Las Vegas (Nevada)

Grains of sand had blown into Birte's eyes during the sandstorm the day before. She hadn't noticed it at first, but when she took her contact lenses out, her eyes hurt immediately. We tried rinsing them with the eye drops Manu had brought, but it didn't help. So we had to go to an eye clinic in Las Vegas on our rest day before we could do anything else in the city.
Luckily we didn't have to wait long at the clinic. The doctor removed two tiny but sharp "pieces of desert", as he called them, from her eyelids. To calm her eyes, he first treated her with medical eye drops, which dilated her pupils to the maximum. For the next few hours, Birte walked around with several pairs of sunglasses stacked on top of each other 😎

After lunch at NoButcher, a vegan butcher we knew from two years ago, we headed to the Arts District north of the old Las Vegas Strip. We had been there before, but last time we arrived too late to get into any of the thrift shops. This time we spent almost two hours in various shops, trying on funny hats and clothes and browsing through all the oddities these shops had to offer. After a slice of pizza and a rainbow ice cream, we got back in the car and drove to downtown Las Vegas. We parked the car and walked down the craziest pedestrian street ever: Freemont Street Experience. The street is alive 24/7 all year round. The roof is a giant LED dome that is constantly showing either advertisements, psychedelic patterns or Star Wars-themed spaceships racing through space. Casinos, bars and fast-food chains line the street and every 10 metres or so showmen and women display their skills (or skin) to earn either a few or a lot of dollars (depending on their skill or creativity...or skin) from the generally overwhelmed and drunk tourists. The whole experience was crazy, almost too much and hard to take after weeks in the wild. Lisa aptly described it as a fever dream. After an hour of walking up and down the road, we were glad to get back to the car and then to our campsite outside Las Vegas. In the desert. Quiet. Dark. Silent.Leggi altro