What Images Do Not Tell

Before we hit the road for mainly just driving through the Grand Canyon (which was definitely big, albeit perhaps not as grand) to get to San Diego (which should happen tomorrow afternoon), we stayed in a small city called Page in Arizona. This little dusty town south of Lake Powell is closely tied to the Navajo Nation, the largest Native American tribe in the US and its main attractions are the mystical canyons around its grounds. The local Natives are making a lucrative business out of the red sand and its natural treasures - the most impressive canyons cannot be accessed unless one is a part of a guided tour, and those tours must make fortunes. So Clerg had booked us on one of them through the Antilope Canyon. Together with what seemed at least a hundred tourists we were registered, counted and piled up on one of our Chief Leonard`s self-made pick-ups like a cattle of sheep. I prayed the whole half an hour journey, jumping a meter high up and down on the wooden bench in the open truck, where the seat belts were just a decoration.

At the canyon opening, Leonard tried to line us up, we were 15 in his group. It is funny how people who choose a group activity usually end up being the least suitable for such. There was the Italian lady who could not stop instantly verbalizing what ever she saw or heard to her husband and son (Oh, look, sand! Oh, look, its red!), there were the three French idiots carrying expensive cameras and probably still a load of alcohol in them from the night before, and the two Englishmen who did not bother following Leonard and who Leonard got pretty upset with, having to lecture on them in front of everyone else. In addition to all this, the canyon that in the photographs had looked big, calm and serene, in reality was very narrow and packed with dozens of other groups just like ours. I had been to much more serene places I must admit.

But then, on our way back through the S-shaped canyon walls, Clerg and I happened to be in front, quite ahead of our group, and somehow, for a minute, we were the only ones to witness the midday sun beams break through the canyon ceiling. For this moment, we could feel what the websites keep promising to tourists: the serenity and calm of the Antilope Canyon. The wooden benches on the way back did not seem that bad anymore. Baaaa.....