South Africa has warnings about not feeding the animals which are generally geared towards saving daft tourists from baboons. America has similar rules however evidently the tourists here are just as stupid as those back home.
The scene went like this – having driven for several hours to get from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon (naturally first visiting the gigantic M&M store to stock up) we were understandably keen to see the wonder. We bounced out of our vehicle and rushed off to the viewing spot – many ooh’s and aah’s later we started to move to another spot when we noticed a small crowd oohing and aahing over the local wildlife. “So cute” many whispered and not to be left out we sought to capture the moment, no sooner had we sat than we were overrun, fearing for our lives we sat stock still hoping to survive the onslaught, sadly one of us didn’t fare so well.
*ouch*
The ferocious beast
For the record we weren’t the idiot tourists feeding the wildlife, unless you call Tamsyn‘s finger food.
The canyon definitely lives up to its name and anyone going too close to the edge made me feel decidedly uncomfortable, way too easy to fall off. Its incredibly beautiful and incredibly difficult to encompass all that beauty in a photograph.
There had been a sign at the booking gate indicating the camp was full for the following three nights and there certainly were a lot of people. Consulting our trusty guide we opted to have an early supper at Bright Angel Lodge which was pegged as being a good place to have a beer and a burger. Not sure if they’ve changed their menu since that was written but I’d heartily recommend their specials, you get a main meal with the option of either a salad, red pepper soup or corn chowder. I had the chowder, Jessica the salad and Wouter the red pepper soup, all three were really good although the consensus was the red pepper soup was the nicest. Mains were lasagna, spaghetti with meat balls and a creamy alfredo pasta – too much food, really tasty but way too much. Have to say on the whole the food may be expensive but it is really good. Tamsyn didn’t feel like anything too heavy so she chose a toasted chicken and cheese sandwich with fries.
For some reason we seem to end up doing our laundry at camp sites – $1.75 per load and a dollar for 25 minutes of drying time. Our plans of sticking the washing on and then nipping off to watch the sunset went somewhat awry, we managed to catch the tail end of it which had us all resolving to wake up at the crack of dawn to watch the sunrise.
There is a very comprehensively stocked general store near the camp site including a rather well stocked liquor section, in fact most of the ‘café’ type stores we’ve been to have well stocked liquor aisles, even the chemist in Hollywood was an alcohol lovers paradise. So armed with a cheapish bottle of Australian bubbles Wouter and I sat waxing eloquent whilst our washing dried.