Fiesta

It turns out that we'd arrived in Santa Barbara just as their annual Mexican fiesta was about to start.

The first sign for us was a young girl getting on a bus with a box containing around 18 brightly coloured confetti eggs. Then we heard that a few roads would be closed and finally as we arrived in the centre we could see the Mercado de la Guerra in full swing, with a rock band on stage and various Mariachi and Norteño groups grooving in the side streets.

Sizzling and popping from the adjacent stands were all manner of foods and colourful clothes, and this was still a day before the main events really got under way.

sittin in the hills

Yes, we realised it was time to check out from L.A. but not until we'd done one more thing. We'd already spent time on Hollywood Boulevard, seen the sign, wandered along Sunset Strip. Been up to the big houses in Beverley Hills. Seen a movie in Graumann's Chinese Theatre. Been backstage at the Kodak. Visited the fancy schmancy restaurants frequented by the stars, seen Famous People Driving Around In Fancy Cars. But there was one more big attraction of the area that we hadn't yet done.

I know you'll guess...

Yes - Sittin' in the Hills - with Naomi.

And for that story there's

'More to come...'

Hollywood - Marina del Rey - Beverley Hills

We're still in Hollywood but have also been out to Marina del Rey to meet a friend.

The road systems around Los Angeles are more demanding that most of the other places we've visited and we saw some quite spectacular manoeuvres by other drivers changing lanes. I was driving at my most defensive.

Michelle Shocked sings 'I've driven five hundred miles today and never even left L.A" - I know the feeling.

Then an evening to catch up on years of news with Michael who now lives in a ritzy apartment in the Marina district. His place has all mod cons with valet parking, onsite gyms and pools and was quite a lot like living permanently in a luxury resort. We spent several hours chattering about our various adventures before taking our leave for the return to the centre.

Whilst we were away the construction workers seemed to have made central L.A. a total exclusion zone with various strategic roads and ramps closed to traffic creating something of a puzzle to get back. We made it in and only seemed to lose about 10 minutes, but it was more with luck than judgement. It was also another late finish, maybe 2am compared to yesterday's 1am.

Today was spent around more of the central areas, although we also hopped briefly over to Beverley Hills and in the evening visited the excellent and vibrant Spago restaurant where we also met the head chef Wolfgang Puck, who visited our table. The food, ambiance and service of this restaurant were all first rate.

Hooray for Hollywood

We can see the Hollywood sign from the apartment. I didn't realise this yesterday night when we arrived, but noticed it as soon as it was daylight today.

The same with the stars on the pavement which go right past our building. There's Judy Garland and James Dean within a few paces. However, the main Hollywood Boulevard still has a wide variety of shops, ranging from tattoo parlours, places to by hubble bubbles and strange herbs all the way through to quite upmarket stores.

The tourist centre today is a few blocks west from here, by the Kodak Theatre and Grauman's Chinese Theater. We took a look around both. The Kodak is where the Oscar ceremony is held each year now although the off-duty outside resembles a shopping mall. For the Oscars around a quarter of a mile of the mains road is laid with red carpet for the fil stars to walk along. The rest of the year its a high pressure tourist location which somehow reminds me of an unfolded and very sunny Leicester Square in London.

Adjacent to the Kodak is the 80 year old Grauman's theatre, which looks very Chinese because Grauman was a fan of the Chinese. Inside, it s a very opulent and well detailed building, which can somehow teach the designers of the Kodak about adding some spirit and soul to a building.

In fairness, the inside of the Kodak theatre has been done well, but there are large areas which look as if the paint has been applied rather thinly.

But we are standing quite literally in the footsteps of the great and good outside Grauman's. All of Hollywood royalty is present with their feet and hands marked out in concrete slabs. I've seen one of the ceremonies in the past (Nick Cage) and he had Jim Carrey, Jay Leno and others show up for the session. I'm told they limit the ceremonies to 2-3 a year which stretch back to Marilyn Monroe (much handling of these impressions) via John Wayne (whose impression includes a fist) and up to the Harry Potter trio who share one large square together.

Now its time to head to a marina to catch up with another friend.

Hollywood and Vine

We decided that we'd taken enough money from the casinos in Vegas and it was time to move on.

The journey to L.A. took slightly longer than anticipated because of an inexplicable 120 mile long traffic jam on the main route.

We chickened out and diverted across the Mojave Desert, which was a round-about route but did give us a chance to get reacquainted with Joshua trees.

The clock on the wall in our Hollywood and Vine apartment here gives the game away though.

We didn't arrive until about 1 o'clock in the morning. I've decided to leave my stuff in the backpack until the morning.

Instead maybe I'll spin some vinyl on the thoughtfully provided turntable and selection of albums or catch up with Mila Kunis in Los Angeles Confidential.

Later I'm sure we'll be wandering across to Hollywood Boulevard and hopefully spotting a few movie stars...

Oh, silly me, I must be tired after all....

We are on Hollywood Boulevard...That would account for the golden stars on the sidewalk outside the apartment.

you gotta know when to hold 'em, and know when to fold 'em

As its Vegas, we can't tell too many tales of what goes on. However, my gambling was pretty good.

I decided to splurge a full $10 on the slots and started out at the Rio, whilst collecting some tickets for a show.

I worked my way through a variety of low spend machines, winning a dollar or two as I went along. When I found a winning machine, a man popped up from behind it and started singing on a small stage. Only one number, but I wondered if it had been done to distract.

I continued and then a few minutes later a dancing girl wearing not very much popped up on the same stage whilst another started to offer me drinks. I was up to at least $16 by this point, and the machine was making all manner of excited sounds.

In the end, I had to leave, but cashed in my winnings which finally peaked at $18 - thats a full $8 profit for less that half an hour of button pressing.

I returned to the Palazzo and decided to try a similar machine to see if my luck continued.

But No. In less than five minutes my winnings were wiped out and I was down to $2 from my original $10.

I decided to save the $2 for a later gamble.

This played out when we were on our way back from a restaurant. I put the $2 into a machine and pressed the button for what amounted to 3 or 4 goes. On the third go, some lights flashed and the machine went into deep thought for what seemed like a long time.

I'd won again. This time $135. I decide to press the 'print coupon' button and triumphantly cashed the money.

At this point I could say I had gambled successfully in Vegas.

But don't tell anyone.

in the skyline of signs

From my various dalliances with Vegas, I'd decided that the Venetian was my hotel of preference.

This time we are actually sleeping way up in the sky at the adjoining sister hotel which is called the Palazzo. It's a huge room in what is really the same vast complex and still has the Venetian canal system that runs through the shopping mall. The room is high enough to make eye-contact with the many passing helicopters and our room looks down on many of the hotels including the overly golden Trump towers.

The predecessor of the Venetian for the indoor faux Italian street scenes was the Bellagio, which is the one often shown in 'heist' movies although staying in the simulated daylight or evening of the Venetian works surprisingly well. Look carefully in the picture and you can see the sprinkler system in the sky.


Many people can be a bit snooty about Las Vegas, but as a short break of 2-3 days it is something of a global and slightly bonkers 'one-off'. Suspend certain critical functions when entering this topless pizza other-world.

As we arrived yesterday through the ten story neon signs I was reminded that night-time Las Vegas is where everyone drives with an attitude as if they have just consumed about a dozen Red Bull caffeine drinks, don't yield at crossings and will jump lights and jostle for a one car advantage.

I'm valet parked until we crack the system in this desert town that hides the hours.

Scarlet's Walk as a soundtrack

There's even more mental editing to keep this blog running whilst on vacation and trying to stay to a ten minute per post rule. It'll be impressions more than anything.

I'm travelling fairly backpack light, so the usual paraphernalia of cameras and suchlike technology is mainly back in the UK. Like another desert wandering blogger, iPhone will sometimes suffice.

The trip is also a useful stimulus for the Circle (book three of The Triangle). I've got some great ideas. But they must wait. It's a full time job 'doing it' at the moment, let alone writing about it.

Then there's water. Despite the desert pictures, we have seen some of that too. Stepped in it, crossed it, swam in it. Oh yes.

And last night we drifted out of one kind of desert into another. The type that suddenly switches on as if a giant has carelessly tossed golden jewels across the sand. Too many to count, each one glittering with someone's hopes but in an environment designed to extract more than it places back.

Yes. We are in Vegas. As Tori might say:

and the Jacaranda tree
is telling me
It's not over yet,
just by the way She bends
"if you come breezin' through"
you said "I'll know that it's
you by the taste on my lips,
Bet on the desert's kiss"

See you on the 44th floor.

a hell of a place to lose a cow

We've been out to a place called Rainbow Bridge. My assumptions were that the colours in the rock formations would explain the Rainbow and then the arch formed by the wind erosion would explain the Bridge.

I was therefore delighted when we'd been there for a few minutes, to look into the sky and see a strange rainbow stripe across it. Not like a usual rainbow arch, but instead a straight line showing a spectrum of colours. I did grab a few shots and I'm pleased to say that the colours were also picked out by the camera.

I shall have to puzzle how this works, probably something to do with the bowl shaped canyon that we were peering into and a particular time of day. Or else its the native American gods of the area painting the sky.

The area is part of Bryce canyon, named after Ebenezer Bryce, one of the early mormon settlers who clearly had a sense of humour with his famous quote about the area.

The much earlier settlers, the native american Paite Indians, had a different story for the place. They told that it was a valley where the Legend People (to-when-ang-wa) lived.

They were of many kinds - birds, animals, lizards and such like - but they looked like people. For some reason, the Legend People that lived in that place were bad. Because they were bad, the Coyote turned them all into rocks. You can see them in that place now, some standing, some sitting and some holding on to one another. You can see their faces, with paint on, just as they were before Coyote turned them into rocks.

And as if that wasn't enough, by sitting still, I was then visited by a Raven, another mystical being from the old stories.

The Raven started as a snow white bird, but changed colour to black bringing the elements to mankind. He stole the Sun, Moon and Stars, fresh water and a brand of Fire from where they had been hidden by the mankind-hating Gray Eagle when visiting his lodge to see Gray Eagle's daughter.

The Raven fastened the Sun to the sky and used its light to fly to a far island where he hung the Moon. Then as the Sun set, he arranged the Stars in the sky. Next day, he dropped the fresh Water at a good spot where it became the source for all fresh water.

The Raven still had a brand of Fire in his bill and as he flew on it made his feathers black from the smoke. Eventually it was too hot to hold and he dropped it, where it struck stones and was hidden within them.

That is why, to this day, if you strike two stones together, spaces will fly from them. The Raven's feathers never returned to white.

Along the valley floor

A South Western style breakfast burrito this morning before we set off towards more of the cowboy country.

We'd slept in a small town (Pop 300) founded by Mormons who’d cut a tough new route through the rocks to open up the southern edge of Utah.

Seeing a picture of the original pioneers lined up in their Sunday best gave little clue to the rugged hardship of the journey they'd all made.

Onward toward the land filmed by John Ford and a part of so many westerns. We stopped at the one time small trading post used as a hotel by John Wayne and many others when filming The Searchers and many other western classics.

Then crossing the border back into Arizona exploring the breathtaking valley floor within the Navajo reservation.

Utah around sunrise

Standing by the Utah roadside just around sun-rise.

You can hear the trucks on this high-desert road from miles away as they approach.

The small roadside foliage hides flying critters just waiting to see what's so different about a European as they wait to pounce.

Me, I may be standing by another stretch of black-top in the middle of a desert, but I realise I'm grinning broadly.

weather check in Durango

It's been a strange kind of day. We started in the sunny hills outside of Durango with a plan to go north to a small mining village. The top picture shows the yard of the place where we slept.

But shortly after we started, the sky ahead turned grey, so we revised our plan and headed south west towards the finer weather (by evening we discovered we'd missed flash floods and 3/4inch hailstones)

Instead we wound up in a sunny and hot native American reservation where we followed some of the trails.

Spectacular with views across four US States from around 9000 feet elevation and deep canyons cutting throughout the landscape.

We spotted various generations of pueblo living, from the early years of AD, when the dwellers lived underground in pits, through AD700-800 when they lived in buildings of brick and wattle, and then into the 1200s, when they moved to an intricate way of building brick structures into the cliff faces of the area.

And then, by evening, we'd crossed the spacey alien and surreal landscape from New Mexico into Utah, and found ourselves sitting outdoors during sunset, whilst enjoying a cowboy-style supper.