American Manifesto, Volume 2, Episode 9 – Las Vegas

What can I say about Las Vegas? It’s a place of blisteringly hot madness and decadence, and I liked it (if only for a little while), but it helped that I spent most of my days touring outside the city. I am not a gambler, so that takes away much of the appeal the city has, at least to me.

If I ever return I think I would try one of the hotels, rather than a hostel. Specifically, rather than the hostel I had this time, which was one of the worst I ever stayed at. Staff was nice, but the kitchen was too small, every building (rather than rooms each dorm was a small building with beds and a bathroom) was packed with too many beds. The bed I had was the lower bunk in an alcove, affectionately nicknamed ‘the cave’ by one of my roommates, and I agree with that assessment wholeheartedly.

I’ve also never felt as unsafe as I did in that neighborhood.

No Man’s Sky, I mean land

In Vegas you basically have two areas of note, The Strip and Downtown. Between the two is a no man’s land filled with strip clubs, wedding chapels, bail bonds, homeless, addicts, madmen, and my hostel. As James, one of my roommates said, use a taxi or bus to get back after dark (they stop in front of the entrance or 30 seconds from the entrance respectively) and stay in the light.

I wish I was exaggerating, but it was really bad. At one time I went out to eat with James and we had to go farther than we thought. On the way back we passed a guy under an underpass, mumbling to himself. When we looked back he was determinately following us. We didn’t stop for red lights and kept walking. Then further on there were some guys sitting on a bench. They saw us coming, and one of them got up to walk provocatively towards us. Nothing happened, and maybe it doesn’t sound like much written down, but at the time it most definitely didn’t feel right.

Of course it wasn’t all bad.

I met some interesting characters in the hostel.

Like the Moldavian kid who had won a green card in a lottery and was there to live the American dream and had to find a job and a place to stay within one week because he had no money, hardly spoke English and had apparently never seen a bed before because he had no idea what to do with exotic things like a mattress cover and sheets (Epic fail waiting to happen?).

Or like James, who wasn’t technically homeless, but was close enough to care. This guy had been dealt the worst hand by life, including a heart condition that had him in a lot of pain all the time. He was living on borrowed time and was in Las Vegas waiting for his sister, but he’d gotten to Vegas a few days before she was going to arrive so he was just passing the time in the hostel until she showed up (he didn’t want to do the tourist things, because he’d have to do them again with his sister and he’d just get bored). He believed in some interesting things and we had some good talks about games and more esoteric subjects like reincarnation and the Mandela Effect.

Of course I didn’t spend all my time in the hostel, even if the incessant heat often made me want to stay in the small but air-conditioned room.

The Strip

As I said I just spent one day touring through The Strip, and for me personally that was enough, even though I didn’t come close to seeing all the casinos. This place, especially compared to the no man’s land around it, is decadence personified. Everything is larger than life there, the casino hotels are huge and some of them feel like miniature cities, with shops and restaurants so technically you never have to leave the casino while you stay there.

I liked the themes of the casinos, like the Luxor and New York New York, and I saw several of the water shows of the Bellagio’s fountains. The inside of the hotels, the casinos proper, weren’t really my thing. Rows upon rows of slot machines made up the majority of the contents, but there were also some tables where they played other games like poker and blackjack. Since I don’t play those games, and slot machines don’t interest me in the slightest, I just walked through the smoke and throngs of gamblers and gawkers. In some cases I went in one casino and out another, because most are owned by the same company and are interconnected through walkways and for two of them even a monorail.

Death Valley

Las Vegas is a good place to use as a base to explore some of the surrounding areas / landmarks. That’s the reason I spent as long as I did in Vegas – if you’re not a gambler than two days are more than enough. Realize though that if you are going to tour around you’ll need the whole day to do it for every single place you want to go to, since nothing is really close by.

The first place I went to was also the hottest: Death Valley. This is a great look at the variety of landscapes a desert can offer, from vast salt plains, to sandy dunes, to chocolate and vanilla colored mountains and hills.

It’s important to bring lots of water because you’ll be drinking almost non-stop. Water was included on the tour and everyone made good use of it. At one point it was 107 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 42 degrees Celsius, outside and that kind of heat is draining. By the end of the tour most people were either sleeping in the bus or sitting there a bit dazed. I was one of the few who still went out of the bus at every stop, still interested in everything we were there to see, and there was still plenty we didn’t get to see even though we spent hours in Death Valley. I could have done with an additional hour or two there, but I was the exception.

What I found particularly cool was that they shot some of the scenes from the original Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope) in Death Valley. I stood on the spot where Obi-Wan and Luke stood as they looked over Mos Eisley spaceport! I saw the dunes where R2D2 and C3PO walked after their escape pod crashed on Tatooine. Now I want to re-watch the Star Wars movies again.

Zion and Bryce Canyon

I took a combination tour to both Zion and Bryce Canyon, which has its up and downsides. Upside, I saw a lot of beautiful places. Downside, there was no time to really spent time there. In Bryce Canyon especially I would have loved to have hiked down the trails into the canyon.

Like the previous tour there was a lot of driving involved and we basically went from photo stop to photo stop. Zion has some really pretty rock formations, including an arch that, in a few thousands of years, will become a land bridge over two parts of the canyon.

After lunch we went to Bryce Canyon, which is the youngest of the canyons (Grand, Zion, Bryce) and, in my opinion, maybe the most beautiful one of them all. It doesn’t have the scale and deepness of the Grand Canyon, but the colors are so pronounced, with yellows and ochres and reds. This was the place where we had some time to walk, but only along the rim. We got 45 minutes so we used these to walk a bit off the beaten path to see as much as we could and take as many pictures as we could possibly take. This is a canyon I want to come back to and spent a full day or more here, just to hike the trails into the canyon proper.

Next time.

Grand Canyon

I saw the West Rim of the Grand Canyon, after a bit of a fuck up with my tour booking. I was originally going to see the South Rim, but when I got picked up it was for the West Rim. While they did have a tour to the South Rim the next day, that didn’t work for my schedule, so I did the West Rim instead.

It was a really small group, just me, one other guy and the tour guide. We started off with a helicopter ride down to the floor of the Grand Canyon. Apparently the West Rim is the only place where you can land. The helicopter rides on the South Rim only fly over and through the canyon. It was impressive to stand down there and see the walls rise around you.

After that we went to a couple sites with top views of the canyon. I was actually impressed that there weren’t fences along the rim at all. You could walk right up to the edge and, if you’re suicidal or stupid enough, fall right over it. Good for pictures though. The guide showed us a picture he took of a girl who was doing a hand-stand right there on the edge and her mom telling her to get even closer to the edge for the photo. Stupid and dangerous, but it was a good picture though.

One of the draws of the West Rim is the glass floor observation platform over the canyon. I opted not to go on it, because you couldn’t take pictures there (boooo), I already saw the top down from the helicopter and I had just looked over the edge of the canyon with nothing to hold me back from falling. After that a glass floor isn’t really thrilling anymore and, to me, not worth the money.

I also found that, after touring Yosemite, I’ve grown a liking to climbing up rocks. We climbed up some rock formations for some great views and pictures. The other guy with us tagged along, but it was clear this wasn’t his cup of tea – the guide stayed with him while I took the lead going up and down. Gave me more time to take pictures too, so I can’t complain.

Downtown, the Freemont Experience

On the last day I was in Las Vegas I went to the downtown area, even though it was a struggle for me to leave the hostel – it was just so damned hot outside. But I heard a lot of good about Freemont Street, which is basically the old Strip. And it’s true, you can call it mini Las Vegas. They have everything the Strip has, but smaller and condensed in one short street. They also have some stuff that the Strip doesn’t have, like live music shows all along the street. I love those.

In all Las Vegas was a good, if tiring, experience. The constant heat and short nights to go on tours don’t make for a restful experience. No, for that I had San Diego, my next destination.