Horsey, Horsey, Don't You Stop ...............

If yesterday was a bit of a ‘meh’ day, then today was definitely a ‘neigh’ day! Up before dawn, pitch black, stars still out, and absolutely freezing cold - again! I was actually quite pleased when my alarm went off as it meant I could get up and go to the toilet - there was no way I was leaving my warm hogan in the middle of the night to traipse across a potentially creepy-crawly-ridden path in the freezing cold armed only with a torch! We were hoping like mad that the owners had remembered us saying we needed to leave by 6am, as they lock the gate at night, and we really didn’t want to have to wake them up. We drove up to the gate - padlocked! Bloody Hell! I tried our door key in the padlock, just in case, but as expected, no joy. Only one thing for it - wake our hosts, at 6.10 am! Just as Steve turned to head back up the drive, what did he see, but a glint on the ground - then as plain as the nose on your face was the key on a bright pink and orange chain! Oh, how awful would that have been if we hadn’t noticed?!

The first 5km of the road from the hogan is on a sandy unsealed road; and quite sandy in places - just keep driving if you hit the sand, she said! Good old Steve, he knows how to do it :-) a bit hairy at times, though. As we drove the sky in front of us gradually lightened and some of the iconic buttes became silhouetted on the skyline - beautiful.

We arrived at the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park visitor centre car park, one of the first cars in the there, just before the sunrise. We joined a good number of eager photographers waiting for that perfect shot. Very, very pretty but really, really, really cold! On the drive over the car said it was only 37˚! 

Seven o’clock came and we headed over to the little hut where we were to meet our guide for our 2 hour horse trek around ‘The Mittens’ buttes. I was a trifle alarmed when I tried to close his jeep door and the fascia panel came loose! I hoped that wasn’t an omen - I haven’t been on a horse for a few years! No worries, all good! In fact, all terrific! 

Steve got on, and stayed on, his horse Brad, without any problems, and all I had to contend with was a horse who liked to pull his head up and down to try to show who was boss - trouble was he kept shaking spit over his head; not nice when it ends up all over you! 

All Steve had to worry about was, why the xbox controller on the front of his saddle didn’t work (I don’t think the pommel was meant to be used like that, babe), his nuts getting trapped when he started trotting, and the ‘Horsey Horsey Don’t You Stop’ song going round and round in his head! He was quite surprised afterwards that I hadn’t been singing it along in my head too! 
Lawrence, our Navajo guide, spoke very quietly with a strong accent, and mostly to the front - so very difficult to follow anything he said to us. But one thing I did hear was the type of horse we were riding - so although we didn’t get our Mustang car, we did get a mustang horse! We didn’t want to be talked to though, really. It was so peaceful and quite absorbing just plodding, and trotting, (galloping if you ask Steve) along, taking in the iconic landscape. Yeeha!! We saw a couple of cotton-tail rabbits and some lizards, but no snakes or tarantulas :-( 

I’d forgotten what muscles you use when you’re riding a horse, and after our time was up I was a bit nervous about what would happen when I got off - yes, I did feel a bit like John Wayne but the feeling soon passed (my nuts to being as big)  thank goodness I only booked for 2 hours not four! Having had nothing but an apple since getting up, by the time we got back to the visitor centre at 10 am, were a tad peckish to say the least. Luckily we were able to get a buffet, all-you-can-eat breakfast at the View Hotel - so we did, just to make sure we could last all day until dinner after our sunset jeep tour. 

Feeling rather full we sat and contemplated the magnificent view for a while then set off on a 5k walk around the West Mitten Butte, hoping to see at least one snake or tarantula. We didn’t, but the creature count did rise to 6 lizards, 1 cottontail rabbit, several birds of prey, a couple of locusts and innumerable ants - very big ants. 

Apparently the paucity of wildlife is due to the fact that most animals are preparing for hibernation. We arrived back from our sandy hike to find the place overrun with coach party tourists - quite a contrast to the peace and tranquility of the morning. Fortunately coach parties tend not to go hiking so at least we’d had the trail to ourselves.

Our 3 hour cultural jeep tour started at 4.15pm - and it was Lawrence again; we’d rather been hoping to have someone we could understand! It turned out fine, though, because there was an American woman (rather a know-it-all actually) along with us sitting up front, and she repeated a lot of what he said. And we kept stopping for photo opportunities and cultural chats. There’s a self-drive trail of 17 miles, but that is definitely not for the faint-hearted - pot holes, ruts, sand dunes, steep inclines etc, etc. We did see one car like ours down there - madman, is all we can say! Our tour took us off the main trail around some sacred sites. At one point I was convinced we were going to tip over! I really couldn’t believe where he was driving us - I just kept looking sideways at the view, not on the track in front. At one point I managed to grab hold of the hair of the woman in front - and I had been hoping to hide my, for want of a better word, anxiety! 

The tour was, however, outstanding, and also a loop so we didn’t have to repeat the near tipping over part! (Apparently we were in no danger (!) according to Steve; the jeep’s built exactly for this terrain) but I didn’t like it one little bit, I have to say! We arrived back, safely and in one piece, just before the sun set over the iconic formations. More photos, 12 hours apart, to mark the passing of yet another amazing day.