The alarm set for 5am, now that's an early start!
We were picked up outside the hotel at 6am for our day trip to the Grand Canyon and as we drove down the strip we saw plenty of people heading back to their hotels after being out all night in the casino’s. Their night was ending and our day was just beginning, seeing that underlined just how much of a twenty-four hour town Las Vegas is.
Our tour guide for the day was Jean Claude, an exiled Frenchman who came across a little bit abrasive and grumpy, perhaps it was the early start or his nationality? After a while he lightened up and showed a certain sense of humour.
A pre-packed breakfast was included as part of our package and we ate it whilst traveling to the West Rim of the Canyon, about ninety minutes away. When we arrived were dropped off at the heliport where the helicopters were waiting for us.
Sharon was really nervous about flying in a helicopter but had agreed to take a ride in one when we booked the package before leaving England, mainly to keep the peace. Her face was a picture as we boarded and then lifted off, but within a matter of seconds she got over her fear and got really quite excited about it.
The helicopter took us over the rim and then dropped down about four thousand feet to a landing pad at the bottom, where we got out and walked a little further along to a jetty. There was one raft out of commission which meant that we had to wait for almost an hour for our turn, because of this we also got a shorter cruise. The temperature was already over one hundred degrees and it was almost unbearable out of the shade, to make matters worse we also ran out of water.
Afterwards we got copted back up to the top and rejoined the coach before heading to Guano Point where we had a traditional lunch which was cooked by the native Indians. The views there were really quite spectacular.
On the way back to Vegas Jean Claude told us a few amusing stories about Vegas along with giving us a verbal list of the do’s and dont’s, Mark our driver also added his own! He stopped for a little while in the Joshua Tree Forest so that we could take some pictures.
The coach dropped us back at the hotel mid afternoon and after cooling down with a swim we spent the rest of the day shopping and visiting casinos again. It's so easy to get lost in the casinos there are no windows, clocks or exit signs and you can easily become very disoriented, an example of this was when we tried to leave the Venetian. We got in an elevator which took us down to a car park, when we took it back up and walked out we found we had been transported to Venice! There was even a gondolier floating along, that was certainly a mind blowing experience!
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| Pool hair! |
The playlist
Where The Streets Have No Name by U2 - A track off The Joshua Tree.
The River by Bruce Springsteen - Our raft ride down the Colorado River.
The Sound Of The Sinners by The Clash - We had our lunch with a really nice black couple at Guano Point who were real churchie types, I could just imagine them singing a bit of gospel!
Running On Empty by Jackson Browne - Jean Claude pointed out a strip of land from the coach where they had filmed Forest Gump running through the desert.
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