Nevada and Arizona

This is the longest I’d left it without posting an update on the blog. What happened?
Well Reno happened, and a lot of other things too.


We left South Tahoe in Thursday morning and crossed the mountains into Nevada. The scenery and vegetation changed straight away, and the temperature must have gone up about 10°C about as fast.
It was all very dry, only tufts of low growth here and there, and very high and isolated yellow hills scattered across otherwise extremely flat terrain.
We drove up some hills into ex gold mining territory, past archaic structures of rust and almost burnt wood. These, the random metal statues artists on peyotl (very likely) left here and there, and a few seriously dodgy looking settlements made the whole place look like the inbred mutants from The Hills Have Eyes had settled in the area.


At the top of the hills we found Virginia City, a half orchestrated half very real ‘good ole days’ sort of a town. All the buildings – new and old – followed the western architecture with saloons, a ‘try your hand at gold prospecting’ contraption and tourism officers dressed as cowboys. On the way to the obligatory cowboy photo shoot (I don’t have a scanner to upload this but Nic and I looked the part, beard, sweat-rings and all), we found a few posters which indicated that Commie Obama lovers aren’t exactly welcome in them parts.
Obviously we did our best to blend in by spitting frequently and yelping the odd ‘yeeee_ha’ here and there.


Virginia City was definitely the highlight of the afternoon as the rest was mostly riding on the straightest, flattest and hottest road on Earth. Still it was great to see some of the type of rocky desert you see in cowboy films, and I have a lot of admiration for the lunatics who decided that it would be a suitable place to settle there before the invention of air conditioning.


We arrived in Reno late afternoon and looked forward to what the guide-book assured to be one of the most extravagant hotel-casinos in town. Wow. It’s so true what they say that everything in casinos is made to keep you in there. What a contrast between the roasting desolate street outside and the air-conditioned madness within the tall building which occupied a whole block.


I got lost seconds after entering and it took me 10 minutes to find the reception. Going through hundreds of slot machines, a couple dozen tables, Hummers on rotating platforms as guaranteed instant wins, 10 bars and restaurants, lights flashing every where and the craziest melting-pot of white America you could imagine. We could have walked around with nothing on but cowboy boots and our knickers on our heads, the only reaction would have been a cocktail from one of the tired 50 year old waitresses.


We didn’t waste too much time admiring the stunning view from our dead-cheap 29th floor room, ate a decent meal pretty quick and hit the casino sharpish. It didn’t take the blackjack dealer to cop on that she had a couple virgins at her table. She, and the next few, as well as some of the players took pity and explained the basics to us.


The rest is a little blurry. Free drinks. Time broken down into hands, the winning ones and the not so lucky ones. The speed at which we calculated our hands increased and we graduated in turn from challenged to almost able, to Nick showing me his cards, all smile, wondering whether he’d 21 or 64. Not that I’m better at maths…just a bit more experience in the free booze department. Several winning and losing streaks later I’d amassed a nice little sum and thought it a good idea to go to bed and attend to the several stages of inebriated slumber.


Nic didn’t exactly agree. He’d a scary glimmer in his eyes, lost to a dangerous cocktail of whisky and new-found addiction. For possibly the first time ever, I had to plead with Nic to be reasonable..and an hour or so later I managed to drag my dazed and feverish brother back to our room. Turns out all I needed to do was to lure him to what he thought was a table with higher stakes…


Slightly worse for wear we left the bikes at Reno airport the following morning. The view as we travelled to Phoenix was fantastic, and the cold beer wasn’t half bad either.


Arrived in stupidly hot Phoenix I had a slight change of heart at the car rental place. I’d promised to myself I’d be reasonable but before the clerk had finished to say ‘American muscle car’ and ‘discount’, I’d given him the credit card…So we got a brand new silver Camaro, a beast of a car which – they say – handles fast speeds extremely well.


A few minutes, I mean a couple hours later we got to the Red Rock part of Arizona, close to Sedona. We’re staying in the most stunning hotel I’ve ever seen lodged at the very end of a huge crevice in the high red plateaus. The tip of the plateau is very irregular, with tower-like out crops and layer upon layer of shades of orange, ocre and cream, with green bushes here and there, and cacti at the base.
You can sit there and just stare at the whole thing for hours on end, and that’s pretty much what we’re doing, in between over-priced mojitos and expert massages of course.


Tomorrow we’re flying to Grand Canyon in a little plane and I can’t wait to see it.


In the meantime, we’re gonna take that sexy silver Camaro for a spin to see if we can find better beer and salsa than what’s on offer at the hotel.

PS: Mr Buckley, there’s a photo in there just for you.


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