Today is our last day here, before we have to fly back to England tomorrow morning. We're going to spend most of today enjoying the last of the sunshine and the pool (although it has been quite stormy here recently!) and our family friends Dona and Lorrie are also coming round for dinner.
Our flight tomorrow leaves at 12 noon, then it's four and a half hours to Philadelphia, then straight on back to Manchester in England after a further seven hours of flying from Philadelphia. It's going to be a long journey back, and we don't actually land until Sunday in England; but we will no doubt try and get some sleep and it always seems to pass faster going back home anyway!
The suitcases are stuffed to the brim, and so are our stomachs. Needless to say a major diet over-haul will occur once we have returned from holiday. Thank you all for reading, and I can hopefully post a video of our travels once I've edited everything :)
Tonight we went to go and see Cirque du Soleil perform as their tour had brought them here to Phoenix. The show we went to see was called 'Kooza' which derived from Sanskrit means "magical container".
Kooza tells the story of The Innocent, a melancholy boy in search of his place in the world. The show combines two circus traditions - the art of clowning, and acrobatic performance. The boys journey begins after opening the magical box, the Kooza, which takes him into a world un-known bringing him into contact with a range of characters including the King, the Trickster, a Pickpocket, an annoying tourist, and a bad dog. Who at one point actually peed on a woman in the audience, she didn't seem too thrilled.
The show was funny and entertaining, but it also made you feel like you were going to pass out or have a heart attack. Our jaws were already firmly heading towards the floor from the start, but by the end they had practically hit the ground and gone under. The amazing flexibility of the acrobats was so impressive, at one point it didn't even look like human bodies anymore - more like a snake form because of how they were bending. Not to mention the two guys who were on a spinning centrifuge (which was un-surprisingly called the wheel of death) without any rope or wires and were actually jumping on top of it, whilst spinning very fast, and at one point he even started skipping. I was watching behind my hands with only one eye peeping out during the act, it was horrifying to see, I actually thought he was going to plummet to his death, which just made it even more gripping.
We weren't allowed to take cameras in with us for various reasons, so all photographs here are from the Cirque du Soleil website for Kooza.
So there you have it, the show was truly amazing. The amount of times 'oh my god' 'no' 'NO, NO WAY' 'they're really going to do that?!' and... 'ARE YOU KIDDING ME?' was both said and heard, speaks for itself. It's something you need to see with your own eyes, and I'd highly recommend anyone to do so. I'd love to see a different Cirque du Soleil show to see how it would compare, though I'm betting that it would be just as fantastic.
You can watch the wheel of death for yourself here:
Today we set off on our travels again to head to a place called Canyon Lake, which is one of the four reservoirs which was formed by the damming of the Salt River. It is within the Superstition Wilderness of Tonto National Forest, with an average depth of 130ft.
We went on a little cruise around the lake on an old fashioned steam boat, called the Dolly Steamboat - named after it's owners.
It was absolutely boiling hot, and with our failed 'made in China' paper fan being the only thing to keep us cooled..we were pretty doomed.
Anyway, it was a nice cruise, we saw some pretty sights and lots of many people passing by on speed boats (obviously a lot cooler than us) and had a very imaginative Captain who claimed that you could even see a man playing an organ in the rock face. Was there? No, don't think so. But he was quite funny.
Afterwards we passed through a little place called Tortilla Flat, which has a total population of...six. So yes, pretty little.
The name "Tortilla Flat" originated from the cowboys who used to drive cattle from Globe
to Phoenix. While in Phoenix, rancher Mr. Cline and his fellow cowboys
celebrated their sale, and, having a little too much to drink, forgot to
get supplies while they were in town. They ended up with only flour to
make tortillas when they camped at the flat and were stranded.
..So let that be a lesson to you!
It did however have a great bar (yes we really do just gravitate towards them) with hundreds of bills on the wall from over the world. Mainly dollars of course, but we did find an old English fiver!
..and not to mention the best seats at the bar, which were in fact horse saddles! Welcome to the Wild West.
