By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
Them thar cliffs The moon’s blue-white gaze crouched behind some colossal formation, only an illuminated shape, stretching for a mile. A blanket lay over the sound of the wild, cracked American Southwest pierced by classic rock from our car stereo. I was compelled to stare through the black at the daunting beast outside my window. Blue lights ignited in the rearview mirror. Our last minute-generated caravan of two pulled to the side and waited. I pictured my companion and I as two dusty marauders on horseback suddenly met in the middle of the unpredictable darkness by a spittoon-spitting sheriff from a nearby ghost town. The elusive had begun to beckon. After the young police officer scolded me for nearly 40-minutes in the October backcountry night, and an $83-dollar speeding charge issued, my travel partner and I were still fueled by the palpable intensity of whatever we were heading towards. The treacherous encounter with law enforcement may have exemplified that such unpredictable events, thrilling or unfortunate, could occur, which was screaming for us to heighten our awareness and move boldly into the otherworldly void. Once we had reset our antsy minds at an Airbnb outside Hagerman, New Mexico still cradled by the unpredictable desert plains, our small sedan carried us southwest through a sudden shifting landscape. From infinite flatness, a tunnel of red cliffs dressed in ancient spots and cactus blankets, watched us snake below their wise eyes. We followed this road which rose and dipped and swayed left and right around each bend, all the while gaining in elevation for another half an hour, until suddenly the top met our gaze. We looked out at an expanding blue shimmering below the blinding orb in the sky. An ocean in the desert? Naïve curiosity buzzed in our brains as we trotted across the parking lot and into the National Parks office to purchase tickets. Trembling hands extended cash to the clerk, and my travel buddy and I were pressed into a small tin box with other human sardines as the digital numbers on the wall convulsed and said we were plunging. Shrieking metallic friction, the soundtrack of a sinking ship, exposed the shallow, anticipatory breaths of the crowd. 400 feet. 470. 560. 610. 690. It was as if a prankster child was lowering his fishing line into the murky lake with us as the bait at the other end. 740. 795. 810. Soon enough, the rickety cage rested on the ground somewhere, and then the pleasant ding suggested to the people of various ages to exit. The doors to the tin box disjoined, when the guide among us said coolly, “Welcome to the Carlsbad Caverns”. We stepped into a baffling world holding another world captive, an extraterrestrial body with the strangest innards, many appearing to be churning creatures. At more than 800 feet below the Enchanted Land the ancient beasts built by slow-trickling mineral droplets sat regally on rocky thrones. Their sacred chambers were furnished with cartoonish variations of towering primitive scepters and forests of jesters with thrashing limbs of a gross length. Floors were littered with potholes where inside them wire ladders trailed endlessly below. Other dips in the crust were filled with a mirroring liquid. A parched odor lay stagnant in our nostrils. It was a frosty climate but the unknown kept us eerily warm. An arid sky at twilight was a final peek into the outlandish. A murky cyclone of wings spiraling from an underworld-like entrance. A collective fluttering like that of a multitude of sapling tree leaves clapping against each other in ritualistic applause. I was locked in, entranced by the phantom organisms and their surreal flow that were navigating sightlessly around rock cathedrals and charred tree fragments punctuating the sky. As they rushed overhead the band of tourists in the amphitheater, the Brazilian free-tailed bats wandered in cult-like clusters up and away towards the pulse of their fleeting nourishment. The enigma of the southwest. What else is going on over them thar cliffs?