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10 th Day (09/14/2004)

We swam in the rising Gulf Of Mexico while the sun was rising, it was terrific and I took a lot of pictures. After breakfast (I was too late and in the cooking team.. oops) we went to Houston and San Antonio .

Houston is actually a pretty boring city for youth, nothing seems to be going on and there are not even a lot of stores on the Main Street to go shopping. We went on the 60 th floor of one of the business skyscraper; it’s open to the public. Nice view and the most exciting point of Houston. After 1 hour we were finished with this city (it’s nice and clean though) and went to San Antonio .

In San Antonio I was still part of the cooking team, so I had just about 60 minutes to see the Fort of Alamo and 2 western stores. This city looks really interesting because the old Wild West style is shining thru very strong and that’s different from everything else we saw up to then. I had had the feeling it wasn’t enough time to check the city out (just for the cooking team) because we had to get to the campground and go shopping with our guide Stephan. We did and made a pretty good dinner, I believe. After that a couple of us wanted to go out in San Antonio , there was my opportunity to see more from the city. We went out and walked along the River walk, which is definitely a pub, club and party area. Since every day feels like Saturday for us we where wondering why nothing was going on. Well, it was Tuesday. But anyway we looked in the “Coyote Ugly Saloon” and watched the girls dancing on the bar. After that we just walked along the river again and ended up trying to get in an Irish pub. We did not stay in Coyote Ugly because the girls with us are underage. They couldn’t get into this pub either, but my brother got picked up from a pretty girl after we’ve been there about 25 seconds. Then the other guys met French people from the campground, so it was me and the two girls. We just walked around in the city and I realized I didn’t miss anything in the afternoon. It’s still a nice city but the Streets around the Fort Alamo are the center and there is not much more to see. Maybe the Tower of America could’ve been a point of interest, but we didn’t have the time and it’s a little further away.

11 th Day (09/15/2004)

We got up in time, but we left at 7:25am , instead of 6:30am . However, at the first rest station stop our guide figured that we get an extra hour due to the new time zone. Problem solved!

There are 490 Miles in front of us and after some hours of sleeping and playing chess, past us. In between we crossed the border to New Mexico and got in the new time zone. Just to show people the infinite endless country we stopped in between at the side of the road, just to take a picture, not showing anything but pretty dry nature.

As we where driving the nature changed from tropical to more dry, as if we would come close to a desert. Also the air changed, it became less and less humid, very nice!

As we arrived in Carlsbad Caverns 5 minutes before closing time we still got in and where amazed by those huge caverns, 750ft deep down under the surface. Parts of them are still undiscovered. It wasn’t as cold as I expected it, so it was ok to walk around in shorts and shirt. After we left the caverns we set up the tents right next to this national park in the middle of nowhere, next to White City . It is ridiculous to call it a city, because it’s merely a post office, grocery store and souvenir shop. Anyway it has a really nice western flair; actually this was the first city which looked like the ones in the movies.

Stephan had a little surprise for us right after we set up the tents (in 13 minutes, including unloading the Van, by the way). We went back up to the Carlsberg Caverns (I was one of the less people who didn’t know what’s going on). There I realized that we will see all the bats flying out of the natural entrance of the caverns. There are about 2 million of them.

That’s what we did and it was something I wanted to see really badly since I was a child, watching bats was always very cool. The ranger explained everything you should know and then the started flying out. It was terrific to see about 50000 bats per minute coming out of the caverns, it would go on for 1,5-2 hours. First I sat on the top of the “theater” and I couldn’t hear a thing although they where so many bats. When I went down and sat down right under them, zooming past me, it was still hard to hear something. They are very silent and elegant animals. We took some pictures of the sunset over the hills of the Caverns and then went off to the campground. We had Hotdogs, Chips and some leftovers from Risa’s Japanese soup; great!

12 th Day (09/16/2004)

We’re on the way to Santa Fe , New Mexico . In between we stopped in Roswell , New Mexico . Everybody wants to see Aliens and UFO’s and their legends. It was a short stop in the Museum and Museums shop, maybe 35 minutes and then we went to the visitor center to do “Alien research” at the free internet there. I had problems with my bank account and went to “Bank of America” to fix it. So the whole group had to wait 20 more minutes for me, I’m sorry for that.

The nature on our way from Carlsbad Caverns to Santa Fe changed a lot on the way. From grass prairie to rock desert back to bush prairie we had everything, very interesting. All in all there is pretty much nothing, except wilderness.

Santa Fe was a really nice campground, unfortunately the have only very expensive firewood. We went out to Santa Fe , I really like the style of the city, all the buildings are in pueblo style and typical for the west and Spanish population. The people are selling hot chili peppers everywhere and those look very pretty, hanging at the stores. I had the chance to check my mail (Outlook Express did not work, but the browser) at the campground and then we started a fire with some leftover wood from the last camp, we chopped something off the trees and bushes around, because of the price of the wood. That wasn’t enough so we discovered the area a little better. Together with my brother I got wood from behind a high fence, it was working wood or something like that, actually pretty good wood but obviously unused. So just to say it right out, we stole wood and we did that a couple of times during this night, it was a lot of fun.