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We survived the hike through the Grand Canyon!
Unlike some pour soul that didn't make it last week: a group of people didn't bring enough water, and one of them died on the way :(. It's kinda weird that this happens to people because a) you get warned about dehydration, sunstroke and electrolyte imbalance SOOOOO much, it's kinda hard to kill yourself in this way, and b) it wasn't that hot in the park last week... at least, compared to temperatures in Riverside :). Which was good, because Bart and I were perfectly acclimatised to the 'hot' weather.

To hike from one side to the other, you need to arrange some form of transportation back to the place you started from, upon arrival to the other side. There's a infrequent, expensive bus service that can take you back, or you could hire a spot in a plane/chopper to fly you back, OR you can do it the cheap, yet slow, way, and use the 'two-car' trick. Drive to the South Rim in two cars, drive up North in one car, hike across, drive the other car north, and drive back south in two cars, and drive home. Keeping in mind that to get from SR to NR takes about 4,5 hours... Kinda annoying, but hey.

We planned to do the hike across in four days, and spend three nights in the canyon campgrounds. The first day is hard because it's all downhill, but at least there's plenty of trees that provide shade. Also, we started hiking at sun rise (well, almost anyway), to try and avoid the sun for the first part of the day. We reached Cottonwood campground (7 mi) before noon, and killed the rest of the day by lazying about by the creek, taking a (4 mi) sub-hike to the beatifull Ribbon Falls. Spotted quite a long snake, possible a Desert Striped Whipsnake, but I'm not quite sure about that. The ranger dude believed it to be a Black Racer. But he was just a volunteer, so what did he know, right? We came across millions of lizzards, saw some large birds of prey, and at night there were dozens of bats, and we were visited by a bunch of inquisitive mice, one actually climbing onto my backpack I was sitting right next to.

Day two took us on another 7 mi. trail to the bottom of the gorge, to Bright Angel campground, near Phantom Ranch. Phantom Ranch turns out to not be a ranch at all, but more of a place for lazy people to spend the night, after being hauled in on mules from the NR.
We didn't like these people.
There's a little restaurant, where steak dinners can be obtained. Be prepared to pay over $40.- though. I bought an apple for $.90; a nice change in food; whilst hiking, all we ate was energy bars, trail mix and rehydrated dried meals... gets old very quickly.

That night it rained quite heavily, and this made us decide to try and shorten the hike to three days, instead of the aforementioned four. Turns out this was a good decision; the next campsite @ Indian Gardens was way too busy and touristy for our taste... I was not expecting the bottom of the gorge to be so busy, actually. An indication of how populated it is down there were the 'wild' squirrels sitting about the resting areas, literally trying to steal the trail mix from your hands.
The last bit of the hike, up the SR isn't the most inspiring bit of the canyon: hordes of day hikers combined with a made-for-mules trail made it sometimes unpleasant to hike up, but we made it.

And as I took the last steps up the Rim (half a minute behind Bart. But to be fair, I was the first to hike in on day one :)), and glanced back to where I started, I couldn't help but feel somewhat proud I'd made it. Only to collapse moments later, and complain about the pain in my legs / feet, and the obnoxious tourists (of which I wasn't one, obviously, being a native American now).

The Grand Canyon is quite awesome.

And my brother Heiko and his gf Monique put the most adorable litle boy on the world: Otis. So he'd better start calling me uncle soon!

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