We are now in LA, in the home-away-from-home that is the Air New Zealand lounge in LAX. It’s SO nice to hear kiwi accents again, after 12 months of being away. We put in for Premium Economy upgrades, but decided late on to try for Business – we found out when we got here that PE was pretty much full, so it was no problem being in Business. Yay! Sleep, real food and all that. Nice way to do the last leg of our trip – this is the 16th flight on this trip, and the 24th since we left NZ. Ouch. Carbon footprint much?
For those who can’t be bothered and just want the pics, here are mine, and Leonie’s are coming soon :)
Anyway, we got into Durango on sunday night, after flying in from London via Denver. Nice easy flight, and it’s a nice place. We picked up our car – paid a very small upgrade price and got a convertable PT Cruiser, which was fun, if (like ALL US cars we’ve had) a bit gutless. We headed to the Blue Lake Ranch, which is a place about 20 mins from Durango which we stayed in in January – it was fantastic to see it without 4 feet of snow. The whole place was green and growing, even late in summer.
On monday, we headed out to Cortez, which is about an hours drive, to see a friend, Richard Running Deer. He’s a Ute medicine man (for lack of a better way to put it), and even tho he’s getting old, he’s full of wisdom and amainzing stories. It was great to see him again (we went on tuesday too).
On Wednesday, we headed to Mesa Verde, which is a large national park, as wel as a world heritage site (like the pyramids, machu pichu etc). There are some very early Indian settlements there, built into the cliffs – well, early being “before any record of the current people in the area”, so a long time ago. It was stunning to say the least – just look at the photos, it’s a very visual place. I’ll update the HDR pics with “real” ones once I get a chance to buy photomatix pro.
Today we headed off earlyish, and flew to Denver, and we are now in LA, waiting to go to Auckland.
Thats really about it for the moment. :) Next stop, home.
