stores at the amazing minerals around we heard tales of the legendary rockhound ‘Bisbee Bob’. Apparently he had the best examples of turquoise and other local gems and mostly collected at the dead on night from other peoples mines. They ran him out of town!

CAROL’S BIT.
Bisbee reminds me of the West country, Devon and Cornwall. Lot of odd shops with all sorts of different things for sale, and “odd” people, who are quite happy to admit they are odd. My feeling is that they are like those in the west country , normal, it’s everyone else who isn’t. We came here last year,and business was slow then, it still is, but is was nice to see that the same people have survived and are still trading. I did well in a jewelry shop that had a sale on silver, 70% off.

The place was packed, but the cat on the counter didn’t budge. Several shops had dogs in, as part of the welcoming committee. The shops are run by their owners, who bring their pets into work.
This is one of the places I wouldn’t mind staying for a while.


TOMBSTONE
"The Town too Tough to Die," Another of Arizona's old mining camps. When a miner named his first claim “The Tombstone” and rumors of rich strikes made a boomtown of the settlement that adopted this name. In only 7 years the mines produced millions of dollars in silver and gold but rising underground waters closed them.
Days of lawlessness and violence, climaxed with the infamous Earp-Clanton battle, fought near the rear entrance of the O.K. Corral, on October 26, 1881 and recreated several times a day for us tourists.
We were enjoying our walk up the historic main street avoiding the ‘Shady Ladies Side’ when we came across this.

CAROL’S BIT
I think John has overdone the diet bit, don’t you?


I didn’t realize this thing moved every so often, there was nearly another corpse in Tombstone.



TUCSON DOG SHOW
This was all about finding homes for shelter dogs but we were not sure about this breed spotted in the food queue





CAROL’S BIT.
America is very good at these types of events. They often take the shelter dogs out to the public to try to place them in homes. There are so many of them though, and seems to be so little control of the breeding. I saw one hybrid of a Pyrenean mountain dog crossed with something half it’s normal size. The result was hideous, the legs were half the size of a pure breed, but the body wasn’t a lot different.
It would be nice to think that most of these dogs were placed by the end of the day. Fortunately there were no White German Shepherds looking for a home, although there is a rescue for them in America.


As we were leaving we came across a group In regalia, dancing. We think they were probably Mayan, judging by their clothes.






After we left the dog show, John took me for a birthday meal at Mimi’s, which has become one of our favourite places, the weather was hot all day, so all in all, a good day.

TUCSON

After feeling a little overcautious because we stayed put in Coolidge after a snow warning on the weather forecast on what turned out to be a sunny day we went to the Biosphere 2 site just North of Tucson.




We visited the site of the famous experiment where 8 people got locked inside this giant closed system greenhouse in the hope that they could grow their own food while the greenery was producing enough oxygen to keep them alive.

In most peoples recollections the experiment was a failure as the inhabitants fell out and the oxygen production failed to keep pace with the consumption and I have to say that was my picture of the place, another glorious failure. However the excellent docent who took us round made me think other wise. They found out about lots of things and the “ BIG SCIENCE” experimental facilities they used are still in use today allowing macro research in a closed and controlled environment.

The giant diaphragms made using Hypalon, rubber dinghy material, were impressive as was the huge under floor pumping and air conditioning setup that allowed the scientists to produce whatever environment they wanted, be it mangrove forest or savannah or Sonoran desert. They even have a boojum cactus growing tall in one corner.

Coming out of the airlock caused the roof to come down.

Oh Yes it turns out that we were not overcautious about the snow. They had had lots the day before!

We visited Sabino Canyon a desert oasis in the Catalina foothills. We took the hike from the trailhead down to the river.
It was steeper than expected and required a bit of scrambling at the end due to erosion damage but worthwhile.

We spotted this unusual rock formation




Snoopy and Woodstock again.









The walk back down to the Trek was a pleasant downhill stroll but we were passed by earnest runners in IRONMAN T shirts on their way up and down the 4 mile access route. We had taken the shuttle up!

We found a noisy little RV park in the middle of Tucson for the night.



As I was connecting up the Trek to the utilities we were visited by the park cat who hopped in, checked us out, mooched a meal and then asked politely to be let out.



Wanna buy a Fat ALbert cheap mister?


Well as we left Tucson we came across this giant unwanted military aircraft parking lot. Several hundred Fat Alberts [ AKA Lockheed C-130 Hercules ] rows and rows of Warthogs plus many others. I suppose it is all part of the peace dividend.





We are off down to Tombstone and Bisbee again as we did not allow enough time last year to see everything.

Quartzsite and Casa Grande

We joined the wave of RVs that hit Quartzsite during the months of January and February, swelling the population from a few thousand to over a million.
At this time of the year, 2,000 vendors of rocks, gems, minerals, fossils and everything else imaginable create one of the world's largest open air flea markets in Quartzsite.

Eight major gem and mineral shows
as well as vendors of raw and handcrafted merchandise peddle their wares to snowbirds, collectors and the odd stray Brit like us.





But there is the car show as well.

People trailer their beautifully restored classic and spend two days sitting behind it making sure people do not touch while answering the same foolish questions over and over again.


Not every thing was a conventional classic and I liked this old time truck with it’s working likker still and animated talking doll beside it.





We came away with some unusual
semi precious stones and now have to work out what to do with them.


CAROL'S BIT.

I have always wanted a good piece of Amber a lot of the stuff you see is a sort of resin made up to look like Amber. This piece has a lot of dead bodies in it, flies, spiders and a few unidentifiable ones. This stone will cut and file easily, but I will probably put a bell cap on it, so that a chain can be attached.
The green stone is FUKITE it glitters and seems to be made up of several layers. I have left this as it is and had a hole drilled. The silver Bale that you see will fit through the hole.

The Red and Cream piece is MOUKAITE - Australian Jasper. It would make a nice back drop for a picture of Charro.

The torqouise and red is CHRYSOELL and CUPRITE - Senoran Desert. These make nice pieces on their own on a stand.

Those little rocks are IRON PYRITE - fools gold. This rock grinds easily into granules and could be used to fill in the faults in the MOUKAITE to add interest.

John has some flat pieces of AGATE and TIGERS EYE which he intends to use as inlay in the table on the boat.

The prices of this stuff was amazing, and I guess people come from worldwide to stock up and take back to their own country, to sell at a big profit. I have seen some of the large geods at alternative medicine shows that cost thousands of pounds. I can imagine what Harrod's would charge. You could get hooked on making things or just displaying what comes out of the earth naturally , and drive yourself nuts looking for it.




So far we have avoided becoming rockhounds but we are looking down and are starting to pick up interesting looking rocks. I am told that the next step is to buy a bag of marbles and every time we pick up a rock we should leave a marble. When we have lost all our marbles then we can call ourselves rockhounds.

After Quartzsite we moved to Casa Grande then on to Coolidge where the Casa Grande ruins are. Confused? We certainly were!

We joined a ranger lead tour of the ruins.

Anyway we already knew a bit about the Hohokam and their irrigation based culture but much of what he said was new to us,
Casa Grande is four stories high and about 60 feet long and 40 feet wide. All constructed from caliche a kind of desert hard pan mud. It is one of the largest prehistoric structures ever built in North America, its purpose remains as much a mystery as the people who built it.

This building was at the centre of a community of three to five thousand people and at the end of a complex canal system twenty miles long.

It was a giant undertaking with stone hammer and wooden digging stick as the canals were 70 feet wide and 18 feet deep in places.

We also discovered that they were small people.


Carol got through the doorway but I could not make it.





The ranger finished by telling us that the Hohokam lived in this area for a thousand years and had little impact on the land as they used renewable resources. He then asked us to look at all the dead trees in the back ground. He said that in the last 30 years deep well irrigation has dropped the water table in this area from 12 feet to more than 100 feet, out of range of the deepest tap roots!


We have to hang around this area because I have to go back for a stress test on my heart at the end of the month.