Death Valley

“Good afternoon, do you have any superlatives?”

“No ma'am, we sold out of 'em about ten this morning.”

“ I see. We'll have to resort to gasps and blasphemy, then,”

The thing about Death Valley is that it's VAST. Death Valley is unforgiving, hot, and rocky. This place is a geologist's wet dream, the colours of the rocks like neapolitan ice cream melting in the hot sun, but that doesn't make it any prettier.

But beneath all the rocks and slag-like heaps of stone which make up Death Valley, are the gentler, glowing colours of 500 million years or so of the area's history, brought to life when the sun goes down. OK, so you wouldn't use “pretty” as an adjective for Death Valley – but you might use gobsmacking, awesome (which is American for gobsmacking), beautiful, dramatic, other worldly, eerie – and just plain weird. Some of the landscapes look like a film set for the landing of Apollo, or something off the front of a David Bowie album.

We've tried to capture some of these landscapes in our photos, but we're not sure that mere film does them justice.

Nor does it do justice to the maniacs who came here to try to tame the landscape – we visited the brilliant Scotty's Castle. This piece of classic American madness rises out of the rocks like a mirage, complete with false battlements, a fake Spanish heritage and a lot of tall tales. Well worth the admission price.

Tomorrow, we'll do ghost towns and then head to the biggest mirage construction of them all – Las Vegas.