Mesa Verde

We got up nice and early so that we could get to the Visitor Centre at Mesa Verde when it opened at 8am, since the guide book had assured us that was the only way we were going to get into even one of the most impressive of the Pueblo cliff dwellings known as Cliff Palace and Balcony House. Anyway, it turned out that the Rough Guide was as wrong about that as it was about the location of the Visitor Centre itself. There's now a beautiful, state-of-the-art Visitor Centre just off the highway and ahead of the entrance to the Park itself, and a very helpful lady there booked us onto both tours, as well as arranging the timings so that we could drive down to both via the Park Museum and the freely accessible ruins at Spruce Tree House. A highlight of that one is a kiva, or circular cellar space, that still has a roof and can be reached by a wooden ladder. We dutifully trooped down one after another and soaked up the ancient vibes in the gloom. The cliff dwellings themselves are amazing - whole cities built into the caves created by the overhanging clifftops, clustering around wells where the water had filtered down through the rock above. Oh, and there were more wooden ladders at the Balcony House, most notably a thirty foot high one that you had to ascend to climb back out of the dwellings - very scary...!