Bad place to break down

We left El Paso heading East to San Antonio where we intended to stop and have the car fixed. The heat was still up in the high 90's and we were on 4 lanes of an insanely busy highway 10 travelling west. We were only 15 miles from Mexico and the Texas Border Security patrol funnelled the four lanes of traffic into one by blocking the lanes with huge red plastic barrels. At this point where the four lanes became one our bloody car decided to clap out again with three miles of traffic behind it and about half a kilometre to the checkpoint. We put the hazards on and began walking toward the checkpoint. We were met by a border patrol trooper with a smile and a hand on his pistol asking "Y'all have a problem?". We explained the car situation and that we wanted to bypass the check point because we didn't want to push it through the checkpoint in front of 500 eighteen wheelers. He took us to the check point. Inside were about 10 armed cops who listened to our story and decided to let us evade the check point. They checked our passports and then drove us in the patrol car back to our car, stopped the traffic and allowed us to go on the empty lanes to bypass the checkpoint. We had explained that the car went if the fuel tank was completely full and that we could get fuel at the next stop about four miles down the road. We headed for the servo and while filling up we noticed that the Patrol Car had followed us, presumably to see that we did what we had said we would do.

Down in the West Texas town of El Paso ....

After Alan felt a little better we decided to push on to El Paso, Texas. On the way the bloody car clapped out in temperatures of up to 110 f on the blacktop. At a place called Truth or Consequences we called the AAA and had the car tabletopped to Las Cruces. A guy at a Honda dealership there, said to put wooden clothes pegs on the metal part of the fuel line feeding the injectors. He reckoned that it was heat evaporation causing the problem. We followed his advice and limped on to El Paso, where Al had a rumble guts relapse so we booked into a very seedy hotel. The hotel was built in 1959 and at that time was top class but it had long seen better days and commanded a hefty $27.00 a night. While the air conditioning worked and it was clean there was a very large mysterious stain on the bathroom floor that we deduced was the blood stain from a drug deal gone bad, backed up by a huge piece of plywood covering the absent window in the bedroom and frequent patrol visits to the car park by the local sherriff.

Lying; dying

Because of Al's irreverent attitude to my holy sand gathering, God afflicted him for the whole of the next week in Santa Fe and later in El Paso and then in Fort Stockton (Texas) with terrible diarrhoea and vomiting. He initially took refuge in the Santa Fe camp ground under the shade of a motley tree. It was 106 f (in the shade) and the ravens were literally circling above him. Then the cheeky buggers did a low level run and flew over the top of him. He feebly waved his fist and said "I'm not dead yet".

El Santuario de Chimayo,

El Santuario de Chimayo (The Shrine) was built between l8l4 and l8l6. This intense and deeply catholic community enthralled and scared us somewhat with its brutal iconography combined with lovely architecture. The faithful come to gather the "holy sand" which is reported to cure all sorts of ailments. They left an amazing assortment of offerings.

Leonie gathered some of the sand but it didn't stop us from being afflicted by the holy diarrhoea for the most part of our time in New Mexico. We also stayed in some of the driest, and dismal camping spots.

The Durango Kid

We spent time in Cortez, a lovely little town with lots of interesting Indian Cultural information and shops and we also took a steam train ride from Durango to Silverton. Al wore his cowboy hat and we dubbed him "The Durango Kid" but he thought he might be mistaken for someone from the set of Brokeback Mountain. The steam train took us through the most spectacular country to Silverton, an old silver mining town.










It seems Paris Hilton cant keep out of trouble, even in Silverton.

Mesa Verde, Colorado

People along the way had recommended that we go to Mesa Verde National Park and look at the cliff dwellings where the ancestral Pueblo people had lived centuries ago. We headed south to Colorado and into the hot dry desert country. This place is a must see we stayed at a campsite at the entrance of the National Park for about 4 days and visited the Mesa Verde National Monument, where I overcame my fear of heights and climbed a 30 foot ladder up the side of a cliff to get to the Balcony ruins. How people managed to live up there and not fall off the cliffs I dont know. They used hand and foot holds to get up and down the cliffs. Terrifying. So is the arse shot.