03 Mar USA: Dunes of the States.

I have to admit that three times in a row the mountain has defeated me. Three times, three times, I have had to abandon the objective of my trip because of the p... snow (p for pure snow, mind you). On the penultimate of these, I ended up with my car abandoned in the middle of the Rockies, soaked, frozen, alone and with the snow covering me to the hilt. It was then when I saw the light, I came to my senses and I said to myself "but what the hell am I painting here, if I'm not into mountains, I'm more into deserts...!

So on all three occasions I left the mountain in search of the desert, and I was lucky that I always found a dune nearby where I could recover from the cold, lie down in the warmth and surrender to my spiritual depths.

I don't know why I like being in the dunes so much, well, I do. Sometimes I feel like Mano Dayak, the Targuí rebel leader who wrote that he was born with sand between his eyes. I didn't get sand between my eyes, but it was the wind, that Irifi that blew through Villa Cisneros, in our old Sahara, that got inside me through my ears when I was very small, and now it doesn't know how to get out...

That Saharan wind that at that time gave me a strong and long ear infection, today entertains itself by unsettling my hormones. So variable that in a matter of minutes they make me go from crying disconsolately for the death of Chanquete to calmly facing the most unsuspected dangers...

But above all, it always, always leads me back to the dunes...

One of the times I landed in the Great Dune of Colorado. A substitute for erg, as you can see in the photos, but at least it was able to calm my longing to be in Africa again...  

The time I didn't get to see the Grand Sequoia National Park, I mitigated my sorrows in the dunes of the Desert Valley.

And the third time, to see in which dunes I found refuge. I remember that I was so excited that I forgot that I had gone to forget that I had not been able to see another place that I no longer remember what it was (what a mess, and although it may not seem like it, I have written this sentence dry, without my gin and tonic in a balloon glass) (with the gin and tonic I get rhyme).

I don't remember how long it took me to get to them either, it's not that they were very far away, no, it's just that on a stretch of road I came across this sign...

...which clearly means that it is forbidden to overtake turtles for the next six miles. And as Sherif Lobo had already taken 4 points off my licence in Colorado... , I slowed down as much as possible so as not to overtake a single one, I'm so good at complying with the rules! Anyway, this section was a bit longer.

But it was worth it.

These dunes are located in New Mexico and the Spaniards who discovered them, in a fit of imagination, called them Arenas Blancas (White Sands), leaving the Apaches who inhabit this area a bit shocked and who were already thinking of a more poetic name such as "Mountains of freedom that ride with the wind through the green meadows of Manitú...". Our name seems a bit more practical, especially for googling.

As I said before, this is Apache territory, of the Mescalero tribe. This time I didn't try to converse with any of them, because besides the fact that I didn't have the hang of the Apaches, my hands were still sore from speaking English with the Navajos from my previous entry.

Besides, I didn't meet anyone all day either. It's unbelievable that such a place is more desolate than my Norfolk fridge. I prefer it a thousand times, but this time I managed to get one of the "robaos" that I always like to give you. Perhaps it was better this way, nobody like myself to know how to capture all my beauty in full bloom.

The northern boundary of this area coincides with the southern boundary of the White Sand missile test site. In fact, this is where the first atomic bomb was tested. You have to be careful not to come here on missile launch days, because they close the area for security reasons and no one can get through. I wonder if that's why there's nobody here today, or maybe I got confused and wandered into the missile drop zone. What I was missing was that there was radiation in the area and I was turned into a gusiluz.

I took advantage of the fact that I had rented a bike for the other area I wanted to ride, and I had one of the most fun bike rides I have ever done. I'm not posting a photo of the event, because I'm aware that there's only one thing that fits me worse than a bike helmet, and that's a swimming cap. My friend Carlos says that with the swimming cap I look like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, and I don't know if he's right. So just in case, no photo will do.

Among the dunes it is easy to see lynxes, foxes, coyotes, kangaroo rats, etc, you can get fed up of seeing them, there are posters with pictures of them everywhere. However, when it comes to seeing them in the flesh, that's when I got a bit confused with the total number of animals seen, and as always, I don't remember if I saw one or none at all.

I didn't even see the famous black beetle, very numerous and easy to spot among so much whiteness. I am sure that if someone I know, who has travelled in one of my groups in Africa, comes along, he or she will come across a few of them.

Well, I'll leave you for today. As I admit that I'm a bit stubborn and I refuse to give up with a little snow, next week I'm going to a very far place, very cold and with a lot of snow...let's see what happens this time. It's a surprise, but you'll see what an incredible place it is. Of course, you will have to wait until I post my entry.