I mentioned we’d learned that the Antelope Canyon (which has an upper and lower section) isn’t publicly accessible. It’s on Navajo land and in fact different families have rights to the different canyons. You have to pay a permit fee, a guide fee, a licensing fee if you want to take photos and possibly sell them, and you have to sign up for a tour in order to go.
Well we didn’t know that, so Pokin spent a few hours on the phone calling up tour companies. Most of them were already booked up, but eventually she found a tour with one spot left. A two hour photography tour with Chief Tsosie of the hour Upper Canyon for $80 at the 10:30 time slot. There was also a $43 regular non photography tour too. Upper Canyon is famous for the beams of light that shine into the canyon at certain times, and as a result it’s crazy busy there. Being crammed into small confined spaces with tonnes of other tourists seemed like the last thing my best bear bud wanted to do, so we wished Pokin good luck and headed towards lower canyon where there were rumours that you could go without a guide.
Which turned out not to be true.
Well it’s true that you could go to lower canyon if you were a photographer. With an SLR. And a tripod. No, your fancy Leica won’t work because they don’t accept mirrorless cameras. So not surprisingly they didn’t accept our cell phone camera as sufficient equipment. And unfortunately we missed the guided tour departure by about 5 minutes so seeing the Antelope Canyon just wasn’t happening.
Off to find something else to do!
