32 ~ North Shore News — Sunday, April 2. 2000

reaktast
with the
cowboys

Toni Dabbs
Contributing Writer

THE colours of the canyon wall — sienna, ochre
and mauve — softly glow in the day’s first light.

The aromas of a mesquite wood campfire and freshly brewed
coffee scent the air. Fluffy scrambled eggs and flaky sourdough
biscuits are set on the picnic table by a Stetson-hatted cook
whose kitchen is a chuckwagon.

It’s our first morning in Amarillo, Texas, and we've risen at the
crack of dawn to travel by horse-drawn wagon to the rim of }alo
Duro Canyon, the second-largest canyon in the United States, for
a “cowboy moming”™ breakfast at the Figure 3 Ranch.

Amarillo is one of the few places in Texas that still lives up to
the expectations of visitors whose knowledge of the Lone Star
State comes from movies about the Old West. It's in a rugged
region of wide open spaces, and cowboys are a common sight on

Sce Amarillo page 33: 1929, is now headquarters of the Amarillo Convention and Visite: Council.

. POSTCARDS: SLYNIS BOLTON REPORTS FROM JAPAN

The tand of the rising gadget

@ March 28: Japan

Crowded but superbly organized Japan is
infatuated with gadgets. Ladies’ washrooms
have cubicle speakers which shy women can
push to simulate the sound of flushing so as not
to waste water. Machines sheath wet umbrellas
to stop them dripping. Some parking lots
mechanically lift and stack cars in compact, tall
towers with the touch ofa button and if you're
lost in Tokyo's Ginza shopping district just

* press your destination on an clecuric board and
a bulb lights up on the map.

_ They also like big. In Nara we visited the
world’s largest bronze Buddha seated within
the world’s largest wooden building. Built a lor
more recently the world’s largest Ferris wheel

gently rotates up to 480 people 112 metres

above Osaka’s skyline. My acrophobic husband,

who does these things as a test of manhood, sat
on the floor and peeked out like a kid watching
a scary movie.

Public wansit was clean, efficienc, frequent
and kind enough to use some English, so it was
fairly easy to navigate the underground in
Tokyo or catch a ferry to the still smoking
Volcanic island of Sakurajima where a bus regis-
tered our gradually increasing fare on an electric
board as we drove along the lava highway.

However you must have yen. This is the first
country where U.S. cash is not acceptable any-
where and it took us 30 minutes to exchange a
one hundred dollar bill at a bank where there
appeared to be no technology at all. Several

lerks visually checked our note to make sure it
was real, hand wrote a couple of forms then
made two phone calls before giving us our yeia.

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South Africa, Swaziland, Botswana and Kenya

Journey through Airica
_- - on a fully escorted Luxury Safari
'. Your choice of 8,14, 18 or 24 exciting days

| ‘The Adventure of a Lifetime

0 WWW.rosewaytravel.com:

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THE 1905 mansion built for Lee Bivins, the largest individual cattle rancher in the werid when he died ir