Whiskey Row

We had arrived in Arizona amidst a passionate, nationwide debate regarding new laws making it a requirement to carry documents identifying one's right to be in the US. But it didn't seem to matter when we arrived. It was possibly the most beautiful state we visited.

First on our tour was Tuzigoot, a US National Monument according to Wikipedia. Excavated ruins that I believe had housed some Native American tribe a long time ago. Just as Montezuma's Castle had been. A small dwelling build in the middle of the face of a cliff. They believe that the Native Americans had abandoned the sight one hundred years before the first European settlers arrived. The causes are unknown but there are some suggestions: War, famine, drought, they fell off the side, Starbucks bought it to put up a store.

After a day of touring we were off to relax with some jazz in a park in Prescott. It was by a street called Whiskey Row. The street was reminiscent of New Orlean's Bourbon Street but it had a more western vibe. It was lively, but I imagine one hundred and fifty years ago it would have been even more lively, and much less touristy.

Then we walked across a highway. Apparently, some politician (maybe a senator) had gotten very drunk one evening, and nearly been killed trying to cross the highway. Careful to avoid a future fatality, this politician installed a crossing so that it was safe to cross. A highway.

We ate dinner at a brewery. Very much British themed, although with typical Americanised fare as well. I had nachos, and bangers and mash. Which I couldn't finish. The portions were still American sized. The beer was pretty decent as well.

The evening consisted of more time failing to find a suitable car to rent, and Ed making his first contribution to finding us some accommodation. He found a cheap room at Harrah's Casino for our one night in Vegas.

Crossing the Border

4AM wake up to catch the early bus. Check out. Walk with our heavy bags to the greyhound station. Get told that the our bus is an hour late. It is also full. Back to hostel.

They won't let us back in our rooms because we have already checked out. So we go down and sleep in the common room. We get back and get the 1:30PM Americana bus. The Americana bus is a subset of the greyhound company, and I believe it starts its route in Mexico. Spanish is the first language on the Americana bus, occasionally they follow with an English translation. Ed and I were probably the only ones the English translation was relevant for.

A little while after crossing the state border of Texas and New Mexico the bus was stopped by police. They came on and gave instructions at the front of the bus. I couldn't hear a word they were saying. I tried calling "what did you say?" to them. They ignored me. The other passengers looked at me as if I were insane. In the end it was just a passports and papers check. Everyone on the bus had their papers in order so we were allowed to continue.

All I really remember after that from the journey was that there was a very pretty woman working in the McDonald's where we had lunch. The rest of the journey was just staring at desert.

After arriving in Phoenix we took a shuttle van for another two and half hours out to Prescott. A suburb about two and a half hours away from Phoenix. While I had gotten used to hearing too much about other passengers lives, I wasn't prepared to learn everything about our driver. Her troubled relationship with her father, the pains of menopause, why she had a smokers voice (anyone could have guessed why, she smoked). Another case of unintentional eaves dropping making the journey a little more uncomfortable than it already was.

We arrived in Prescott around 10PM. We were fed dinner. Then it was straight to Fox and then bed.

This is America. (I hope)

The heat was amazing. Twenty one years living in England is poor preparation for experiencing the desert heat in the southern part of America in the summertime. Every new place we experienced was hotter than the one before it. The sticky Houston heat had made it one of the hottest cities I had ever been to. And El Paso made it seem mildly warm.

El Paso is definitely in the USA. Wikipedia will confirm it. But when you are half delirious from heat, groggy from flu medication and in a city where everyone is Hispanic and many houses in your current neighbourhood look like South American slums, it is easy to believe that you are in Mexico. And not a very nice part. Everyone also seemed to be on a siesta as we wandered around looking for lunch. Eventually we came to an all you can eat buffet. It was exactly like New York's Sbarro but with a Mexican twist. The food was just as bad but at least there was plenty of it.

Then came the highlight of our day. Fifteen years since the original film had won the hearts of children and adults worldwide, Toy Story 3 came out. This would the first ever feature length film I would watch in 3D. Many movies have been filmed or set at least partly in El Paso. Many westerns. That was part of the reason for visiting and it made a great location to watch Woody and Buzz in their latest adventure.

Ed preferred El Paso to Houston as soon as we stepped off the bus. Despite the dilapidated housing there was an eerie beauty about the city. It is surrounded by several mountains and there is a real sense that if you got fed up of city life you could easily head out for a few hours of peaceful isolation.

Breakdown on the Texas Plains

On the bus from Houston to El Paso I saw an amusing sign on the front of a church that read, "Get off facebook and get into my Book". That was the peak of the journey. The large Samoan man wanted us to chat with him and the back of the bus, but we wisely went for the handicapped seats near the front with the legroom. A move of pure genius.

In New Orleans I had had the foresight to buy flu medicine. Not that I was ill, but I wanted sleeping pills to knock me out on the longer bus journeys. I couldn't find any pills designed for just sleeping so I took the flu medication designed to help people sleep through high fevers, chills, runny or blocked noses and nasty coughs. It was perfect, medication made for experiences as uncomfortable as the greyhound.

The journey was supposed to take about 15 hours. We expected that to mean about 17 hours. Around one o'clock at night I took my pills and prepared to doze off, hoping to wake up in El Paso. Right before I fell asleep we were parked at a petrol station in the middle of nowhere, Texas. The bus driver announced that two of the lug nuts had come loose, or disappeared, or something. I can't remember exactly, I was drowsy on flu medication but there was definitely a serious problem with the engine, or the wheels.

I woke up seven hours later in the same petrol station. It was around 7am. Having been half-asleep at the time of the announcement I didn't quite understand what was going on. It slowly dawned on me that this bus was going nowhere soon. A young latina woman told us everyone was going to go eat at this cafe. We followed her to go get breakfast. It was a Mexican cafe and we didn't understand the menu at all. Worst of all there were flies and bugs everywhere in the cafe. It was very off-putting. We decided not to eat there. I walked about ten minutes to get to a supermarket we could see in the distance. I bought six muffins and some chocolate milk.

Our new bus showed up around 9am. The bus station in El Paso had been contacted around midnight and they had sent a new bus out around 4am. We arrived in El Paso around 2.30 in the afternoon. The whole journey had lasted about 25 hours.