Saturday 13 September 2008
Mesa Verde
Denver to durango was weird. Our plane was about 50% grubby campers like us, and 50% uber rich people, who presumably had all come to do the railroad thing.
The pueblo dwellings were amazing, and it was dry enough to dry out our tent :) The burning question I had ever since I saw photos of these and other pueblo dwellings was - why? Why live in a cliff? It's difficult to get water and food in, imagine rockclimbing with a giant basket of corn, and difficult to get waste out (or just gross, depends on your tolerance for poo I guess).
My guess was the reason was defense - who needs locks when you have a grade 16 climb to your door? In fact archaeologists think it was to free up farmland on the scarce plateau land. They were starving farmers in the desert, they moved off the plateau so they could plant more crops.
Was nice to be out of grizzly territory for a little while - they only had black bears :)
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