 |
Yosemite National Park (USA)
by rosaliecullen
**Overview**
Yosemite has to be one of my favourite national parks of all time. Lying in the Californian wilderness, the area consumed by the park is enormous. The park is beautiful with waterfalls, rock formations, lakes and plenty of walks. You might be joined by the occasional black bear or mountain lion but fortunately, ... particularly in high season, it tends to be quite busy so you shouldn't have too many problems.
We visited Yosemite from Monterey for a one-night trip which is about a 6 hour drive. We arrived in the park as it was getting dark and 2 hours later in the pitch black we rolled up to Curry Village to see Half-Dome glistening in the moonlight. The snow had fallen on the ground and it was like a scene out of a Christmas card.....in April.
**Camp Curry**
We didn't need tyre chains for the snow but it is worth having a look to see if you do, the main routes were clear it was just the village itself that was full of snow. As it was April, chances are you might need snow tyres/chains in the winter.
"Village" is probably overstating this large camping area but perhaps we didn't use all of the amenities. We only ate one meal which was breakfast in the vastly overpriced Yosemite lodge which is adjacent to Curry Village. Breakfast buffet was something horrendous like $25.
The main hiking trails to Mirror Lake and Nevada Falls begin just a few minutes outside of Curry Village and a short drive or slightly longer walk can see you at El Capitan for some climbing or sight seeing of Yosemite falls.
The tent-cabins are exactly that, really basic, think "tents" with a dressing table and a light. Not glamping, still exposed to the cold (which it was in April, I heartily recommend Vodka for keeping warm and getting an excellent sleep.. not so great the day after though...! Seriously, take something warm and a hat, my Vodka-free-friends were freezing).
The bathrooms are a short walk away from the cabins and the cabins we stayed in were on quite uneven ground so bear that in mind if you have access-needs. The bathrooms had the bear lockers right outside which was good to deter bears away from the tent-cabins, but I often wondered if Yogi and his mates would be having a feast outside the bathrooms when I popped to the loo in the middle of the night. Of course..they weren't! We didn't see any bears at all in Yosemite but we walked popular trails with lots of people.
The trek to Nevada Falls was hard work and we didn't quite make it, but the views and scenery were breathtaking, one of the nicest places I've ever visited. We saw the famous half dome in the sunshine and had lots of adventures on steep cliffs in the snow.
On the whole I thought Curry Village was great value, very basic but clean and there was no overcrowding in bathrooms, but Yosemite Lodge breakfast was pretty busy and I'm not sure I'd want to stay there. Depends how cold I am.
There was so much more to Yosemite that we didn't get to see as we were only there for one day. Definitely worth a visit and Camp Curry was fun too.
Read the complete review |
 |
Eravikulum National Park (Kerala, India)
by koshkha
~Go(at) forth!~
On the afternoon of our second day in the Kerala hill town of Munnar, we were in the mood to take things easy after a morning spent being bounced up and down a mountain to see a tea factory and then bounced all the way back down again. If we'd been eggs we would have been totally scrambled. We'd had a rather ... average lunch and quite fancied just going back to the hotel and being lazy, but our driver had other plans. This was a man with two customers in the back of his vehicle and a neatly typed itinerary from his employer. We were going to 'do the itinerary' whether we wanted to or now.
As easy-going souls who'd more likely than not put themselves through all sorts of torture in order to avoid upsetting a driver, we decided to shut up and 'get with the programme'. In this case that meant we were off to look for goats in the Erivakulum National Park. Not just any goats though - you can see those all over the place. These were special goats, a protected species called the Nilgiri Tahr. If you ask me what makes them special I would say they're a bit bigger and hairier than your average Indian goat and they have really cool curly horns. It's not exactly the difference between a zebra and a horse.
~Park Life~
The park is about 15 miles from Munnar and is open from 7 am to 6 pm daily but keep in mind that you have to be out of the park before 6 and need to build in the time for standing in a long line waiting for the bus. Don't get stuck in the park - it wouldn't be fun. Our driver dropped us off at the far end of the line waiting to buy tickets. When we saw how long it was we had second thoughts about giving up and going back to the hotel but told ourselves it would probably move quickly and our driver had disappeared and we didn't know where to find him so it made sense to just get on with it. Indians seem to enjoy the social aspects of a good queue almost as much as we Brits do so even though we waited nearly an hour, we didn't get bored. Frustrated perhaps, but not bored. We watched the buses coming and going, we watched the people trying to jump the queue, we even observed a small smartly dressed girl squatting down for a pee in full view of the hundreds of waiting visitors with her parents standing by approvingly.
As we progressed along the queue a group of what I guessed to be business men started trying to push in. The 'line manager' caught my eye and sent them back. They tried again and again - each time he pushed them away. The line was a mess because the passengers with tickets were waiting for the next bus and blocked the access to the actual ticket counter. The line manager tried to expedite the sales by sending forward one person from each group to get the tickets - the queue jumpers pushed by us, trying to hoodwink the man in charge. I tutted judgementally as only a true Brit can, he wobbled his head in that way that says everything and nothing at exactly the same time.
During our wait we had ample time to ponder the unfriendly pricing policies of Indian attractions. A ticket to get into the park will cost you 15 rupees (about 20p or 30 cents) if you are Indian. If you are a foreigner it's 200 rupees. To slightly mitigate this sense of unfairness, the other fees are fairer - the bus is 25 rupees for everyone and there's another random blanket fee of 5 rupees. So in total an Indian visitor pays 45 rupees and a foreigner pays 230. Hey ho! If you can afford to go to India you can afford to pay more to see their goats.
~Here we go(at)~
After about an hour we finally got our tickets and hopped onto the bus. The journey up the mountainside to the park is pretty though a little scary on the hairpins. Since the only vehicles in the park are park vehicles, you can assume the drivers are used to taking blind corners at speed but that's not a reason to relax.
The bus drops you at the end of the road where there's a visitor centre, a snack bar and some fairly clean toilets. There's no need to worry about where to go next since there's only one way you can go - along the road for about half a mile. At the end of the road you turn round and walk back again. How exciting! Signs tell you in terms not seen since the great film 'An American Werewolf in London' to "Stay on the path". There are no werewolves if you stray but an irate security guard with a whistle will pursue you and give you a good telling off.
As you can imagine, with busloads of visitors arriving every few minutes and only half a mile of road, there's quite a bit of congestion. I'm the type of person who thinks the purpose of a national park is to get away from people so I found this more than a little bit irritating. However, by varying our pace to keep away from large groups we managed to create our own little pod of 'aloneness' though the racket created by visitors shouting at each other did convince me we hadn't much chance of seeing the goats.
I had pretty much convinced myself that there would be no goats but none the less I kept scanning the horizon in hope of a mighty horned beastie standing on a rocky outcrop like Simba in the Lion King. The views alone mean it's worth taking a visit to this park and even though hundreds of square miles of other mountainsides exist in the area, rather a lot of them are covered in tea bushes. Whilst these tea plantations are gorgeous to look at, they aren't exactly what nature intended. The large display board near the entrance had informed us that the park is a fine example of the shola grasslands ecosystem which is typical of the Western Ghats area of India and contains diverse plant and animal species which are endemic to the area. Some of them - most notably the goats which everyone goes there to see - are also endangered. The total area of the park is a smidgen less than 100 square kilometres and the highest point within the park is mount Anamudi which stands 2695m high, making it the highest Indian peak south of the Himalaya range. In addition to the goats there are allegedly also Nilgiri Langur, leopard, tiger and Indian bison but I wouldn't suggest you hold your breath in expectation of seeing any of those except possibly the langur (a type of monkey). All the rest have more sense than to go looking for tourists.
In effect, the admission of tourists to a tiny part of the park probably raises a large part of the money needed to look after the rest of the area so I can't get too worked up about how restricted it is. If herding all of us into one corner means that the goats and other beasties can frolic in the rest of the park, that's OK by me.
~Father, Son and Holy Goat~
I will admit that after 15 minutes of trudging up-hill I started to wonder what was the point of this silly park. Then we spotted a guy with a large camera coming towards us and I asked him if he'd spotted any goats. He told us that he had, that there was one right by the end of the path and that we should hurry over before it went away. So we picked up the pace and kept plodding on. Most of the people around us seemed to have got fed up with the walk and the awful weather and were already turning back and heading towards the bus stop. We passed them, happy in the knowledge that there was a sniff of a chance of a possible goat sighting.
Sure enough we came to the end of the road where a security guard was standing and in the field beside him was a goat. The only other people there were a father and his son with a bunch of cameras. The coincidence of the goat being there seemed rather suspicious - I wondered if it had been tethered to the spot or lured there with food but I could see no evidence of either. For a minute or two we were the only humans there - me, my husband, the guard, the father and the son - all completely focused on a rather ordinary, fat, goat with curly horns. We took some pictures, made a rather dull video, and whispered in our best 'David Attenborough watching gorillas' voices. And then, just as we were getting into the goat-vibe of the place, a large family came round the corner, spotted the goat and came running up to the barrier where we were standing. I don't know what language they were speaking but I would translate roughly as 'Goat, Goat, hurry, hurry, let's go and shout at the goat. The goat was unimpressed, turned her tail expressively towards the crowd and wandered away. I raised my eyebrows and shook my head at the guard. He wobbled his head in a 'Hey, what can you do?' kind of way and then we plodded back down the road.
~The anthropology of the bus line~
The queue for the bus when we reached the entrance was shocking. We joined the end and 20 minutes later despite lots of people arriving we were still at the end. I can only assume that everyone had someone in the line keeping a place for them. Two poor foreign tourists who don't know the queue etiquette of an Indian bus line had no hope. And indeed we were the only foreign tourists, and hence a bit of a minor attraction ourselves. Not as fascinating as a goat but nonetheless tethered to the queue and so accessible. We had some pleasant chats with the people in front of us - they came from Gujarat and told us about wild tigers walking through one of the towns. I tried to hide my disbelief with a polite head wobble of my own. It took nearly an hour before we finally made it onto a bus and then only because the group in front of us wanted to stay together and all take the same vehicle back to the entrance.
As a wildlife experience it wasn't terribly memorable. As an 'at play with the locals' experience, it was rather more interesting. The scenery was beautiful and offered a very great contrast to the tea plantations of the previous couple of days. But was one goat and a few birds really worth nearly two hours standing in lines and 500 rupees? I'm not completely convinced. My top tip, if you want to go, please try to avoid weekends - it's quite possible that our biggest error was going on a Sunday.
Note: There are signs at the ticket desk saying goat views cannot be guaranteed and that no refunds will be given. This generally means I have as much chance of marrying George Michael as of seeing a goat. Don't be TOO disappointed if you don't see any.
Read the complete review |
 |
Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park (USA)
by rosaliecullen
**Background and Location **
Monument Valley (MV) is nowhere near as famous as the Grand Canyon, but in my opinion it is so underrated! MV is in the American South-West in Arizona, but close to the borders of Colarado, New Mexico and Utah. The climate is semi-arid (aka VERY HOT in the summer) and if you google search ... 'Monument Valley', you are likely to recognise the landscape as it is where most Western Films were set (especially John Wayne stuff). It is famous for it's huge monoliths of rock which are shaped and sculpted by natural erosion and weathering processes.
I didn't realise how close this was to the Grand Canyon, just a 3 hour drive from the South Rim of the Canyon will get you to Monument Valley. 7 hours from Las Vegas airport and a similar time from Phoenix Arizona. Yes, it is out in the sticks but if you are bothering to drive to the Grand Canyon from Phoenix or Vegas you just can't miss this. In my opinion it was better than the Grand Canyon.
**Our itinerary**
--Vegas to Monument Valley--
We arrived in Las Vegas after a short flight from Vancouver at around 9pm, after a delay in customs and waiting over an hour to pick up our pre-paid rental car, we finally left McCarran airport and headed to Henderson, our quick stop-over for the night. Henderson was a good choice just 30 minutes outside of Vegas and nowhere near the godforsaken Boulevard. I had considered driving to Boulder City or even as far as Kingman just so we had a few hours "in the bag" before the long drive the next day, but I was concerned about flight delays and driving in the dark, so decided to plump for Henderson. It proved an excellent choice the next day when the rental car had problems just one mile into our seven hour journey to Monument Valley, we were able to go back and exchange it relatively quickly and be on our way, only an hour and a half after we had planned. We finally exited Henderson at 8am. We stayed in the Hilton Garden Hotel, Henderson which was the cheapest of our month long trip at £46 for the night and far exceeded my expectations, I can highly recommend it and plan to write a review very soon.
--Heat and the road conditions--
We decided to do the longest drive on the first day and the seven hours to monument valley went relatively quickly. We took advice from people on tripadvisor, bought a cheap cool bag, some ice and a tray of water which cost us less than $15 from the amazing Seven Eleven (love that place!) and started our desert adventure. Except, it wasn't really as much of a desert as we had imagined. Sure, it was sandy, we knew it wouldn't be a proper desert as is arid land rather than semi-arid but I'd imagined narrow roads elevated above sandy shoulders, and we didn't get that at all! It is by no means a complaint, in fact, we both found it more reassuring that the roads were busier than we expected (but by no means busy by UK standards) and that the entire 7 hour journey was not the delightful 100 degrees heat that the car had started in in Las Vegas at 8am. Members on trip advisor had told me that the roads weren't desert roads, they told me it got cooler at high elevations, but I couldn't figure that out until we actually got there and saw it for ourselves!
--Petrol Stops--
We had also been seriously concerned about places to stop for petrol and restrooms but despite there being no actual dwellings between places, there were plenty of petrol stations with restrooms on the way. Having just been to Canada for two weeks, we expected the dwellings on the map to be small and remote places. I expected Tuba City (1-2 hours from Monument Valley) to be a small town with a few houses, I did not expect to see a McDonalds and Taco Bell, but I did see it and I was surprised at how much settlement there was in these areas.
--Unexpected Weather--
Flagstaff en route was another surprise and much bigger than expected. Torrential rain and 61 degrees Fareneheit had not been on my list of things to experience in Arizona, but the high elevations (6000-7000ft) made sure we experienced it. Sure, it cleared up soon enough but I had not expected it - especially in July, especially when we had just come from Las Vegas in stifling temperatures of 42 degrees CELCIUS at 7.30am!!!!!
--Driving down the road to monument valley--
After six hours which had gone reasonably quickly, we headed down the final road to Monument Valley and oh wow!!! It was like a scene from the movies, there was my long desert road with amazing monoliths on either side. We filmed the entire drive down into the valley and that was before we had even turned off for the most impressive part of the park. We stayed at The View hotel for one night which was AMAZING, it was like having a giant postcard outside your window. The view of the Mittens and Mesa Butte (names of 2 of the monoliths) were awesome. We had to pay $5 each to get into the park which is run by the Navajo tribe and the park was pretty busy when we got there at 3pm, of course we had lost an hour as we moved into a different time zone when we crossed the border from Nevada (Vegas) to Arizona so it was actually 4pm in Monument Valley time.
--Bumpy Road--
We planned to drive the 17 mile loop around the monoliths, but we didn't realise it was unpaved and very bumpy, so decided to give that a miss in our sporty rental car and jumped in a private tour with Homeland Navajo Tours. The ride down to the Mittens (about five minutes) was sooooooooooooooooooooo bumpy, we were jerked around everywhere in the jeep and I felt ridiculously sick. The thought of another 2 hours sitting in that vehicle made me feel awful, so I asked if it was possible to get a refund and asked to walk back to the hotel. The guide was really kind (although I do think they all found me hilarious! - crying English woman who felt sick) and said he would get a driver to pick me up and he insisted on waiting with me despite my insistence that they should proceed with the tour. He gave me a full refund and another guide picked me up in a 4x4. It didn't feel half as bumpy in that and I told him so. When we got back to the hotel, the boss man could see I was upset about missing the tour and offered to take me out in the 4 x 4 and pick up my husband on the way (who was still on the original jeep).
We paid $60 each for the tour, I have no idea if this is good or bad, but for the fact I could go out in the 4 x 4 made it worth every penny. I was a little nervous of the Navajo people as I had heard horror stories about people being ripped off and we had obvious cultural differences, but this experience completely wiped away any misgivings I had previously.
The ride was still bumpy but I didn't feel sick at all and really enjoyed the trip. We were out for 2.5 hours with plenty of time for photographs and OH WOW the monoliths were amazing! The view from "the north window" (named as it is the best view in the park as though you are "looking through a window") was incredible. Being able to drive around the loop felt so special, there were tribal elders living in shacks with no running water or electricity, the thing I couldn't get over was how quiet it was. The peace and serenity and quiet, well, I doubt if I will ever be able to match that ever again in my life.
The view from the hotel (The View hotel - well named!) was stunning, we watched the sunset whilst eating in the restaurant (which by the way is excellent service for good food at a reasonable price, $10-$15 for main meals - we had expected to be fleeced given that there are hardly any places to eat around there). The hotel played a John Wayne film (set in Monument Valley) which people could watch outside, that was very surreal watching the Mittens on the screen and seeing them out for real out of the corner of your eye.
**The Hotel**
The hotel was expensive (again! If you read any of my other travel reviews you'll see why!), probably £120 a night - it books up super fast we were SO lucky to get a room and had to shift the Grand Canyon itinerary round so that we could make it to Monument Valley. It was a huge, clean, modern room with a balcony overlooking the Mittens, all rooms overlook the Mittens and the hotel itself is moulded into the landscape, you can barely see it when you are in the park as it blends in so very well. The hotel had lots of Navajo items in it. In terms of other accommodation, I believe Gould's (the "local" store - i.e. the only store!) has a camping ground. You won't regret going to stay in The View though. We watched the sunset and sunrise and even watched a sattelite in amongst the stars, truly dreamy.
We bidded farewell to Monument Valley, probably my favourite place in our entire month-long trip and headed to the Grand Canyon South Rim.
Read the complete review |
