Navajo ho ho

Santa Fe

Miles driven - 15,432

Miles travelled - 31,993

"Standby!" shouted the director.

"Rolling!" shouted the D.O.P.

"Background!" shouted the floor manager.

It took all my strength not to respond to the cue and start juggling a cocktail mixer in the careless and haphazard way that made my Bollywood performance so memorable. But this wasn't north Mumbai and today I wasn't being paid (although, come to think of it, I was barely being paid in Bollywood). We'd stumbled onto a film set in central Santa Fe where the picturesque central plaza was the setting for a key encounter between 3 key players in the forthcoming movie 'Odd Thomas'.

The 3 stars on set were Hunky Male In Dark Shirt With Impeccably Tousled Hair, Sexy Female In Denim Shorts With Impeccably Tousled Slightly Longer Hair, and Red Vespa.

Actor Anton Yelchin knows I'm really photographing the Vespa

We watched the scene (in which H.M. and S.F. cross street, deep in conversation, until S.F. mounts R.V. and scoots off leaving H.M. alone and perplexed) played out several times and the Red Vespa was a complete professional. I think the reason for so many re-takes (using my film-star lingo again) was because the director suspected what all of us onlookers knew from the start: the Red Vespa was stealing the scene every time.

Santa Fe is, as well as the name we'd give our friend Fay if she dressed as Father Christmas, the capital of New Mexico and the USA's highest capital at 7,000 feet. Its Spanish colonial history is obvious in the architecture, especially the many smooth brown Adobe buildings. This doesn't mean they're owned by a software giant, but that they're built using bricks of mud and straw, and rendered with the mud by hand. They look amazing and, given the fairly severe rain storms these mountains produce, it's a wonder they don't simply dissolve into the gutter.

The city has become a creative hot-spot, and a promotional video I watched in a tiny cinema (a warm up to a free showing of The Green Hornet - the ticket price reflects the quality of that film) boasted that Santa Fe was home to 14,000 'creatives', be they artists, writers, sculptors, musicians or whatever. I wondered how such a figure was arrived at and whether these people had had to sign a register to say they were 'creative'. Where would the line be drawn? I can play Beatles songs on a ukulele but I doubt that would qualify me to be counted as a shining jewel in the Land of Enchantment. Conversely, I've known accountants who are incredibly creative.

Anyway, the city is now something of a mecca to lovers of art and has more galleries and studios than you can shake a hand-painted-authentic-Apache-cactus-rainstick at. For the less discerning visitor (like me) there is an artistic culinary creation that can be enjoyed for just $4.50. Yes, just under 3 quid will buy you half an hour of bliss devouring the town's renowned lunchtime fave - a Fritos Pie.

At the local '5 and Dime' a kindly woman in an apron will slice open a packet of Fritos (the original corn chip), smother the contents with beef chilli, beans and grated cheese, hand you the warm packet and a plastic fork, and away you go - the Fritos Pie. Not a pie in any sense of the word, but who cares when it tastes so good? I also chose to add complimentary raw onion - careful to maintain my rigorous 'daily 5' health regime. Yum.

We only arrived in Santa Fe because I feared Penny might kill herself crossing The Rocky Mountains getting from 4 Corners to Colorado Springs. The old girl has been complaining a bit recently (I'm still talking about Penny). She's been blowing more smoke than she used to as we climb hills and she's started being grumpy in the morning when she's required to start. It was the cold of The Grand Canyon that did it. We camped in the forest on the southern rim and, thinking we'd stay for a couple of nights, even pitched our tent (the fourth of our tent-wrecking marathon), only to find the temperature dropped to minus 1 at night and it snowed. I consider us hardened campers, I really do, but snow? That's not really on, is it? The next morning having spent the night wrapped in every item of clothing we owned, we re-packed Penny to set off for a hike into the world's most famous ditch, and Penny refused to start.

We all exchanged worried looks. She has never refused to start. Fearing I was going to drain the battery turning the engine over, I suddenly had a thought.

"Oh! There's a special lever somewhere for cold starts!"

I reached under the dashboard and pulled a plastic handle that had never before been pulled. Edie's face fell.

"Blue told you never to touch that," she said earnestly.

It was true. I had once asked our mechanic Blue what it was for and he'd laughed and said something about a cold start choke and not to touch it. Edie had clearly been there, and taken in this vital fact. I turned the key. We held our breath. The engine spluttered.

Soon she was firing on at least 2, then 3 cylinders, until finally in a cloud of smoke she revved her heart out. I pushed the lever back in and recoiled a bit as if prodding away an angry snake. Penny didn't sound happy and I'm not sure the lever helped. Anyway, in case the inner workings of a VW interest you, I suspected the old fuel filter problem we'd encountered in Italy had returned, as she lacked a certain oomph, so bought some Diesel Kleen additive for the tank, put our final new fuel filter on and was slightly reassured to find the old one was visibly full of nasty black gunk. She's running a lot better now. We'll never touch the lever again. Don't tell Blue.

The Grand Canyon was stunning. Of course it was. I'm not going to waste your time by telling you how amazing it is, because you already know it is. It's one of the '7 natural wonders of the world' (along with the Great Barrier Reef - 2 down, 5 to go!) and has been on my tick-list to see since I was about 10. It didn't disappoint. We were driving around the rim when we first saw it. The forest had been hiding it for a few minutes, and I was saying to the kids "It's just on our left, honest," when suddenly the trees opened up ... along with our jaws. Even after 2 days of exploring it, it never lost the 'wow' factor. Well, not for me. Edie's first comment was "It's a big hole" which I think does 6 million years of hard work by the Colorado River something of a disservice. Keen hikers can yomp all the way to the river where the exposed rock is almost 2 billion years old, but Ella, Beth and I took the trail just beyond a lookout point known as 'Ooh Aah' (was I the only person who wanted to say 'Cantona' after that?) where the temperature rose as quickly as the rocks above us.

Even better, though, than the Grand Canyon is Monument Valley. It's better because hardly anyone goes there, and if you arrive after 6pm as we did, no-one charges an entrance fee! Of all the places we've set up camp in the world, can any compare with the sunset views of Monument Valley? We couldn't help remembering all the inferior places where we've paid too much to camp, or places like Petra in Jordan, where they wanted £100 entrance fee. We'd had a week pass to the entire Grand Canyon for $25 (£15.30) - with all its free Ranger talks and shuttle buses thrown in - and then a night in Monument Valley for free.

Depending on your age, you'll either recognise the towering pillars of this Navajo landscape from a John Wayne movie, or a Tom Cruise one. The Duke made 5 films here, including 'Stage Coach' and 'The Searchers'.

Tom Cruise was hanging off one at the start of Mission Impossible 2, although my request to mimic his stunt was politely declined.

We neither stage coached, nor searched, nor took on missions impossible, but drank coffee whilst drinking in a view none of us will forget.

Our next stop is Colorado Springs. We're meeting rellies of some friends back home so are very excited about a few nights of comfort. I know you won't want to hear how tired we are, having the time of our lives out here, but we really are exhausted. None of us want to go home and the countdown is looming ever larger day by day. It's like the slump you feel on the last day of your holiday, but times a hundred.

Plus of course, it's not a holiday. I may have mentioned that before.

Anyway, a month to go and right now I have a movie set to infiltrate. Remember to look out for 'Odd Thomas' in a year or so. Look closely. Over there ... beyond the red scooter ... is that guy throwing a cocktail shaker in the air?