updates will take a while right now i am in costa rica

I am a little behind with my updates, sorry. Today July 28th I am in Costa Rica and will stay here until August 17th. I finished my trip through the national parcs in the the southwest of the USA and managed it to visit my friend and former colleague Carsten with his wife in the Silicon Valley. In the USA I saw (and will post to this blog): Bryce Canyon, Zion Canyon, Death Valley, Yosemite National Parc, Sequoia NP and San Franzisco. Then I drove back to L.A. at the recently reopened Highway 1, there had been big fires around Big Sur in the last weeks. I visited the Hearst Castle and landed again in Pasadena where I repacked and reorganized for Costa Rica and Canada.
Flying to Costa Rica was quite challenging, my original flight was canceled and the other flights to Houston have been also delayed, so I would missed my connection flight. I was so smart to change my booking for the next day and choosed an earlier flight. This flight has problems with the plane and was also delayed for over 7 hours, so I changed to a latinamerican airline which flew direct from L.A. to Costa Rica, unfortunatly through the night.
In total I arrived nearly 2 day later than scheduled. The L.A. Airport is a mess and very chaotic!!

Glen Dam, Monument Valley and Toadstones

On my way to Bryce Canyon I made a side trip to the Toadstones. These are some nice stone - formations hidden in a small valley. The scenery looked quite beautiful, nice colors and the weather was nice, not too hot, perfect for a small hike. I was there nearly alone. At the parking lot there was a woman sleeping in her car with engine running and air condition on. When i came back after one hour the engine was still running. Gas prices in the the US are still not high enough to stop this behavior...



These are the bigger Toadstones


And this is the smaller one:



This night I had a nice motel, each room looked different, i was in the Rodeo Room:


The next day I went to Monument Valley. This area is famous for magnificent rocks. These are some smaller ones on the way:


And these are the ones in the valley. You can either drive around them on a dirt road or do a tour with the waiting 4wd equipped guides.



Or this one:



Before I headed to Bryce Canyon, I visited the Glen Dam. It was used to dam the Colorado and to control it.


This is the bridge next to the Dam:
And this is the engine room with the turbines.


Impressive, but I have also seen Itaipu, the biggest hyrdo power plant, which is close to the Iguazu Falls in Brazil/Argentina. This power plant is way bigger than this one.

It took 14 years to fill up the artificial lake before the dam. The color of the landscape was great and the water was turquoise.

Horseshoe Bend and Antelope Canyon

I stayed overnight at the grand canyon, which was very expensive. Everything in Grand Canyon is very expensive. I was thinking about doing a scenic flight there, but ended up only watching the IMAX film, which is showing there. Quite nice and spectacular, I hardly could´t wait to see the canyon on the next day again.

My next stop was Page at Lake Powell. The first night it was no problem finding accommodation there but the next night was. It was the 4th of July, Uncle Sams Birthday which was also a long weekend. Everyone uses this long weekend to take a short vacation. I went to the visitor center and was only able to find a bed a few miles away and when I reached there late after the fireworks I was lucky to get the last room. Someone called the mailbox of the motel and canceled and the lady thought that that was me. 5mins later a couple showed up, which had to sleep in their car ;-)

Close to Page is the Horseshoe Bend, a nice formation of the Colorado which can easily be reached from the road. Its also not secured, so you can walk straight to the edge and look down some hundred meters.



The best way to see it would be to have some wings. I saw an eagle there, a great bird.


Going so close to the edge made me quite nervous. The safest way to look over the edge was in fact laying down and moving slowly forward.

I spent the sunset there, this time only with a few people and close to me nobody. A perfect and also magical place.


The next day I visited the Antelope slot canyon. Its a canyon in the ground made out of sandstone formed by flash floods. The best time to visit it is around lunch time when the sun shines in directly. They are offering some tours out of Page but you can save your money and drive there with your own car.


The canyon is quite narrow, at some places you have to climb up and down on ladders.


When the sun shines into it, the sandstone changes its color.




You can walk through it in about an hour, most of the time of course is used to take some nice pictures.

grand canyon

My next stop was the Grand Canyon. I went there from the south entrance, which was perfect. You don´t see anything until you are reaching the rim. And what a view it was, the canyon is 16km wide and 1600m deep. You can stand right at the edge and look down, at some parts its secured but other parts are totally open.


If you enter the parc from the east entrance you see some parts of the canyon from the road which lowers the wow effect.

The same place with me:



And the same spot at sunset. The red rocks became even more reddish.



Here you could imagine, how deep it goes down. I was thinking about doing a hike there but it was too hot. At to top close to 40 degrees and down even hotter. I looked at the trails, all of them have been in the full sun without shade. I have been told, if you want to hike down, there is a ranch where you could and should stay overnight. Doing all in one day is way too much. Over 250 people have to been rescued by the rangers every year because of overheating and other problems.




I spent the sunset there, every good spot was occupied, you have to be there early for a good one. I was lucky to find one and me and the 80 people behind me cheered when the sun went down ;-)




Grand Canyon was so far the place where I took the most pictures, really nice and impressive.

josua tree national parc

The first National Parc I visited was Josua Tree.



The night before I slept in Indio, a small city in the desert. It was really hot, during the night still 38 degrees. And a constant dry hot wind like someone blowing a hairdryer into my face. I slept with aircondition, tried to sleep without but gave up at 3 o´clock in the morning. I entered the parc from the south, the scenery looked like this:



In the parc I saw many funny rock formations . This one is called split rock


And this was my favorite, called skull rock. Very obvious name ;-)


On one place they had a beautiful cactus garden.



And this is the Josua tree, a tree of life, which gave the parc its name. It stores water inside and feeds a lot of animals with its seeds. The birds are nesting inside it.




I really liked this parc, unfortunately is was too hot to do some longer hikes there. I underestimated the sun and got a light sunburn. I used sunscreen but it was not strong enough.

san diego

I left my friends in Pasadena and drove south to San Diego. This city is very close to Mexico and when you are walking on the street you hear a lot of spanish voices. Mexicans are also very cheap workers, here is an example of a very very cheap advertisment sign.



I visited the famous zoo, its really nice with much space for the animals. My favourite there was the area with the orang-utans. To watch them what they are doing was very funny. One of them sat down at the window and was watching us, i wonder who was the spectator and who the exhibit.

After that I went to a discharged aircraft carrier, which has been changed into a museum, the USS Midway. This ship was the headquarter during the Operation Desert Storm, where the allied forces claimed Kuwait back from the iraqui troops.



It payed off to be a high ranking officer at this ship. Otherwise you had to sleep in bunk beds like these ones.

The space under the matres is also your wardrobe, not much space indeed. I learned about the difficulties of landing and taking off from this ship and also how much organization is needed to keep this small city on a boat functioning. Many people working on this museum are volunteers, former members of the navy.

I also visited the area, where I spent a week with my former company. I was there in 2002, half a year after 9/11. We made some jokes, that this hotel consists also of two towers...