Crapping on a yak.....overland to the other side of the world and the rest: Day 326 – 23 June 2010: The Navajo and Jungle Music

I get up early to catch the sun rise, the light stretching my torso along the plain.

Later in the morning we stop on the ‘Forrest Gump Road’ in Monument Valley, one of the most impressive road vistas in the US. We do some traffic dodging to get group photos. Regular users must be fed up with people running down the middle of the road clogging up this perfect opportunity for putting the metal down.

By 10am we are in Monument Valley National Park, an official Navajo Reserve. Most of us are booked on a guided jeep tour, which turn out to be a couple of pick-up trucks with seating in the bay, while others have booked a horse ride. I declined to do the latter, as it can’t be a nice life for horses being ridden around this dry hot dry landscape. Looking at the horses when we bump into the riding group during the tour, small, dry and scarred with uneven coats, I am glad of my decision.

Before we meet the Navajo, Jimmy gives runs through some do’s and don’ts, but mainly don’ts. Don’t shake their hands too firmly, don’t look straight into their eyes for long periods as they take this as a challenge from men and flirtation from women, and don’t take pictures of them – in fact don’t even take your camera out next to them as they assume you will take a picture of them. In the event, the two guides encourage us to take as many photos as we like, though they are somewhat camera shy themselves.

The roads in the valley are pot hole ridden dirt tracks. The Chevy GMC I am in has done 212k miles, which is impressive enough, but that 120k of these were on these tracks means it must be bomb proof.

I am sat in the front of the truck with Shane, our Navajo guide. He breaks the ice by talking about the football World Cup, which he knows a lot more about than I do, as it has been going on while I’ve been on the Green Tortoise tour. It seems the ‘beautiful game’ has at last penetrated the American psyche.

The names of the sites in the park were assigned by a prospector called Goulding when he started running tours of Monument Valley in the early twentieth century. One of the people he brought to the area was the film director John Ford, who decided this was the perfect place to film Stagecoach. The central vista overlooking the valley is called John Wayne Point, and the souvenir trading posts, which are run by Navajo, have life size cut outs of Wayne and Geronimo, which seems ironic to me given John Wayne didn’t necessarily get along very well with Native Indians in many of his films.

Shane tells me that he is the father in law of the guide in the other pick-up. Shane doesn’t look much older than mid-thirties, and living in this landscape you would have trouble looking young for your age. He notes that Cristina the yoga poser, who is on the other truck, is spending a lot of time talking to his son in law, and says she must not be a very good listener as she doesn’t seem to realise that he is married with a child. I re-assure him that, though listening may not be her forté, talking is, and that is all she is doing.

In warning us about taking photos, Jimmy had said that we also risk getting our cameras clogged up with dust. In the event, the dust is only a problem when we are driving, but Shane tells me that there were 65mph winds the last time a Green Tortoise group was here. Given the conditions, I am surprised to find a smattering of cows and sheep grazing here, though there is plenty of scrub to spare.

One of the highlights of the tour is a large rock formation that looks like a giant sleeping or slain dragon. There is another similar formation that looks like a T-Rex, while the Bird’s Eye is a whole in the roof of a tall concave formation called The Giant Hogan, a Hogan being the large mud igloos that are the traditional homes of the Navajo.

In the evening we find ourselves a slice of Americana in Page in north Arizona. Most of the group have dinner at a steakhouse to compensate for the mostly vegetarian food we have been served from the Green Tortoise cook outs. Afterwards we find a bar that is doing Karaoke. Before our entrance it was catering only to a handful of tone deaf locals. ‘HelIo Page!’ I announce as I take the mic to belt out a few numbers, these being Folsom Prison Blues, Chantilly Lace, and Hendrix’s version of All Along the Watchtower. ‘Alright’, says the karaoke guy who is about sixty, ‘a fellow fan of the jungle music’....???