Day 74 - Antelope Canyon, AZ

Antelope Canyon shot to fame when photographer Peter Lik sold one of his photos of the canyon, entitled Phantom, for $6.5 million. It became the most expensive photo ever sold. You can see the photo here.

Antelope Canyon is a slot canyon: it is formed by rushing water eroding the rock. If it wasn't difficult enough to get on a tour due to the number of people trying to take a $6.5 million photo, the canyon is closed if there is rain, even if it's miles away, as the canyon regularly floods.

There are two Antelope Canyons you can visit, Upper and Lower. We chose the most popular and the source of the Peter Lik photo, Upper. The Lower Canyon is supposed to be quieter and a little more challenging to hike, one to come back to when we return to the US!

You have to take a guided tour for both canyons. We initially thought it was a way of controlling the number of people going into the canyon and for tour companies to make money but we learnt that it's more for safety. In the 90s, 11 people died in the Lower Canyon when a rain storm 30 miles away caused a gush of water to come into the canyon and flooded it. The weather is now closely monitored and tours are cancelled or rescheduled if there is any risk of flood.

There are only 3-4 tour companies, we went with Antelope Slot Canyon. The tour was well organised and the tour guide Leonard was excellent! We initially wanted the midday tour to see the famous sun beam come through the canyon (as in the very expensive photo) but it was fully booked, the only slot available was 6:30am. Whilst neither of us are morning people, we are really glad we went on the early tour. Besides from it being a lot cheaper, we were the first tour into the canyon so we didn't have to squeeze past any other tour groups (which you can see in the video we had to do on the way out) or struggle with having other peoples' heads in our photos.

We were lucky to have Leonard as our tour guide. He gave so many hints and tips on how to get the best photos, pointing at areas to direct our cameras at that we would never have considered that gave us effects such as Dragon's Eye and Monument Valley. See if you can spot these in the video!

Asides from appearing to be more helpful than the other tour guides and not rushing us around the canyon as we had expected, Leonard played some traditional Navajo music once we had reached the end of the Canyon. The sounds he made were both magical and eerie, just like the Canyon.