Ooh, what a grand sight ...

12 April - determined to at least try one buffet at Vegas I headed down to the Sahara for their breakfast. All in all, it was pretty average but my normally garguantua apettite was curiously muted upon the presentation of the multitude of comestibles. Despite my courier metabolism I could barely put away my money's worth and there was no way that I was going to be able to compete with the bg assed americans who were going back five or six times for plates piled high with saturated fats and hot fat and empty calories. Still, that's another one checked off the list. Did a bit more daytime sightseeing but apart the city really wasn’t doing much for me and I knew if I stayed another night to recoup yesterday's losses it would onlyresult in disaster so checked out and made my way south and east. At Sin City I picked up a rather interesting traveller, Murat from Turkey - he's 18 years old and has just done a bit of an exchange student program which didn’t work out to well so he's also doing a 30 day sojourn around the states with the plan to hitchhike most of it. He had some pretty interestingstories, especiallyfor someone so young and I found him to be a very hoopy frood who realy knew where his towel was at. Eventually got out of the maze that is Vegas and headed through a horrific traffic jam that was over the hoover dam (it's pretty big but I saw enough from the car). Soon after we made it across the arizone border I spied a couple who's car had broken down on the highway and they were trying to hitch. S there were two people already in the car I thought it would be pretty safe to pick them up so I did - they just needed a lift to Kingston so they could rent a u-haul so they could drag their car back to the Bisbee oa f**king long way when I looked at it on the map). Larry, Larry Jack and Blaze certainly provided entertainment for the next hour - they'd gone to vegas to celebrate blaze's birthday and the drive train of the car had fallen out on the way home. Blaze was a school teacher and larry jackj was an 'on-tray-pre-nyur' which translated to a mary-joo-ana smuggler (I live on the mexican border, what do you think I do???) - he had some interestingviews on the world but it was all a bit amusing really. After a few hours me and murat found ourselves at the grand canyon, apart from the mcdonalds and imax and hundreds of fat american families who kind of dampened the atmosphere I would have to say thtat this os one of the few times i've had a physical reaction from seeing something. It's just so big, I felt myself weak at the knees when I looked into it. Me and murat found a campsite and after scrounging wood from some of the abandoned barbecues (you're not allowed to collect wood in the park) we cooked up a little dinner and made a decent dent in a bottle of whiskey i'd bought in a small arizsone town before (the woman asked for both of our ids when we purchased it and then warned me that Murat was noto drink any or even touch the bottle ... We've got differedrinking laws in arizone, y'know? youu've got different drinking laws in the usa!) - as far as i 'm concerned he's m18 and he's old enough to rink in my country and his country so I wasn't going to lose any sleep over breaking a little state tlaw). It turns out that marat is obsessed with douglas adams, so I immediattly warmed to him and he also seemed to be a bit of a bright - getting a scholarship to the usa and then getting explelled fnot turning up then getting another scholarship to uni in turkey anyway - very interesting guy. It was full moon that night so we decided to head back to the canyon where we saw a very different view to the daytime - everything in silver tones and nobody around to spoil the atmosphere - pretty increidble sight.