KEY POINTS:
"That," our chopper pilot points right, "is the new Sky Walk. Apparently, it can hold the weight of a 747 jumbo jet'.
All five of us in the helicopter craned our necks to catch a glimpse of the latest tourist attraction at the Grand Canyon. The Sky Walk allows tourists to walk out over the edge of the canyon and look straight down through the platform's glass bottom. Expecting something more impressive, we were disappointed to spot a platform that seemed more akin in size to a patio balcony on an inner-city Auckland apartment.
But that, in a nutshell, is the problem with the Grand Canyon. It's so grand there is no scale to compare it to; the size is so mind boggling it's hard to comprehend. Then Jeff mentions the Sky Walk extends from the cliff 150 feet.
A quick bit of mental arithmetic equates that to roughly 50m - quite a distance for anything to be jutting out from a cliff.
Yet from our spot in the sky, even the canyon's cliffs don't seem very high - until our helicopters lands and astounding 1500 metres below the edge of the precipice - that's five times the height of the Sky Tower.
We caught a lift to the Grand Canyon with Papillon Helicopters a few hours before sunset. It was a 35-minute trip from Las Vegas, which hovered and banked over the equally impressive Hoover Dam, which blocks the mighty Colorado River.
The backflow of water created when the dam was built is now Lake Mead. It flooded a goldmining town at the time but started a new gold rush as dam workers flocked to Las Vegas to spend their wages.
The flight over the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead is worth the US$280 ticket price alone, but flying through the Grand Canyon is an experience that words cannot do justice.
At between 6km and 24km wide, 446km long and 1.6km deep in parts, it is little wonder Native Americans worshipped the canyon as their protector. And a bloody war with Spanish settlers would have ensued had not the crevasse's unassailable walls prevented the Europeans from crossing.
After a picnic lunch and a glass of bubbles, take a moment to sit on a rocky outcrop overlooking the Colorado River. Like a scene from a John Wayne movie, assorted cacti are dotted among loose shale rocks, a shade of red that is different to anything back home in New Zealand, and which contrasts vividly with the dark green water of the river. Untouched, pristine and primitive, the valley is so silent, you can hear yourself think, something impossible to do only an hour away in the casinos of Las Vegas.
Humbled by the scale of something that could never be created, or conquered, by man alone, one can only agree with former American President Abraham Lincoln who said that everyone should visit the Grand Canyon.
*Jared Savage flew to the United States courtesy of Air New Zealand
- Detours, HoS
