Grand Canyon

We were successfully picked up by minibus early in the morning, we had eaten biscuits with our tea to serve as breakfast but truthfully we were too excited to be concerned about hunger. We collected a pair of American ladies from another hotel and to our surprise we headed out of Las Vegas to an airstrip at nearby Boulder City.
Their business premises were full, I would estimate 35 to 40 people due to go out on various trips some in helicopters some in fixed wing aircraft. When we checked in and paid, I decided against bringing up the disappointment of the previous day and was issued with a coloured piece of card. By trying to spot that colour in other people’s hands we were able to identify our party. It consisted of two men together, us and a Mexican couple but no pilot as yet. The groups were taken out and flew away as their assigned pilots arrived. One of the later pilots was ours; he led us out to the only black helicopter in a fleet of red, white and blue ones and introduced himself to us. As the early part of the flight was over and around the Hoover Dam recent legislation meant that we had to wear a life-jacket, which made the cabin space even more cramped for the seven of us. We were also wearing earphones and microphones to hear each other and the carefully picked CD tracks. We rose from the tarmac to a James Bond theme and later as we breasted a rise to see the Grand Canyon for the first time it was the theme from Apocalypse Now. The pilot was named Rick and he was very entertaining in his commentary. He told us that the Grand Canyon is a good three and a half hour drive from Las Vegas so it would have taken all day to go there and back also it is impossible to reach the canyon floor by car.
After the Hoover Dam we headed for the canyon at about 120mph, which only felt fast as he was lower to the ground, at altitude nothing seemed to be moving which I suppose illustrated the scale of everything. After a first look at the canyon from above we dropped into it and landed just above the river banks. Rick reclaimed our life-jackets from us just before we went on the boat remarking that the boat would probably issue us with parachutes if it followed the same logic as he had to. He pointed us in the right direction to clamber across the rocks and down through the scrub to the riverside. The New Zealanders were the intrepid sort; the Mexicans weren’t, so we fitted comfortably in the middle, as we had to find our way down to the small jetty where our river cruiser was moored. I think it was a flat bottomed boat which would have held 10-12 people and there were no currents to negotiate so it felt pretty solid on the water. The driver was a grizzled old white man, Jim, who was very well informed about the canyon and the river, the most striking fact that remains with me was that the river uses up almost 100% of its water by the time it should outlet into the ocean. It was also him that told us there were no real trails down to the river and he used a helicopter two or three times a week to come and go from the canyon floor. We had about 15-20 minutes on the river before returning up the same trail to the helicopter, which had waited for us. It flew us up to the canyon rim and we unloaded for two hours at the small airfield run by the Hualapai, Native Americans. We were given vouchers for the various parts of the tour and joined the queue for the shuttle bus to the sky walk.
It may be some failing in myself but I had never anticipated any problem walking on the glass area, although Julia was by now expressing some doubts about it. The first time we had seen the sky walk from the air I had struggled to see it because it looked so small against the scenery, now it looked and is a major construction. We took some photographs and video from the rim then joined the sky walk line. Inside the reception building we had to surrender our bags, cameras and other loose items before going forward to the platform. Just before we got there we had to slip duster bootees over our shoes, I guess this was to protect the glass surface from scratches. The fact that they kept our cameras from us meant that their crew of photographers on the walkway had a monopoly and there were many people lying on the glass panels to be photographed as if falling down the entire depth of the canyon. It was hugely impressive and we both found ourselves quite able to walk on the transparent bit and look down to see the huge drop below us. The photos taken by the staff photographers were again extortionately expensive but worse than that once again we appeared stouter than we see ourselves, we refused them again.
We cashed in our food voucher for chicken nuggets and fries for each of us, it was the worst meal we endured on our trip, and even a lack of breakfast combined with the breathtaking scenery couldn’t redeem it. We getting close to the end of our two hours so were close to just returning to the terminal but someone told us we should get off the shuttle bus at guano point as the views were even better. On the short bus trip we learned that the guano in question was bat droppings, an ingredient in fertilizer, other chemical products and often cosmetics. The driver remarked that this was why all girls can remember their mother telling them to “Get that crap off your face!” A basic joke but the next bit really stuck with me, Guano Point is actually on the opposite side of the Grand Canyon to where the bats were, so they built a cable system across the gap to get the mined droppings back to be processed. It boggles the mind to think how the whole enterprise was built.
The other attraction about Guano Point was that you could see further down the canyon as there are no safety barriers to stop you leaning out as far as you want. We managed to fit in Guano Point before catching the next bus back to the terminal. From there we watched Rick return from the floor of the canyon with a set of passengers before loading us and we were now on the way back to Las Vegas.
As we flew over the Arizona desert it was so inhospitable that a line from a movie came back to me, a grizzled old Indian scout remarked, “If the Devil owned Hell and Arizona he’d live in Hell and rent out Arizona!” To contest the theory as we approached the Hoover Dam again the land below was clearly marked out in rectangles and Rick told us that parcels of land were being sold to be commuter districts for Las Vegas when the major road over the dam was completed.
Before we crossed the highest point on our return we spotted a helicopter on the ground, again Rick had the answer, apparently one of the rival firms squeezed seven passengers into the same size of helicopter, but the increased payload meant that they had to land, disembark the passengers, pump fuel from a tank and fly on from there.
There is some concern about the number of helicopters and planes damaging the environment around the canyon and I can see some truth in it. Helicopters were coming and going all the time we were on the trip. However it seems ironic that the white men gave the Indians areas that basically could barely support them and because tourism has made the land profitable suddenly there may be an ecological issue.
Julia missed out on all the information on the return trip because her head-set wasn't working but the whole venture had blown her mind already and she was glowing as we were driven back to our motel. We had a last drink in Coco's before setting off for Anaheim at about 2.00pm