Balcony House at Mesa Verde
By Lisandra Collazo

Sitting under the cool shade, we waited for our tour guide, a park ranger, to escort us to our first stop, Balcony House. I was happy that we didn’t have to stand in the sun. There was a group of middle school kids who were on field trip in front of us. Personally, I wish we could have had our very own tour because the tour did get a little elementary. But the ranger made it as interesting as he could for both the kids and us. To get down to balcony house we all had to climb down a flight of steps. As we reached the bottom, we gathered in the shade. The ranger talked about how the Indians got their water. Finally, the fun part came. We had to climb a 30-foot ladder to get to the actual pueblo. It was two at a time, and Ronya asked me to go up with her. We slowly made our way up. My legs began to shake as I stepped up on the heavy wooden ladder. I don’t know why. But we weren’t quite there yet. We had to squeeze through a small hole . It was amazing when we got there. The view from Balcony House was incredible. We could see for miles. Balcony House consisted of two-story houses made of wood and adobe. The house with the actual balcony was used for storage, probably. There were two kivas there. They were in the ground. What I couldn’t get through my head was how the anicient Puebloans could build such a beautiful pueblo and how it was located where it was. After our tour, we had to get out of the cliff, but we didn’t go the same way we went in. We crawled through a small tunnel, which those with backpacks had trouble with, and then go up another ladder.

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