So we had a near death experience in Death Valley.
For those of you who are uncertain about what Death Valley is, the name says it all. It's one of the hottest places on the planet. It's a desert that gets up to 50 degrees C in the shade. I have never felt so hot in my life. Luckily I drank a lot of water so felt relatively ok. The only way to describe the heat is the fact that your sweat dries instantly and you can't feel cool. The heat also makes it difficult to breathe and people ended up having nose bleeds because the air is so hot and dry.
The near death experience happened when we were walking (clambering is more of an accurate description actually) over salt rocks in our flipflops (bad idea) and Janine (a German girl from my tour) slipped and sliced the bottom of her foot completely open. I have never seen that much blood in my life.
We get her back to the van with me acting as a crutch and spend about an hour in the blistering heat bandaging her up. We head to A&E (which turns out to be 3 hours away) and get her seen too. Luckily she was such a pro and didn't even panic.
The rest of us go on a hunt for food and we end up serving our own chinese take away buffet on a bench in the hospital car park. There's a RLE we aren't going to forget any time soon! Kudos to Jason (our tourguide) for being a pro and sorting us out even though he must have been knackered!
Exciting times!
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