With nothing much of note happening in Los Mochis I turfed in for the night, setting my alarm for the ungodly time of 4.15am. If you add the lack of sleep on the boat to this, you see I wasn´t giving my sick body too long to recover from this illness. I wrestled out of bed, packed up and headed down for the bus that Lonely Planet assured me ran from 5am. Half an hour later and with no bus in sight I grabbed a taxi down to the railway station. Arriving there I attempted to buy a ticket for the train by card, only to be informed that the card machine was broken and the nearest ATM was back in town. Bugger, thats why I always carry cash. I took a taxi back to town and again back to the station for about $10 wasted. As I arrive back into the station, the bint behind the glass puts up a sign saying no tickets till 6am so I have to sit and wait. When she eventually comes back and I get my ticket she says she has no change and I have to wait for 100 pesos. Tired and ratty I had to resist the urge to just punch her in her annoying face. Eventually I stagger onto the train which is cased by drugs dogs like the one in Serbia. This trip was having harrowing echos with my inter-railing experiences. For the first 3 hours the train lopes past fields like those in New Mexico full of wild horses and it was so exciting I fell asleep for about an hour and then did another Spanish lesson. I was beginning to wonder what all of the fuss was about.
Just past El Fuerte the train begins to climb and some little kids keep hitting me with their paper aeroplanes, which is amusing at first. The little kids were so hyperactive I began to suspect the Rocky Mountain High may have been slipped into their morning coffee. My mind wandered to something I had forgot to mention earlier. In New Orleans I had posted a message on couchsurfing complaining about the curfew. This had been answered gruffly by a man in his 40s who thought some 'tourists' should keep their opinions to themselves and wasn't it terrible that the attempt to enforce the law to protect from looting was stopping someone getting pissed. Personally despite his sarcasm I thought it was terrible. A girl Robin leapt to my defence by stating that if you are going to criticise someone you should at least type properly, to which he responded that it was a little difficult when you only have one hand. One of those awkward places where it becomes difficult to extricate yourself from there. Anyway just as I was getting bored, bam. The train rounds a corner ala Colorado and you are treated to an awesome sweeping vista of a valley with a river scything through the base and a multitude of colours dancing on the cliff face. There were white rocks, yellow patches near the loop, red brick formations and a fantastic green in the main canyon, which is why the Spaniards had christened it copper canyon in the first place. There were tens of bridges and tunnels as this impressive engineering work snaked its way to the canyon mouth. I'd wahcked on my mp3 player and as the sun danced along the canyon Bob Marley would be my accompaniment for much of the journey and all was good in the world. The canyon itself is like a crossbreed between the vastness of the Grand Canyon and the beauty of Zion on steroids. I realised at this point that I should have stayed in Creel and gone hiking. Its a cool little town up in the middle of the mountains. Just after leaving Creel I was informed that we would have to leave the train for a bus that would take us the rest of the way. I had my first awful conversational attempt at Spanish with an older woman on the train and helped her with her bags. We packed onto the bus and were treated to a stuttering, breaking version of Ghost Rider, while I was made uneasy by the guard sitting behiond me with an automatic weapon in his lap. We eventually rolled into Chihuahua at 10.30pm and I was finally in my first decent town.
The hostel right by the station is run by a great French/Mexican couple with a cool Alsatian dog. I wandered out into the town and found a proper supermarket where I could get cereal bars to stave off hunger on bus journeys. Walking around town I found a lovely cathedral and this being a cowboy town they sold cowboy boots for cheap. I wanted some but figured I would allow myself till Durango to stew over that decision. The Palacio de Gobierno in town has fantastic murals around the walls detailing the city's history. It also has a small Hidalgo museum in Spanish. If you walk out to the Parque el Palomar at the far end of town you get great sweeping vistas over the surrounding hills and the beauty of Chihuahua's location becomes apparent. Quinta Gamaras was a pretty house with an art exhibition that had been built for a sweetheart who ran off with the architect. The hostel is however located next to a prison, which makes for an amusing morning walk. I wandered through the Parque Revolucion and was still being sick a bit from the whooping cough. That night I was supposed to meet Liz, so I headed out and grabbed some Elotes before taking in the dancing fountain show behind the palace. Its cool and reminded me of Vienna or that time in Versailles where I snuck into a formal do. Everyone was in their tuxedos and I was there with my rucksack and bobble hat. Then again I usually look the most trampy in a room so it did not change much. The fountain show is free and good. Music ranged from Dido to ET to Enya to Magnificent Seven. I headed to Cafe Calicanto and listened to some really good live acoustic music and when Liz failed to show I had a beer and headed back to the hostel. There I met some older Yankees who had just come in and were heading up into the canyon to hike. We chatted for a while and one wrote history books and another was a teacher. It was a pleasant conversation and then I turfed in.
In the morning I got chatting for a couple of hours with the French owner of the hostel. He informed me that the heads of four policeman had been delivered after decapitation to the local police chief and subsequently there had been a spate of resignations. It seems the drug wars were moving further from the border and he described the frustrations of everyone being in the pocket of the drug cartels and how there is a concerted effort to keep the poor down by lending them money at 67% a year interest and other ridiculous financial systems. He even has to buy his medical insurance for his family from the States. We talked for a while about US politics and then moved onto his French military service. When he was 19 he had applied for a post in French Guyana that involved wearing full uniform to raise and lower a flag once a day in a hut in the middle of nowhere. He had lived out among the natives for one year alone. They had often stolen his uniform in a game so he had to come to the village and barter for it back. It must have been solitary but he said it was the best year of his life. We talked on many things and then I headed out to the Casa Chihuahua which was free on thursdays (or so Lonely Planet incorrectly informed me). I was beginning to suspect they did not check anything properly since being taken over by the BBC and that the Aussies did a much better job. Its a cool little museum, even if part of it fell on me. I was frantically trying to put it back together when I heard footsteps of curators coming my way. Reminded me of those kids on the platform at Garston. Gathered in their hoodies one of them noticed the glass had been vandalised from a train shelter and had climbed over to get it and then`put it back on the roof. If any police had come along they would have suspected that the kids had broken it and they would have had limited defence. Lovely how our Rashomon societal prejudices play out. I was also invited to a new gallery opening while I was there but declined politely. On the way out I grabbed a great breakfast from cafe 60s that the Frenchman had recommended and found out Spurs were still shit.
When I arrived back at the hostel I got chatting with a girl named Angelica who worked at the hostel. She had studied mechanical engineering up in Washington state and had just come back from visiting her boyfriend's family in Bulgaria. Was a good chat and I promised to send her stuff on teaching Spanish abroad as she wanted to get back to Europe. The French owner also told me an amusing story about a German girl who had stayed there. She had been in the States on a student visa and was heading into Mexico. She got through in El Paso and they said she had to pay $20 for a visa. She had no US money on her so they sent her back. US customs said she was only on a student visa and could only enter once, so she was not allowed back in the States. So they sent her back to Mexico. She ended up getting played like a ping pong ball until the US guards eventually allowed her to use an ATM. As I was heading for the bus I was assisted by a Mexican woman who informed me she had lived 15 years in Houston (with a husband and two kids) but was originally born in Chihuahua. Immigration had found her and deported her back across the border. Now her husband is a US citizen, as is the younger of the girls. Both children are deaf and in a special school in Austin. She is now refused entrance to the US and because the older kid does not have US citizenship she can't come to visit without being deported herself. So as a mother she is separated from her family for 9 months of the year and from one daughter indefinitely. Whatever people think of immigration, it has to be morally wrong to separate a family with arbitrary borders and is a sick system that needs fixing. I tried to reassure her that an Obama administration may reenact the Bush/McCain liberal immigration bill that was killed by house Republicans and that then she has a path to citizenship, but to be honest the political circumstances sounded hollow when the moral ones are so clearly wrong. I eventually made it to the bus that was late as always. I settled down and watched the end of some crap Michael Madsen film called 'detectives 2'. I was unsure how a second one got made, but hey ho it was on to Monterrey.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
Baja, Mexico
I crossed over comfortably into Mexico. Or so I thought. At the border I was informed that i would have to pay $20 for a visa. Now I don't remember paying last time I was over, but this being Tijuana I let it slide. They had had a recent spurt of gun crime victims and beheadings with relations to the cartels and I ahd been warned by Enrique. He said if you are in a club do not look at any good looking girls on tables with expensive drinks or you will disappear. He also told me not to go around asking fo 40 tabs of acid, but that I figured was a less likely scenario than the former. I waited outside the McDonalds as Marissa had told me to do and got chatting with a taxi driver. He told me business was slow now that so many people had been decapitated. That filled me with confidence. In fact everyone I met in Tijuana was surprised I was there because of the violence. Marissa eventually got there half an hour late and we headed back to hers. Her place was immense and I had my own room with a private bathroom and cable tv. This was better than most hotels, even at the top end. I also met her 5 month old daughter who was a little unsure of me at first, but we discussed general travelling and had a good time.
The next morning Marissa dropped me off midway with a warning to be careful and I walked down into Avenue Revolucion (the bar district where all the Yankees go for fun) and I was only solicited twice. This was a much poorer showing than in Havana, where it was every 10 metres. It just seemed quite touristy, not as tacky and seedy as I had presumed. Americans have a funny view of seedy I was beginning to think. Either that or I just don't get shocked very easily. I had to rush back to meet Marissa and she had a few classes to go to. Being a medical student some were in the hospital and I sat as the solo gringo outside the hospital and the university reading peacefully to myself Obama´s ´Dreams of My Father´. The only disturbance was when one guy kept banging a bike on the railings behind my head. On the plus side Marissa diagnosed me with Whooping Cough and I would eventually amnage to get the necessary antibiotics with no prescription down in La Paz. A total cost of $10. Stick that in your fucking medical system America and smoke it. Marissa had asked her medical professor if I could sit in on a hernia operation ans it sounded interesting so I tracked along. As we neared the hospital Marissa informed me they only had pink overalls left so I entered the men´s changing room and got dressed into my surgical stuff. It was then that I was challenged by one of the orderlies. Er shit. Here I was in my pink, too small for me overalls, telling someone that ´mi amiga este una estudiante de medico´and then pointing frantically at the dressing room next door. Got my Spanish sucks and he eventually got over his confusion as to why there was a gringo dressed in pink in the surgical ward when Marissa set him straight. We wandered into the operating theatre and although we had missed the main bit of the operation it was still cool to watch them stitch the patient back up and I had never been in an operating theatre before. The doctor had a joke with me afterwards and we chatted about travel, while he said I was a nomad and I should have a woman in every port like the sailors. He said thats what his father had done as a truck driver.
In the evening we went out to a bar with Marissa´s friends Laura and Nelly. We drank a few Mexican beers as I realised the antibiotics were going to restrict that. The beers were ridiculously expensive, even by Yankee standards (ripping off all those 18-20 year olds). We talked about the ridiculousness of Royal families, which they found amusing. We talked about medical courses over there and compared London to Paris. Nelly said she had to go on a 3 month trek with her family and if she got fed up with them she may come and join me. Ah well in the morning I would move on and hopefully this whooping cough would end soon (apparently it can go on for as long as 1-2 months). I found out that Ollie may have been coming down with it in Brazil as well. An epidemic of something I had been innoculated against.
In the morning we went over to her grandmothers for breakfast. Her grandfather greeted me in his wheelchair and would continue to talk to me about the food in Spanish (and I had no idea what he was talking about, but he did not seem to bothered by that). Her aunt came round with a friend as well and we went through her photos of Mayan Mexico and Guatemala from her trip over that side of the country. We played with the dog (an alsatian/lassie corssbreed) and her grandmother continued to feed me until I could eat no more. The coffee was also sensational with a touch of cinnamon. We rushed to the bus station and I just got on the 24 hour hellhole bus to La Paz where I intended to rest up. Marissa had asked me, when we talked about previous couchsurfers, why I had not stayed with the guy who owned a mansion. I checked the guys profile and he has a yin yang polkadot haircut and lives in a mansion with an indoor pool and waterfall. He was kind of a pimp, connected to the cartels and a former prize fighter. He would, according to some Austrian dudes, always have prostitutes and strippers over and when the Aussie was there he had had a party for 1,200 people in his back garden. Though the Aussie had left when the guy had starpped on a bullet proof vest and taken two handguns because he was out to avenge the honour of one of his prostitute lovers. Would have made for an interesting time, but sadly I missed that one. The bus journey was long and painful. There was a Californian in his 50s who was heading down to pick up his old car, made surfboards for a living and told me about how much of a whore he used to be down in Mexico. I sat through ´The Incredibles´,´Radio´, ´Half Past Dead´ (there is always one shit martial arts one, usually Seagal or Van Damme), 'Spy Kids 3d' and 'Jersey Girl'. I managed to get some sleep and finish Obama´s book. The sense of community was really strong on the bus and linking it with Obama's writings I realised we really did not have any real community sense in the UK. Shame.
I arrived in La Paz in the afternoon and trecked to my concrete hotel. I stayed in Pension California and all the furniture is made of concrete. The shower is ice cold and the room is full of insects and little ant bastards that kept eating me in the night. It was a shithole, but still possibly marginally better than the Parker Spruce. My phone was working in Mexico, but there appeared no way to get credit. At some point I will need to buy a phone here or suss this thing out. I found a supermarket as I hadn´t eaten and I finally found some damn socks, which my feet appreciated greatly. I sorted out some of this blog and then slept. I turned on the overhead fan and it wobbled and seemed to descend towards me. It was a weird moment, like when the granny in Requiem for a Dream sees the fridge coming for her. I was certain it would decapitate me in the middle of the night, but I also hoped it would keep the insects at bay. Fat chance. I opened up my copy of Love in the Time of Cholera and a bus ticket from Mexico City-Palenque from last time I was here dropped out. Wow what a weird coincidence, only this time I would actually read the damn book.
In the morning I wokr up and whacked my head on the concrete door before heading out to see the delights of the town. One hour later I had exhausted my options and I still had 3 days. Shit this was going to be rough. It was out of season for wahle watching and I could not snorkel, dive etc because of my shitty lungs. I picked up my medication and it appears to have worked as I am only coughing 2 or 3 times a day now. The waterfront reminds me of a sort of Little Havana and that effect was magnified in the evening when they had a classic car show. By this point I was very bored. The loneliness was beginning to kick in as a product of boredom, so I went for a waterside walk at dusk with my mp3 player and that helped. I was supposed to meet Katherina in the evening but she cancelled as she had to go somewhere to see an old friend. I sat there watching spongebob squarepants in Spanish while reading my book. This was becoming intolerable. Why had I booked so many nights in the middle of fucking nowhere. I even started smack talking my lung about how his time had come now I had medication and the only consolation was that the Mexican currency had collapsed.
The next morning I awoke, more eaten than ever and still bored. Nothing notable happened. I managed to flirt a bit with the Baja Ferries employee in Spanish which gave me hope I might sharpend it up quickly. I got my 'get out of jail free card' from the ferry company and tomorrow I would escape. They had some beech volleyball in the evening, which I watched for a bit. I arranged to meet Katehrina by the dolphin statue in the evening, because my phone was still useless. I got there and there was a balloon seller and a music extravaganza on this part of the dock. I felt like I was 006 from an early James Bond and someone was about to kill me. There was an amazing taco place just outside my hotel for peanuts I found and I read until dusk. The internet was down everywhere and so I started my Spanish lessons, teaching myself week one in an hour. To be fair I had studied it before and this was sharpening, but it boosted my confidence and I chatted with Yoanna who assured me we would have a good time in Monterrey. I now had five people to stay with or see in Monterrey and I would be off the antibiotics so it could erase my time in La Paz. It felt like my Athens detour inter-railing. It had been a costly mistake in time and money, I did not like Athens that much and I ended up stranded in a port in Corfu for the day. Ironically that would happen again the next day when I decided to go to Pichilingue in the morning, dying to escape, but I would get stuck in a shit port with nothing to do for a full day. I finished my book, but my bloody mp3 broke so I was even more bored.
There were a Finnish couple trying to head to Mazatlan. I informed them no ferry was going and they would have to go to Topolobampo. I tried to start up a conversation, but they were typically cold Scandinavians and they did not even seem to speak to each other. It was funny to contrast that with the French couple who could not keep their hands of each other. Mediterraneans are so much better than us northern Europeans. I was amusing myself watching wasps fly into the wall (I had sunk low) when i got chatting with an American called Jaime. He was a glass blower and weed seller in Santa Cruz (he joked that while the US economy collapsed his business was still going strong). He did not have a passport so was seizing a chance to travel before they became a necessity. He'd manage to procure himself a ticket on a cargo ferry to Mazatlan and wasn't sure what to expect. He told me he had been down in Cabo and then yesterday had to look after a couple of young Yankee kids. It was an 18 and 16 year old who had snuck over the border and hitchhiked down to La Paz. They were there for a hippy festival in 10 days time, but only had 50 pesos ($5) left. He took pity on them and fed them for the evening, but they told him the 18 year old was now wanted for kidnapping the 16 year old. Sounded messy to me. We swapped e-mails and agreed to maybe meet up in Puerto Vallerta as a girl he knew was coming with a friend and they had a time share there. After he left I spent the rest of my time dribbling and brain dead until the ferry got ready to leave. Once I got through to the boat, me and the Finns were told we could not take our rucksacks on board and would have to leave them under a table. For some reason the French people had managed to get theirs onboard. I got to my seat but could not sleep properly, because I was afraid my bag would be kidnapped. As it was, it was still there in the morning and I leapt onto a chicken bus to Los Mochis. I love the chicken buses. I missed them so much. So communal, so crammed, so cheap and so much fun. Ah free at last, I am now sitting in this cafe in Los Mochis typing this up. Tomorrow morning I shall set forth on the Copper Canyon Railway which should be awesome and then I have a string of couchsurfers to unload my pent up conversation. I did in my bordeom translate my book title into Spanish 'Cerveza y grandulear en el pisto de Gringo'. See all was not time wasted and I am now fit enough to drink again when the antibiotics are finished on wednesday. Reading about Ollie's week in Brazil I think he had the better of it so far, but I'll get there eventually lol.
The next morning Marissa dropped me off midway with a warning to be careful and I walked down into Avenue Revolucion (the bar district where all the Yankees go for fun) and I was only solicited twice. This was a much poorer showing than in Havana, where it was every 10 metres. It just seemed quite touristy, not as tacky and seedy as I had presumed. Americans have a funny view of seedy I was beginning to think. Either that or I just don't get shocked very easily. I had to rush back to meet Marissa and she had a few classes to go to. Being a medical student some were in the hospital and I sat as the solo gringo outside the hospital and the university reading peacefully to myself Obama´s ´Dreams of My Father´. The only disturbance was when one guy kept banging a bike on the railings behind my head. On the plus side Marissa diagnosed me with Whooping Cough and I would eventually amnage to get the necessary antibiotics with no prescription down in La Paz. A total cost of $10. Stick that in your fucking medical system America and smoke it. Marissa had asked her medical professor if I could sit in on a hernia operation ans it sounded interesting so I tracked along. As we neared the hospital Marissa informed me they only had pink overalls left so I entered the men´s changing room and got dressed into my surgical stuff. It was then that I was challenged by one of the orderlies. Er shit. Here I was in my pink, too small for me overalls, telling someone that ´mi amiga este una estudiante de medico´and then pointing frantically at the dressing room next door. Got my Spanish sucks and he eventually got over his confusion as to why there was a gringo dressed in pink in the surgical ward when Marissa set him straight. We wandered into the operating theatre and although we had missed the main bit of the operation it was still cool to watch them stitch the patient back up and I had never been in an operating theatre before. The doctor had a joke with me afterwards and we chatted about travel, while he said I was a nomad and I should have a woman in every port like the sailors. He said thats what his father had done as a truck driver.
In the evening we went out to a bar with Marissa´s friends Laura and Nelly. We drank a few Mexican beers as I realised the antibiotics were going to restrict that. The beers were ridiculously expensive, even by Yankee standards (ripping off all those 18-20 year olds). We talked about the ridiculousness of Royal families, which they found amusing. We talked about medical courses over there and compared London to Paris. Nelly said she had to go on a 3 month trek with her family and if she got fed up with them she may come and join me. Ah well in the morning I would move on and hopefully this whooping cough would end soon (apparently it can go on for as long as 1-2 months). I found out that Ollie may have been coming down with it in Brazil as well. An epidemic of something I had been innoculated against.
In the morning we went over to her grandmothers for breakfast. Her grandfather greeted me in his wheelchair and would continue to talk to me about the food in Spanish (and I had no idea what he was talking about, but he did not seem to bothered by that). Her aunt came round with a friend as well and we went through her photos of Mayan Mexico and Guatemala from her trip over that side of the country. We played with the dog (an alsatian/lassie corssbreed) and her grandmother continued to feed me until I could eat no more. The coffee was also sensational with a touch of cinnamon. We rushed to the bus station and I just got on the 24 hour hellhole bus to La Paz where I intended to rest up. Marissa had asked me, when we talked about previous couchsurfers, why I had not stayed with the guy who owned a mansion. I checked the guys profile and he has a yin yang polkadot haircut and lives in a mansion with an indoor pool and waterfall. He was kind of a pimp, connected to the cartels and a former prize fighter. He would, according to some Austrian dudes, always have prostitutes and strippers over and when the Aussie was there he had had a party for 1,200 people in his back garden. Though the Aussie had left when the guy had starpped on a bullet proof vest and taken two handguns because he was out to avenge the honour of one of his prostitute lovers. Would have made for an interesting time, but sadly I missed that one. The bus journey was long and painful. There was a Californian in his 50s who was heading down to pick up his old car, made surfboards for a living and told me about how much of a whore he used to be down in Mexico. I sat through ´The Incredibles´,´Radio´, ´Half Past Dead´ (there is always one shit martial arts one, usually Seagal or Van Damme), 'Spy Kids 3d' and 'Jersey Girl'. I managed to get some sleep and finish Obama´s book. The sense of community was really strong on the bus and linking it with Obama's writings I realised we really did not have any real community sense in the UK. Shame.
I arrived in La Paz in the afternoon and trecked to my concrete hotel. I stayed in Pension California and all the furniture is made of concrete. The shower is ice cold and the room is full of insects and little ant bastards that kept eating me in the night. It was a shithole, but still possibly marginally better than the Parker Spruce. My phone was working in Mexico, but there appeared no way to get credit. At some point I will need to buy a phone here or suss this thing out. I found a supermarket as I hadn´t eaten and I finally found some damn socks, which my feet appreciated greatly. I sorted out some of this blog and then slept. I turned on the overhead fan and it wobbled and seemed to descend towards me. It was a weird moment, like when the granny in Requiem for a Dream sees the fridge coming for her. I was certain it would decapitate me in the middle of the night, but I also hoped it would keep the insects at bay. Fat chance. I opened up my copy of Love in the Time of Cholera and a bus ticket from Mexico City-Palenque from last time I was here dropped out. Wow what a weird coincidence, only this time I would actually read the damn book.
In the morning I wokr up and whacked my head on the concrete door before heading out to see the delights of the town. One hour later I had exhausted my options and I still had 3 days. Shit this was going to be rough. It was out of season for wahle watching and I could not snorkel, dive etc because of my shitty lungs. I picked up my medication and it appears to have worked as I am only coughing 2 or 3 times a day now. The waterfront reminds me of a sort of Little Havana and that effect was magnified in the evening when they had a classic car show. By this point I was very bored. The loneliness was beginning to kick in as a product of boredom, so I went for a waterside walk at dusk with my mp3 player and that helped. I was supposed to meet Katherina in the evening but she cancelled as she had to go somewhere to see an old friend. I sat there watching spongebob squarepants in Spanish while reading my book. This was becoming intolerable. Why had I booked so many nights in the middle of fucking nowhere. I even started smack talking my lung about how his time had come now I had medication and the only consolation was that the Mexican currency had collapsed.
The next morning I awoke, more eaten than ever and still bored. Nothing notable happened. I managed to flirt a bit with the Baja Ferries employee in Spanish which gave me hope I might sharpend it up quickly. I got my 'get out of jail free card' from the ferry company and tomorrow I would escape. They had some beech volleyball in the evening, which I watched for a bit. I arranged to meet Katehrina by the dolphin statue in the evening, because my phone was still useless. I got there and there was a balloon seller and a music extravaganza on this part of the dock. I felt like I was 006 from an early James Bond and someone was about to kill me. There was an amazing taco place just outside my hotel for peanuts I found and I read until dusk. The internet was down everywhere and so I started my Spanish lessons, teaching myself week one in an hour. To be fair I had studied it before and this was sharpening, but it boosted my confidence and I chatted with Yoanna who assured me we would have a good time in Monterrey. I now had five people to stay with or see in Monterrey and I would be off the antibiotics so it could erase my time in La Paz. It felt like my Athens detour inter-railing. It had been a costly mistake in time and money, I did not like Athens that much and I ended up stranded in a port in Corfu for the day. Ironically that would happen again the next day when I decided to go to Pichilingue in the morning, dying to escape, but I would get stuck in a shit port with nothing to do for a full day. I finished my book, but my bloody mp3 broke so I was even more bored.
There were a Finnish couple trying to head to Mazatlan. I informed them no ferry was going and they would have to go to Topolobampo. I tried to start up a conversation, but they were typically cold Scandinavians and they did not even seem to speak to each other. It was funny to contrast that with the French couple who could not keep their hands of each other. Mediterraneans are so much better than us northern Europeans. I was amusing myself watching wasps fly into the wall (I had sunk low) when i got chatting with an American called Jaime. He was a glass blower and weed seller in Santa Cruz (he joked that while the US economy collapsed his business was still going strong). He did not have a passport so was seizing a chance to travel before they became a necessity. He'd manage to procure himself a ticket on a cargo ferry to Mazatlan and wasn't sure what to expect. He told me he had been down in Cabo and then yesterday had to look after a couple of young Yankee kids. It was an 18 and 16 year old who had snuck over the border and hitchhiked down to La Paz. They were there for a hippy festival in 10 days time, but only had 50 pesos ($5) left. He took pity on them and fed them for the evening, but they told him the 18 year old was now wanted for kidnapping the 16 year old. Sounded messy to me. We swapped e-mails and agreed to maybe meet up in Puerto Vallerta as a girl he knew was coming with a friend and they had a time share there. After he left I spent the rest of my time dribbling and brain dead until the ferry got ready to leave. Once I got through to the boat, me and the Finns were told we could not take our rucksacks on board and would have to leave them under a table. For some reason the French people had managed to get theirs onboard. I got to my seat but could not sleep properly, because I was afraid my bag would be kidnapped. As it was, it was still there in the morning and I leapt onto a chicken bus to Los Mochis. I love the chicken buses. I missed them so much. So communal, so crammed, so cheap and so much fun. Ah free at last, I am now sitting in this cafe in Los Mochis typing this up. Tomorrow morning I shall set forth on the Copper Canyon Railway which should be awesome and then I have a string of couchsurfers to unload my pent up conversation. I did in my bordeom translate my book title into Spanish 'Cerveza y grandulear en el pisto de Gringo'. See all was not time wasted and I am now fit enough to drink again when the antibiotics are finished on wednesday. Reading about Ollie's week in Brazil I think he had the better of it so far, but I'll get there eventually lol.
California
After leaving Eugene, we drove down to the Redwood Forests on the California Coast. We wandered around this, in between listening to Biden annihilate Palin in the vice presidential debate. Apparently she came off better on tv and I figured we must have had the same sensation those listeners had to the infamous 1960 Kennedy v Nixon debate, where the result was different depending on what media type you were following it on. The forests themselves were almost haunting in the damp and the mist. Giant pillars, some carved hollow, that towered to the skys like skyscrapers from another era. We realised we were not going to make it to Arcada as Ollie was determined to push on as close to Yosemite as we could get. At this point we were running low on fuel again and while crusing with no air con we came across a sign in Orick for gas. At first we were confused. There did not appear to be any gas there at all. Then we realised they had the most expensive petrol ever, in an old school box that looked like it came out of the 1950s. The dials for the price went round at the same speed those chair lifts do in old peoples houses. Slow and painful. That night we stayed in Redding. It has nothing of note.
In the morning we carried on our imperious drive through Northern California, hitting Reno and Carson City, but having to skip past lake Tahoe. I was asleep at this point and Ollie informed me I had not missed much in either town. As we closed in on Yosemite we were pulled over for a California Inspection Station. Now what the hell was one of these? and what was it doing in the middle of a State? Bit like that odd one in New Mexico. The woman in the hut stopped us and asked "Do you have any fruit or veg?" to which we replied no and then the follow up "Do you have any mangos?" Erm firstly since when has a mango not been a fruit and secondly what the hell is so dangerous about a mango that it gets its own question. Are mangos officially the most dangerous fruit out there? Fucking Californians. We eventually entered Yosemite national park and with not even enough time for the valley, we skirted through the centre of the park. It was very rocky, very white and had a fair few trees and the odd lake. It was a nice park, but it came off like a smaller and less impressive version of Yellowstone. If its the only park you can make on a trip it would suffice. If you have options however, go for Yellowstone. On our way into San Fran we stopped at Oakland for some petrol. We did not actually get petrol as id did not have a street map and both of us had the distinct feeling that this was not the friendliest area we had ever wandered into. It did have an amusing sign on the outside of a film theatre as we entered though. 'Envision the future. Elect Obama you get Star Trek in 50 years, elect McCain you get Blade Runner'. I thought that was quite classic. We arrived late at our hostel in Union Square, that appeared to be nestled amongst some dust carts in a back alley. Anyway this hostel is called Union Square Hostel. Never use this turgid pile of shit. Firstly it looks like a shithole from reception. Secondly reception is all we got to see, because the stupid bastards had sold the room we had booked to other people leaving us with nowhere to stay. They said they would ring around and then got embroiled in an argument over laundry. This was going to go nowhere and it was approaching 11pm. Aware that motels shut then we drove out of town and eventually found a great little motel, with a really helpful owner, right by the BART station in Daly City. Ollie had still managed to have his fun taking the highlander up nearly 45 degree roads. San Fran is very hilly. This was not a good start for the city as it was reminding me of why I hate Los Angeles. Never a good thing.
In the morning we used the BART (a really good, efficient suburban rail service) to head into the Civic Centre downtown. Ollie had prepared a 25km walk for us both (the sickness was hitting me a bit for competence), which left me on the receiving end of what I usually dish out to travel companions. We started off by climbing the Coins Tower which gives you a great view over the city. Then we wandered all the way across town, past the 'world's least straight road´, which is just full of people driving down it as it zig zags like a giant slalom skiier due to the gradient and taking photos. A constant parade of smiling morons. The walk down to the Golden Gate Bridge was cool. It was here that Hunter S Thompson once said was where the wave of the hippy movement finally broke and if you look closely enough you can still see the tide mark. There was a beer festival on, but we could not enter as we did not have tickets. Can't imagine that happening in the 1960s. The bridge itself is somewhat of a disappointment. Again call it the Grand Canyon syndrome, but it looks better in photos. Its just kind of a flattish red bridge. The one we had driven over the night before had been much more spectacular architecturally and if you took someone to San Fran who had never been and said there was one engineering marvel of bridges here, the Golden Gate would not be the one they picked. We saw Alcatraz from the waterside, unable to tour it due the inconvenience of the 49ers game. The love parade was also on when we were there, but again there just seemed to lack some energy in the air. We had walked past the beaches and parks, just managing to catch the very last act in the Bluegrass festival. Eventually we made it to Haight (Hunters old hangout and the scene of the summer of love). What we found there was a kind of low grade Camden without any of the energy and a bunch of people crowded into bars. I also had to put up with some dickhead yelling at me for apparently spitting on his car. I wanted to yell I was sick you prick and are you going to beat up on a cripple but I thought better of it. Two things had strcuk me on this walk. The first was how unfriendly the locals were. Californians have that gruff indiference that you find on the east coast, but also with a smug sense of superiority and entitlement. The second one was how sad it was to see a city in decline. San Fran is a beautiful place and it still has many great things, but you get the impression it is stagnant and not vibrant. What had been fresh and invigoarting in the 1960s as it led the way in American culture had effectively become a museum to its own past. A theme park for nostalgia junkees, bums and those who haven't quite realised that the forefront moved a while back and may never return.
The next morning I picked up some Tylenol (did not actually have the desired effect) and started to steam my face with the tea pot in the morning. This illness (as yet still undefined) was beginning to really annoy me. We went to the 49ers v Patriots game and had to watch the ugliness and hostility of the 49ers fans, in contrast to the convivial atmosphere in New Orleans. Ollie asked one man where the 'will call' stand was and he just kept shouting "back of the queue" in his face until Ollie wanted to smack him. We got chatting with a few Californians, one of whom had been to the Spurs v Villa game and they were a couple of only a handful of Californians I actually liked. It was a much smaller stadium and the queueing system was shit. The only plus point was that my seat was UB40. That amused me. The Patriots one and that pleased me. I was still weighing up where I would want to study for a PHD in the States and Ollie had urged Stanford all holiday, but after we visited San Fran he conceded that Colombia in New York was probably a better bet. I wanted to know how respected the University of Colorado was. We swung by Palo Alto on the way south for dinner (where Stanford actually is) and it seems like a pleasant leafy town with not much happening. We ended up staying in Santa Cruz and I rested up while Ollie headed out. He came back informing me it was nice but you can't tell who are the tramps and who are the students.
We began our little saunter down the fabled Highway 1 in Monterrey. Its a really pretty little town, but still not as nice as Port Gibson. That blues highway had some spectacular places. Imagine what they would look like if they hadn't been hit by a hurricane. This internet cafe is now playing me instrumental Bryan Adams 'Everything I do'. Just had to drop that in. We went to Carmel and the Carmel Mission. Apparently really posh address and there were some funky houses. We passed Big Sur and Ollie maintained that he was all sceneried out at this point. There was a helicopter scooping up water in a bucket to help control the forest fires that were blazing in northern California. What the fuck is a bucket going to do? Its a bit like me putting out a house fire with a thimble. Bloody useless. Not surprised its still raging on. We eventually came across Heart Castle (sadly missing the Elephant Seal colony) and I decided it was too expensive and pointless. Ollie decided it did not have the tour he wanted and we looked at it from the 1000 miles away they leave you at the gift centre. In the photos it kind o flooked like something you might expect to find in Disneyworld. That night we stopped off in Santa Barbara and rested up again. It was having no effect and I agreed to see a doctor in LA (Ollie had been suggesting this for some time, but I resisted due to US medical fees).
The next day we were to return to my favourite place in the World. Los fucking Angeles. Uck. As we drove in there was a sign that said 'for Los Angeles stay uin the left 3 lanes'. There were only three fucking lanes. God damn I hate these morons. We hit up the Getty again complete with its smog and I don't think Ollie was that bothered. We drove up Mulholland Drive on the way in, but initially went up the wrong way and ended up on a bumpy dirt track. 13,500 miles we ended up doing in that car and LA was the first time we took it off road. At the top there was a woman whose face was falling off from too much plastic surgery. Very attractive. We saw the Hollywood sign and then went down to the Chinese Theatre. Apparently I have exactly the same sized hands as Arnie (to the millimetre), which was cool and if he needs any other casts done I am available as a stand in. We drove down Rodeo Drive (I kept hearing Rage Aginst the Machines ´I'm rolling down Rodeo with a shotgun, these people ain't seen a brown skinned man since their grandparents bought one´). We eventually found our hostel. Only it wasn't a hostel. It appeared to be a doctor's surgery. We enquired as to how that happened and naturally there were two buildings with this exact address, on this exact road (one for Venice Beach and one for Santa Monica). Goddamn these people are stupid. On the plus side the doctors surgery told me it was only 75 dollars for an appointment, but that they did not have one free until the 21st, which is two days from now and I have been in Mexico for a week.
The hostel itself was in Venice Beech and had cool saloon style doors on the toilets. It also had a very cute Polish girl operating the desk. We unpacked and learnt that we would have a Russian cyclist named Dimitry as our roommate. He was a strange man and on the first night kidnapped my shoes to hide them outside. On future nights he would also insist on leaving the windows and doors open despite the bitter cold coming from outside and our utter lack of duvets etc. He also had a slight go at me because the adjective he wanted in English was not the one I suggested. We had dinner in a Thai place across the road, where they failed to add up the bill correctly so we left no tip. Ollie wandered down to the beach while I watched Obama mince McCain in the second of the debates. A Yorkshire lass named Caz then invited us to join a bunch of people drinking on the patio. She was travelling with her mate Emma (from Wales, but lived in London and studied in Coventry) and there was also Jay (nicknamed the 'Syrian desert' who disappeared halfway to piss in the corner), Ben (another northerner who had travlled round the world for 11 months) and Enrique (from a bordertown in Texas). Enrique was destroyed at this point on half a bottle of rum and had a job interview in the morning. People fell away one by one due to the drink, until it was just Emma, me, Ollie and Ben drinking (or not in my case) and playing card games till 6am, annoying the cleaner and swapping stories of Amsterdam. Ben had the best one about visiting a prostitute and falling asleep in her bed for two hours. He did not get anything in the end and had to pay for the time to ward off the pimp. As we got into the room, Dimitry asked Ollie if he was drunk and then started talking to him about what he was doing for breakfast. Ollie was not amused as he just wanted to sleep.
We limped up the next day and took the car back to LAX. It was sad to leave the car behind and we would once again have to become travellers that were effectively our own pack mules rather than just ditching it in the car as we travelled. LAX drop off was actually in Inglewood, but we only lingered there briefly. I made Ollie come into downtown so I could prove how shit the tube was, but it operated better than last time. We then spent time tracking down a bookstore in one of the neighbourhoods that had a Lonely Planet Mexico for when I crossed the border. Eventually we took the hour long bus back to the hostel and I decided to head off to the cinema. Ollie stayed behind as Kurre was cooking a curry. Caz loved that. I walked down to Venice Boardwalk in the dark, got chased by shadow dogs and cruised by the LAPD who were obviously perturbed by my hood. Venice Boardwalk is full of a few oddball, but mainly just looks dilapidated. Eventually I made it to Santa Monica and immediately loved the place. From the hedges styled as dinosaurs, to the awesome musicians playing along the main street. There was a guy playing sitar I would love to score a film if I ever made one, a very talented violin player and a woman playing melancholic songs on the guitar. This is by far the best area of Los Angeles and if you do come to this cesspit, you must stay here. You may even like the city. I watched Meirelles' new film Blindness that was incredibly powerful and then walked back to the hostel. I stayed up chatting with Enrique till about 3am about Monterrey and its clubbing scene. He told me about a place called Schizo, where people go after 4am when the other clubs chuck out. They party here till 2pm and then sometimes the owner will take everyone up into the hills to his mansion to carry on clubbing. Occasionally he used to let a lion lose in the club as well. Sounded weird, but also sounded very cool. Will have to try and go there when I am in Monterrey.
The next day I began writing this thing and broke off in the afternoon to take a wander down to Venice Boulevard. In the evening we saw off Caz, Emma and Ben who had spent the day at six flags theme park. I was still dying at this point, but Emma had given me a few antibiotics which seemed to clear up the infection part at least. Then we chatted with Jay about Katrina. He was an engineer and had been sent there after Katrina, but could not work in the water as it was infected and the health and safety was not as good as it should have been. We found out he got his nickname the Syrian Desert because he could fix any machine that was broken and was often called in as the specialist.
Dimitry kepy insisting that we have a cup of tea, but we kept declining and after an argument with the hostel regarding keeping his bicycle in the room, he finally told me that he thought he wanted to stay in the US. I asked at the hostel regarding doctors and they sent me down to the local hospital. Here I was initially told they did not know how much it would be and then told me between $100 and $700. That seemed extortionate and I did not trust the insurance company to pay up fast enough. I was then sent by the hostel to the 'free' clinic, but they would not see me because I was a foreigner and they figured I should be able to use my travel insurance in a hospital. This was going round in circles. I gave up and played the long haired dude who worked in the hostel at pool. He'd beaten everyone, but then I beat him in a sloppy match and then lost to the Japanese dude next game. Jay came along and me, him and Ollie played pool. Jay thought I was hustling him because I did not lose a game after that in which I didn't pot the black ball. Jay told us about the strip pool he played with mates up in Pennsylvania that used to turn into orgies and said if we were ever in that part of town we had to join him. Sounded like it would be interesting. Ollie and I went up to Santa Monica and grabbed dinner as in the morning our trips would diverge.
We said goodbye to Jay and I gave Dimitry my thirs back as that would prove too many moving under my own steam. Ollie and I grabbed breakfast in McDonalds. You have to end with a classic and then we departed at the corssroads. Hmm for a brief moment it felt a little lonely solo travelling and I figured without couchsurfing it would probably be even tougher. So then I slammed my mp3 player on and got 'Baba O'Reilly´ and everything was alright with the World. It was back to public transport and I would take the Greyhound bus down to San Diego. It was the first time I had used one since they fucked up with Coachella. I had texted Brianna that I would meet her at half two. I'd forgotten that this phrasiology was odd for tha Yankees and Brianna had interpreted it as half past one as in German. So while she was an hour early, I was an hour late because I was on a greyhound and they suck. I met Brianna and we went out for a Mexican. We had a long walk along the beach and I met her housemates Veronika and Helen. Brianna had informed me that they did not know about couchsurfing and would probably be wary about it, so to all intents and purposes I was a friend of a friend from San Francisco who had met me travelling. Ah clandestine dealing, but luckily I never really had to lie as I am always uncomfortable with that. Briana had to turn in early because she had rowing at 5 every morning. So I headed with Veronika and Helen over to their friend Hayleys. She had been in need of a cockblocker for the evening and we joined her and her friend Grant from Texas. He had been studying up just outside LA. We had to take his jeep convertible out to grab some ice and got some cool dance music blazing through the Diego evening. Hayley had decided to make her fabled White Russians and we draknk up in her room for a while before heading back down. They loved the English accent and Hayley was attempting her best Keira Knightley impression. Somehow the conversation edged into a quasi domestic as Grant and Hayley had dated when they were younger and personal stories were flying from all angles. This tied to the cock chair and the raping of the cuddly bear by Helen, complete with little red stains made for an interesting night. Then Sharon, Hayley's housemate came back from her sorority party and I met two sorority sisters in Diego. Was interesting as they said they were kind of like the films, but not as depraved. Which is kind of what I figured. They all have older and younger brother and sisters adopted within the frats and sororities though, which I am sure makes for some very Imperail Roman incestual relationships.
In the morning I got up late and Briana had left me some breakfast. I decided against going into town the next morning and stayed in to watch the mental Bears v Falcons games. The Bears scored in the last few seconds to win the game. Then they kicked off with 12 seconds left, the Falcons returned 50 yards and hit a field goal. Weird as four games had ended insanely that weekend. I decided to book my flight from Cancun to Puerto Rico and settled on the 24th December as that was the cheapest. Then my confirmation came back as congratulations you have booked a flight for the 24th october. Shit. I figured the computers had fucked up, but it looked like a rookie error. I knew I had to fix it, but first I joined the girls and their other housemate (the very cute one in the sorority) for some authentic El Salvadorean food in one of the neighbourhoods. I got back and had pulled a muscle in my back, but by now I thought this illness was going to kill me and that I shouldn't really have been drinking. Nobody in the San Diego shops could understand my accent and when I eventually got credit, the stupid phone would not call expedia's English number. I managed to speak to my mum and my sister for the second and first time respectively, but I was buggered. In desperation i called the US number and they transferred me to the British one. If you ever have to call a company abroad do it this way. They pay the international call and you just pay domestic as you called a domestic number. Brilliant. They informed me they would check into the machine to see if it had made an error and that I could change my flight for $150. Painful but not as expensive as a new one so I took it. I thought my lung was collapsing at this point so vowed to go to a hospital.
The following day I went downtown where a tramp greeted me because he thought London was cool. Some weirdo then shouted out 'Arizona' for no reason. Maybe he was a Republican. I wandered down to the waterfront and so the convention centre which is really impressive and then the little touristy sea town. From there I headed over to the aircraft carrier and figured I did not have time to go on board, but it was impressive to look at. Then I wandered through the gas light district and up into Balboa Park. By this point I was walking around San Diego barefoot, because I had cut them up a bit and had run out of socks. At some point I needed to find some socks or some sandals. Balboa Park is really impressive (full of fountains and ornate buildings) and the gallery was sadly closed. I realised I would need a lot more time to see San Diego (did not even get to go to the world class zoo) and I had not realised how pretty it was or how much there was to do there. Definitely far better than LA and possibly better than San Fran. Technically it can't make the top 10 though as it was not on the roadtrip, but it would be somewhere in there around 6ish. I walked all the way to Hillcrest barefoot, which confused a lot of people and wandered into the hospital. Here they told me that I would have to pay an undisclosed fee that they would not tell me until after I had had the treatment. By this point I was fucked off with the shitty American system and said that they had better elect Obama so they get real healthcare (lots of people laughed at that). The Yankees are really amazed at what we get for our healthcare. Why one of the American politicians does not just stand up and tell people what this 'socialised' healthcare would get them is anyones guess. I got back up to Briana´s and she gave me a lift part way to town. Somebody asked me in Wendys if I could sell him any weed. Yep thats right. Often as a drug dealer I go out with two rucksacks and sit in Wendys where I will look inconspicuous and sell loads. Idiot. Some friendly Diegans told me how to operate the tram system and while I waited for it to come a horse drawn carriage wandered across the tracks. After being threatened at one stop I made my way to the border and followed the crowds as they walked up and round and round like a multistory carpark and I crossed over into Mexico (Like in Tijuana but this time for good).
As a footnote me and Ollie picked out top ten cities and best regions of the trip´.
Mine were: 1.Denver
2.New York
3.New Orleans
4.Austin
5.Seattle
6.San Francisco
7.Charleston
8.Philadelphia
9.San Antonio
10.Memphis
His were: 1.Seattle
2.New York
3.Denver
4.Austin
5.San Francisco
6.New Orleans
7.Charleston
8.Philadelphia
9.El Paso
10.Portland
Now Portland had a rough time as it may have been higher if we had seen it. Our top 8 were the same so that seems a lock as we like different things. We figure Chicago and Minneapolis (meant to be like Austin) look like the best bets to shake this list up. We had covered 13,500 miles, 29 states, 2 Canadian provinces and one Mexican so we figured we had some authority.
For regions it was for me
1.Rockies
2.The South
3.Texas
4.Pacific Northwest
5.Mid Atlantic
6.Southwest
7.California
8.Chesapeake
For Ollie:
1.Rockies
2.Pacific Northwest
3.Texas
4.The South
5.Mid Atlantic
6.California
7.Southwest
8.Chesapeake
So it seems that we might be right. Most Europeans visit very much the wrong parts of the country. The normal areas of California, Florida, New England and New York are much shitter (with the exception of New York itself) than the regions that are less explored. Dig in and throw yourself into the middle. I would not be surprised if the Lakes, the Plains, Hawaii and Alaska (the only regions left as I have done New England and Ollie Florida) stuck high up in that list as well. Fuck I love Colorado.
In the morning we carried on our imperious drive through Northern California, hitting Reno and Carson City, but having to skip past lake Tahoe. I was asleep at this point and Ollie informed me I had not missed much in either town. As we closed in on Yosemite we were pulled over for a California Inspection Station. Now what the hell was one of these? and what was it doing in the middle of a State? Bit like that odd one in New Mexico. The woman in the hut stopped us and asked "Do you have any fruit or veg?" to which we replied no and then the follow up "Do you have any mangos?" Erm firstly since when has a mango not been a fruit and secondly what the hell is so dangerous about a mango that it gets its own question. Are mangos officially the most dangerous fruit out there? Fucking Californians. We eventually entered Yosemite national park and with not even enough time for the valley, we skirted through the centre of the park. It was very rocky, very white and had a fair few trees and the odd lake. It was a nice park, but it came off like a smaller and less impressive version of Yellowstone. If its the only park you can make on a trip it would suffice. If you have options however, go for Yellowstone. On our way into San Fran we stopped at Oakland for some petrol. We did not actually get petrol as id did not have a street map and both of us had the distinct feeling that this was not the friendliest area we had ever wandered into. It did have an amusing sign on the outside of a film theatre as we entered though. 'Envision the future. Elect Obama you get Star Trek in 50 years, elect McCain you get Blade Runner'. I thought that was quite classic. We arrived late at our hostel in Union Square, that appeared to be nestled amongst some dust carts in a back alley. Anyway this hostel is called Union Square Hostel. Never use this turgid pile of shit. Firstly it looks like a shithole from reception. Secondly reception is all we got to see, because the stupid bastards had sold the room we had booked to other people leaving us with nowhere to stay. They said they would ring around and then got embroiled in an argument over laundry. This was going to go nowhere and it was approaching 11pm. Aware that motels shut then we drove out of town and eventually found a great little motel, with a really helpful owner, right by the BART station in Daly City. Ollie had still managed to have his fun taking the highlander up nearly 45 degree roads. San Fran is very hilly. This was not a good start for the city as it was reminding me of why I hate Los Angeles. Never a good thing.
In the morning we used the BART (a really good, efficient suburban rail service) to head into the Civic Centre downtown. Ollie had prepared a 25km walk for us both (the sickness was hitting me a bit for competence), which left me on the receiving end of what I usually dish out to travel companions. We started off by climbing the Coins Tower which gives you a great view over the city. Then we wandered all the way across town, past the 'world's least straight road´, which is just full of people driving down it as it zig zags like a giant slalom skiier due to the gradient and taking photos. A constant parade of smiling morons. The walk down to the Golden Gate Bridge was cool. It was here that Hunter S Thompson once said was where the wave of the hippy movement finally broke and if you look closely enough you can still see the tide mark. There was a beer festival on, but we could not enter as we did not have tickets. Can't imagine that happening in the 1960s. The bridge itself is somewhat of a disappointment. Again call it the Grand Canyon syndrome, but it looks better in photos. Its just kind of a flattish red bridge. The one we had driven over the night before had been much more spectacular architecturally and if you took someone to San Fran who had never been and said there was one engineering marvel of bridges here, the Golden Gate would not be the one they picked. We saw Alcatraz from the waterside, unable to tour it due the inconvenience of the 49ers game. The love parade was also on when we were there, but again there just seemed to lack some energy in the air. We had walked past the beaches and parks, just managing to catch the very last act in the Bluegrass festival. Eventually we made it to Haight (Hunters old hangout and the scene of the summer of love). What we found there was a kind of low grade Camden without any of the energy and a bunch of people crowded into bars. I also had to put up with some dickhead yelling at me for apparently spitting on his car. I wanted to yell I was sick you prick and are you going to beat up on a cripple but I thought better of it. Two things had strcuk me on this walk. The first was how unfriendly the locals were. Californians have that gruff indiference that you find on the east coast, but also with a smug sense of superiority and entitlement. The second one was how sad it was to see a city in decline. San Fran is a beautiful place and it still has many great things, but you get the impression it is stagnant and not vibrant. What had been fresh and invigoarting in the 1960s as it led the way in American culture had effectively become a museum to its own past. A theme park for nostalgia junkees, bums and those who haven't quite realised that the forefront moved a while back and may never return.
The next morning I picked up some Tylenol (did not actually have the desired effect) and started to steam my face with the tea pot in the morning. This illness (as yet still undefined) was beginning to really annoy me. We went to the 49ers v Patriots game and had to watch the ugliness and hostility of the 49ers fans, in contrast to the convivial atmosphere in New Orleans. Ollie asked one man where the 'will call' stand was and he just kept shouting "back of the queue" in his face until Ollie wanted to smack him. We got chatting with a few Californians, one of whom had been to the Spurs v Villa game and they were a couple of only a handful of Californians I actually liked. It was a much smaller stadium and the queueing system was shit. The only plus point was that my seat was UB40. That amused me. The Patriots one and that pleased me. I was still weighing up where I would want to study for a PHD in the States and Ollie had urged Stanford all holiday, but after we visited San Fran he conceded that Colombia in New York was probably a better bet. I wanted to know how respected the University of Colorado was. We swung by Palo Alto on the way south for dinner (where Stanford actually is) and it seems like a pleasant leafy town with not much happening. We ended up staying in Santa Cruz and I rested up while Ollie headed out. He came back informing me it was nice but you can't tell who are the tramps and who are the students.
We began our little saunter down the fabled Highway 1 in Monterrey. Its a really pretty little town, but still not as nice as Port Gibson. That blues highway had some spectacular places. Imagine what they would look like if they hadn't been hit by a hurricane. This internet cafe is now playing me instrumental Bryan Adams 'Everything I do'. Just had to drop that in. We went to Carmel and the Carmel Mission. Apparently really posh address and there were some funky houses. We passed Big Sur and Ollie maintained that he was all sceneried out at this point. There was a helicopter scooping up water in a bucket to help control the forest fires that were blazing in northern California. What the fuck is a bucket going to do? Its a bit like me putting out a house fire with a thimble. Bloody useless. Not surprised its still raging on. We eventually came across Heart Castle (sadly missing the Elephant Seal colony) and I decided it was too expensive and pointless. Ollie decided it did not have the tour he wanted and we looked at it from the 1000 miles away they leave you at the gift centre. In the photos it kind o flooked like something you might expect to find in Disneyworld. That night we stopped off in Santa Barbara and rested up again. It was having no effect and I agreed to see a doctor in LA (Ollie had been suggesting this for some time, but I resisted due to US medical fees).
The next day we were to return to my favourite place in the World. Los fucking Angeles. Uck. As we drove in there was a sign that said 'for Los Angeles stay uin the left 3 lanes'. There were only three fucking lanes. God damn I hate these morons. We hit up the Getty again complete with its smog and I don't think Ollie was that bothered. We drove up Mulholland Drive on the way in, but initially went up the wrong way and ended up on a bumpy dirt track. 13,500 miles we ended up doing in that car and LA was the first time we took it off road. At the top there was a woman whose face was falling off from too much plastic surgery. Very attractive. We saw the Hollywood sign and then went down to the Chinese Theatre. Apparently I have exactly the same sized hands as Arnie (to the millimetre), which was cool and if he needs any other casts done I am available as a stand in. We drove down Rodeo Drive (I kept hearing Rage Aginst the Machines ´I'm rolling down Rodeo with a shotgun, these people ain't seen a brown skinned man since their grandparents bought one´). We eventually found our hostel. Only it wasn't a hostel. It appeared to be a doctor's surgery. We enquired as to how that happened and naturally there were two buildings with this exact address, on this exact road (one for Venice Beach and one for Santa Monica). Goddamn these people are stupid. On the plus side the doctors surgery told me it was only 75 dollars for an appointment, but that they did not have one free until the 21st, which is two days from now and I have been in Mexico for a week.
The hostel itself was in Venice Beech and had cool saloon style doors on the toilets. It also had a very cute Polish girl operating the desk. We unpacked and learnt that we would have a Russian cyclist named Dimitry as our roommate. He was a strange man and on the first night kidnapped my shoes to hide them outside. On future nights he would also insist on leaving the windows and doors open despite the bitter cold coming from outside and our utter lack of duvets etc. He also had a slight go at me because the adjective he wanted in English was not the one I suggested. We had dinner in a Thai place across the road, where they failed to add up the bill correctly so we left no tip. Ollie wandered down to the beach while I watched Obama mince McCain in the second of the debates. A Yorkshire lass named Caz then invited us to join a bunch of people drinking on the patio. She was travelling with her mate Emma (from Wales, but lived in London and studied in Coventry) and there was also Jay (nicknamed the 'Syrian desert' who disappeared halfway to piss in the corner), Ben (another northerner who had travlled round the world for 11 months) and Enrique (from a bordertown in Texas). Enrique was destroyed at this point on half a bottle of rum and had a job interview in the morning. People fell away one by one due to the drink, until it was just Emma, me, Ollie and Ben drinking (or not in my case) and playing card games till 6am, annoying the cleaner and swapping stories of Amsterdam. Ben had the best one about visiting a prostitute and falling asleep in her bed for two hours. He did not get anything in the end and had to pay for the time to ward off the pimp. As we got into the room, Dimitry asked Ollie if he was drunk and then started talking to him about what he was doing for breakfast. Ollie was not amused as he just wanted to sleep.
We limped up the next day and took the car back to LAX. It was sad to leave the car behind and we would once again have to become travellers that were effectively our own pack mules rather than just ditching it in the car as we travelled. LAX drop off was actually in Inglewood, but we only lingered there briefly. I made Ollie come into downtown so I could prove how shit the tube was, but it operated better than last time. We then spent time tracking down a bookstore in one of the neighbourhoods that had a Lonely Planet Mexico for when I crossed the border. Eventually we took the hour long bus back to the hostel and I decided to head off to the cinema. Ollie stayed behind as Kurre was cooking a curry. Caz loved that. I walked down to Venice Boardwalk in the dark, got chased by shadow dogs and cruised by the LAPD who were obviously perturbed by my hood. Venice Boardwalk is full of a few oddball, but mainly just looks dilapidated. Eventually I made it to Santa Monica and immediately loved the place. From the hedges styled as dinosaurs, to the awesome musicians playing along the main street. There was a guy playing sitar I would love to score a film if I ever made one, a very talented violin player and a woman playing melancholic songs on the guitar. This is by far the best area of Los Angeles and if you do come to this cesspit, you must stay here. You may even like the city. I watched Meirelles' new film Blindness that was incredibly powerful and then walked back to the hostel. I stayed up chatting with Enrique till about 3am about Monterrey and its clubbing scene. He told me about a place called Schizo, where people go after 4am when the other clubs chuck out. They party here till 2pm and then sometimes the owner will take everyone up into the hills to his mansion to carry on clubbing. Occasionally he used to let a lion lose in the club as well. Sounded weird, but also sounded very cool. Will have to try and go there when I am in Monterrey.
The next day I began writing this thing and broke off in the afternoon to take a wander down to Venice Boulevard. In the evening we saw off Caz, Emma and Ben who had spent the day at six flags theme park. I was still dying at this point, but Emma had given me a few antibiotics which seemed to clear up the infection part at least. Then we chatted with Jay about Katrina. He was an engineer and had been sent there after Katrina, but could not work in the water as it was infected and the health and safety was not as good as it should have been. We found out he got his nickname the Syrian Desert because he could fix any machine that was broken and was often called in as the specialist.
Dimitry kepy insisting that we have a cup of tea, but we kept declining and after an argument with the hostel regarding keeping his bicycle in the room, he finally told me that he thought he wanted to stay in the US. I asked at the hostel regarding doctors and they sent me down to the local hospital. Here I was initially told they did not know how much it would be and then told me between $100 and $700. That seemed extortionate and I did not trust the insurance company to pay up fast enough. I was then sent by the hostel to the 'free' clinic, but they would not see me because I was a foreigner and they figured I should be able to use my travel insurance in a hospital. This was going round in circles. I gave up and played the long haired dude who worked in the hostel at pool. He'd beaten everyone, but then I beat him in a sloppy match and then lost to the Japanese dude next game. Jay came along and me, him and Ollie played pool. Jay thought I was hustling him because I did not lose a game after that in which I didn't pot the black ball. Jay told us about the strip pool he played with mates up in Pennsylvania that used to turn into orgies and said if we were ever in that part of town we had to join him. Sounded like it would be interesting. Ollie and I went up to Santa Monica and grabbed dinner as in the morning our trips would diverge.
We said goodbye to Jay and I gave Dimitry my thirs back as that would prove too many moving under my own steam. Ollie and I grabbed breakfast in McDonalds. You have to end with a classic and then we departed at the corssroads. Hmm for a brief moment it felt a little lonely solo travelling and I figured without couchsurfing it would probably be even tougher. So then I slammed my mp3 player on and got 'Baba O'Reilly´ and everything was alright with the World. It was back to public transport and I would take the Greyhound bus down to San Diego. It was the first time I had used one since they fucked up with Coachella. I had texted Brianna that I would meet her at half two. I'd forgotten that this phrasiology was odd for tha Yankees and Brianna had interpreted it as half past one as in German. So while she was an hour early, I was an hour late because I was on a greyhound and they suck. I met Brianna and we went out for a Mexican. We had a long walk along the beach and I met her housemates Veronika and Helen. Brianna had informed me that they did not know about couchsurfing and would probably be wary about it, so to all intents and purposes I was a friend of a friend from San Francisco who had met me travelling. Ah clandestine dealing, but luckily I never really had to lie as I am always uncomfortable with that. Briana had to turn in early because she had rowing at 5 every morning. So I headed with Veronika and Helen over to their friend Hayleys. She had been in need of a cockblocker for the evening and we joined her and her friend Grant from Texas. He had been studying up just outside LA. We had to take his jeep convertible out to grab some ice and got some cool dance music blazing through the Diego evening. Hayley had decided to make her fabled White Russians and we draknk up in her room for a while before heading back down. They loved the English accent and Hayley was attempting her best Keira Knightley impression. Somehow the conversation edged into a quasi domestic as Grant and Hayley had dated when they were younger and personal stories were flying from all angles. This tied to the cock chair and the raping of the cuddly bear by Helen, complete with little red stains made for an interesting night. Then Sharon, Hayley's housemate came back from her sorority party and I met two sorority sisters in Diego. Was interesting as they said they were kind of like the films, but not as depraved. Which is kind of what I figured. They all have older and younger brother and sisters adopted within the frats and sororities though, which I am sure makes for some very Imperail Roman incestual relationships.
In the morning I got up late and Briana had left me some breakfast. I decided against going into town the next morning and stayed in to watch the mental Bears v Falcons games. The Bears scored in the last few seconds to win the game. Then they kicked off with 12 seconds left, the Falcons returned 50 yards and hit a field goal. Weird as four games had ended insanely that weekend. I decided to book my flight from Cancun to Puerto Rico and settled on the 24th December as that was the cheapest. Then my confirmation came back as congratulations you have booked a flight for the 24th october. Shit. I figured the computers had fucked up, but it looked like a rookie error. I knew I had to fix it, but first I joined the girls and their other housemate (the very cute one in the sorority) for some authentic El Salvadorean food in one of the neighbourhoods. I got back and had pulled a muscle in my back, but by now I thought this illness was going to kill me and that I shouldn't really have been drinking. Nobody in the San Diego shops could understand my accent and when I eventually got credit, the stupid phone would not call expedia's English number. I managed to speak to my mum and my sister for the second and first time respectively, but I was buggered. In desperation i called the US number and they transferred me to the British one. If you ever have to call a company abroad do it this way. They pay the international call and you just pay domestic as you called a domestic number. Brilliant. They informed me they would check into the machine to see if it had made an error and that I could change my flight for $150. Painful but not as expensive as a new one so I took it. I thought my lung was collapsing at this point so vowed to go to a hospital.
The following day I went downtown where a tramp greeted me because he thought London was cool. Some weirdo then shouted out 'Arizona' for no reason. Maybe he was a Republican. I wandered down to the waterfront and so the convention centre which is really impressive and then the little touristy sea town. From there I headed over to the aircraft carrier and figured I did not have time to go on board, but it was impressive to look at. Then I wandered through the gas light district and up into Balboa Park. By this point I was walking around San Diego barefoot, because I had cut them up a bit and had run out of socks. At some point I needed to find some socks or some sandals. Balboa Park is really impressive (full of fountains and ornate buildings) and the gallery was sadly closed. I realised I would need a lot more time to see San Diego (did not even get to go to the world class zoo) and I had not realised how pretty it was or how much there was to do there. Definitely far better than LA and possibly better than San Fran. Technically it can't make the top 10 though as it was not on the roadtrip, but it would be somewhere in there around 6ish. I walked all the way to Hillcrest barefoot, which confused a lot of people and wandered into the hospital. Here they told me that I would have to pay an undisclosed fee that they would not tell me until after I had had the treatment. By this point I was fucked off with the shitty American system and said that they had better elect Obama so they get real healthcare (lots of people laughed at that). The Yankees are really amazed at what we get for our healthcare. Why one of the American politicians does not just stand up and tell people what this 'socialised' healthcare would get them is anyones guess. I got back up to Briana´s and she gave me a lift part way to town. Somebody asked me in Wendys if I could sell him any weed. Yep thats right. Often as a drug dealer I go out with two rucksacks and sit in Wendys where I will look inconspicuous and sell loads. Idiot. Some friendly Diegans told me how to operate the tram system and while I waited for it to come a horse drawn carriage wandered across the tracks. After being threatened at one stop I made my way to the border and followed the crowds as they walked up and round and round like a multistory carpark and I crossed over into Mexico (Like in Tijuana but this time for good).
As a footnote me and Ollie picked out top ten cities and best regions of the trip´.
Mine were: 1.Denver
2.New York
3.New Orleans
4.Austin
5.Seattle
6.San Francisco
7.Charleston
8.Philadelphia
9.San Antonio
10.Memphis
His were: 1.Seattle
2.New York
3.Denver
4.Austin
5.San Francisco
6.New Orleans
7.Charleston
8.Philadelphia
9.El Paso
10.Portland
Now Portland had a rough time as it may have been higher if we had seen it. Our top 8 were the same so that seems a lock as we like different things. We figure Chicago and Minneapolis (meant to be like Austin) look like the best bets to shake this list up. We had covered 13,500 miles, 29 states, 2 Canadian provinces and one Mexican so we figured we had some authority.
For regions it was for me
1.Rockies
2.The South
3.Texas
4.Pacific Northwest
5.Mid Atlantic
6.Southwest
7.California
8.Chesapeake
For Ollie:
1.Rockies
2.Pacific Northwest
3.Texas
4.The South
5.Mid Atlantic
6.California
7.Southwest
8.Chesapeake
So it seems that we might be right. Most Europeans visit very much the wrong parts of the country. The normal areas of California, Florida, New England and New York are much shitter (with the exception of New York itself) than the regions that are less explored. Dig in and throw yourself into the middle. I would not be surprised if the Lakes, the Plains, Hawaii and Alaska (the only regions left as I have done New England and Ollie Florida) stuck high up in that list as well. Fuck I love Colorado.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Pacific Northwest
We arrived in Seattle to find out that our hostel was far outside of town in the north-west. About six miles from town. This was going to play havoc with our drinking. Though by this point I was dying miserably. We arrived at seaview drive and it had a breathtaking view over to the mountains in Olympic Park (This is the world's only moderate climate rainforest and sadly we would not be able to visit it due to my incessant chatting with our hostel buddies. Will have to come back up here as we also missed Crater Lake and Lake Tahoe on the way south). It had proved too ambitious an itinerary to really get to know these areas, but had given us a tantalising taster of what could be on offer when we return. The owner Lee was just cycling up behind us when we arrived and welcomed us in. It was an awesome little hostel that was more like a house. It was completely open plan which added to the communal feeling and everybody who stayed there that we met was really cool. He introduced me to a cute Polish girl from New York called Lenka who I had noticed on our drive up. Ollie went to sort stuff out, we decided to book in for an extra night and I got chatting with Lenka about working in New York and how she wanted to move to Seattle. Ollie interrupted our revelry and we set off in to town, him complaining that I was flirting too much again. Tsk. I just love talking too much.
We started the long walk by heading to the locks. Everyone seemed amazed by them as I don't think they have many in the States and they were cool, but like giant versions of our canal locks. They also had a viewing platform under the river where you could watch the salmon swimming upstream. Now that really was cool. We carried on our long walk and stopped into a coffee shop. Having purhcased a famous Seattle coffee we got chatting with the guy there about charity, travel and literature. Shit it felt good to be back in the States with humans who have the time of day for people again. That would only last until we got to California. We passed a statue of a giant man hammering nothing in particular. Like Big Chicken. Ollie immediately loved Seattle. We were going to just miss MSTRKRFT and Talib Kweli, the same way we had missed Dan Le Sac vs Scroobious Pip in Austin, ZZ Top and Black Keys in Nashville and Rage Against the Machines free gig in Denver for the Democratic Convention. We stopped in a blues/jazz bar after wandering all over town and got some great Cajun food and some good conversation. I was tired as the virus took effect and we watched a bit the Ravens v Steelers in a few bars and headed out into some of the suburbs. So far Seattle was growing on me well.
The next day we got up and I got chatting with an Aussie girl at breakfast and then with another of the owners who was a Bihai. He explained his religion and he was from Nebraska so we were swapping travel stories like two old men would swap war stories. Neither of us liked LA, but neither had all bar one of the people we had met so far. Ollie remained optimistic and was tired of me bitching the place all the time. I showed the guy from Nebraska the Lonely Planet Adventure Travel Book and he recommended a hairdressers. The Aussie girl had also mentioned Woofing (where you get to live for free if you volunteer to work on some organic project of some kind). Sounded good for when I was desperate. We headed round to the hairdressers where it was cut by some demonic fratboys. They told us that when we were in Portland we should go to a striclub where you get steak with your pussy. I figured our host Amanda may not quite go for that but Ollie wanted to try. They also told us of the masive weed harvest that was currently going on in Acadia, but we didn't manage to make it there as Ollie was concerned about Yosemite and our time. On the plus side they loved our travel plans and refused to accept a tip because I needed it more than them. Friendliness really is currency over here.
We headed into the far leftist district of Fremont where we were able to get authentic Indian food. Ollie, finally sated with an Indian was beginning to move Settle up the list. It would make number five in mine. The rest of Fremont made it number one for him easily. They have a cold war era statue of Lenin that someone brought back from Slovakia and is now for sale while propping up a street corner. They have a giant rocket coming out of the side of a building and around the corner from that is an art deco house like a fucked up Gaudi. Round still another corner is a statue of 5 people waiting for a bus in concrete. To protest the closing of a local rail line all the people have hands coming out of their heads and the mayor objected so his face is now that of the dog. The absolute pinnacle however is under one of the bridges. Hobos used to camp there so artists were commisioned to build a work. The winner built a giant concrete troll devouring a real volkswagen beetle. For once one of these thing exceeded its hype. It was truly impressive. Ollie was in love with the city and around us they seemed to be filming a commercial for women's sportswear. One thing I noticed about the coasts. There are so many visible tramps compared to the centre (Austin excepted). In Vancouver there were hundreds fighting over supermarket trolleys and soups. After Fremont we drove into the centre and climbed the tower there. It gave great views of a pretty city. We saw the new art deco library which is very cool and found a concrete statue of Jimi Hendrix (he was born there apparently). We even found time for some mini golf, but this time I battered Ollie because it was more akin to actual golf greens rather than concrete weirdness.
Dropping the car back at the hostel we bumped into an Aussie girl named Megan who was sailing home via the Pacific and had just bought a boat out in the harbour. A Dutch guy named Roy was also there (cool dude, modelled his hair on Curt Cobain and was there because of him, but was actually staying up in Canada). He had travelled Australia in a Scooby Doo van and the smell of my feet reminded him of the van. That wasn't good on the whole lol. Megan invited us to drink on her boat but had to go get a haircut. The three of us boarded the boat and drank out in the harbour. We were slightly suspicious that this wasn't Megan's boat at all and that we were being set up. Still we drank and had a laugh for two hours and with no sign of Megan and the weather turning cold, we headed into town for a drink. We found a bar with a pool table and an impossible quiz (like the one in Memphis). Then Megan joined us with her friend Tiffany. They came in briefly and then had to leave. Very random. It disappointed Roy as he quite liked Tiffany. Blondes do nothing for me and I was dying, so I really wasn't too bothered. We headed back to the hostel and joined some randoms in the basement to watch the Boondock Saints which is quite a good film.
In the morning we got sucked into a giant conversation with a guy from LA who agreed it had no soul. He told us of when he saw someone ran over and noone stopped to help. A young guy named Alex was thumbing through my Lonely Planet and gave us some tips for San Fran. There was another Canadian guy and we joked and chatted away for some time. The Bihai guy joined us again and we had a good breakfast before heading out a little later than planned., That hostel was easily the best hostel I had ever stayed in. Too cool. We stopped off in the Washington state capital of Olympia for lunch and had a Jack in the Box. The Jack character had a sinister bobble head and reminded me of the clown IT. Surely he must scare the shit out of little children. Look him up and tell me the photos of him hovering over that bed aren't eery creepy. We stopped off at Mt St Helens on the way south and saw the side of the mountain that had been blown off. We watched a ranger film and read some of the stories of people there. One guy had been close in and commentating from his van, when he realised it was coming in heavy and then just radio silence. Another four loggers had been blasted by the hot air and had their skin scalded off. They struggled on, with one dying in the wilderness and another found on a log after they had wandered off. He died as well. One other died when they were found by a helicopter and the fourth survived with tremendous burns. Really tragic story and impressive mountain.
We eventually arrived in Portland and had a look around the city in the early evening. It seemed really pretty and we had heard about the nightlife and live music scene there so it seemed a shame we would only have one night there. Eventually we made it to Amanda's apartment which she shared with Caitlin. They were watching CNN and we had some great dried fruit whilc discussing life in general. Both had been students in Flagstaff and said we should have seen it. Damn old man. Amanda told us how she wanted to build little models of things for a living and we joked about making coffee tables with mini coffee tables on them. Most who know me well, know how these conversation go. Everyone else thinks I am probably nuts but they are such good fun. We found wrestling man on couchsurfing so I could show Amanda and she told us about the swingers she knew who had 'sexy parties' and had once tried to start one at her house with massages, drinking and smoking. Sounded like Nashville lol. Anyway she had managed to sidestep the weirdness and forbidden them from hosting sexy parties in her place. It was a good night, but the girls had to turf in for work. We got some sleep and in the morning awoke to find out that Ollie had left his bank card in Seattle (The bank informed him they are torn up). I blame the inconsistency as some Yankee machines take your card, some don't. Gets very confusing. We also found we had our first parking ticket. Good day so far. We had lunch in Eugene, Oregon (the State capital) and paid the fine. There was a weird statue to the Japanese American victims of American internment camps during World War II that looked a little creepy. Onwards to California and the last leg of the US section.
We started the long walk by heading to the locks. Everyone seemed amazed by them as I don't think they have many in the States and they were cool, but like giant versions of our canal locks. They also had a viewing platform under the river where you could watch the salmon swimming upstream. Now that really was cool. We carried on our long walk and stopped into a coffee shop. Having purhcased a famous Seattle coffee we got chatting with the guy there about charity, travel and literature. Shit it felt good to be back in the States with humans who have the time of day for people again. That would only last until we got to California. We passed a statue of a giant man hammering nothing in particular. Like Big Chicken. Ollie immediately loved Seattle. We were going to just miss MSTRKRFT and Talib Kweli, the same way we had missed Dan Le Sac vs Scroobious Pip in Austin, ZZ Top and Black Keys in Nashville and Rage Against the Machines free gig in Denver for the Democratic Convention. We stopped in a blues/jazz bar after wandering all over town and got some great Cajun food and some good conversation. I was tired as the virus took effect and we watched a bit the Ravens v Steelers in a few bars and headed out into some of the suburbs. So far Seattle was growing on me well.
The next day we got up and I got chatting with an Aussie girl at breakfast and then with another of the owners who was a Bihai. He explained his religion and he was from Nebraska so we were swapping travel stories like two old men would swap war stories. Neither of us liked LA, but neither had all bar one of the people we had met so far. Ollie remained optimistic and was tired of me bitching the place all the time. I showed the guy from Nebraska the Lonely Planet Adventure Travel Book and he recommended a hairdressers. The Aussie girl had also mentioned Woofing (where you get to live for free if you volunteer to work on some organic project of some kind). Sounded good for when I was desperate. We headed round to the hairdressers where it was cut by some demonic fratboys. They told us that when we were in Portland we should go to a striclub where you get steak with your pussy. I figured our host Amanda may not quite go for that but Ollie wanted to try. They also told us of the masive weed harvest that was currently going on in Acadia, but we didn't manage to make it there as Ollie was concerned about Yosemite and our time. On the plus side they loved our travel plans and refused to accept a tip because I needed it more than them. Friendliness really is currency over here.
We headed into the far leftist district of Fremont where we were able to get authentic Indian food. Ollie, finally sated with an Indian was beginning to move Settle up the list. It would make number five in mine. The rest of Fremont made it number one for him easily. They have a cold war era statue of Lenin that someone brought back from Slovakia and is now for sale while propping up a street corner. They have a giant rocket coming out of the side of a building and around the corner from that is an art deco house like a fucked up Gaudi. Round still another corner is a statue of 5 people waiting for a bus in concrete. To protest the closing of a local rail line all the people have hands coming out of their heads and the mayor objected so his face is now that of the dog. The absolute pinnacle however is under one of the bridges. Hobos used to camp there so artists were commisioned to build a work. The winner built a giant concrete troll devouring a real volkswagen beetle. For once one of these thing exceeded its hype. It was truly impressive. Ollie was in love with the city and around us they seemed to be filming a commercial for women's sportswear. One thing I noticed about the coasts. There are so many visible tramps compared to the centre (Austin excepted). In Vancouver there were hundreds fighting over supermarket trolleys and soups. After Fremont we drove into the centre and climbed the tower there. It gave great views of a pretty city. We saw the new art deco library which is very cool and found a concrete statue of Jimi Hendrix (he was born there apparently). We even found time for some mini golf, but this time I battered Ollie because it was more akin to actual golf greens rather than concrete weirdness.
Dropping the car back at the hostel we bumped into an Aussie girl named Megan who was sailing home via the Pacific and had just bought a boat out in the harbour. A Dutch guy named Roy was also there (cool dude, modelled his hair on Curt Cobain and was there because of him, but was actually staying up in Canada). He had travelled Australia in a Scooby Doo van and the smell of my feet reminded him of the van. That wasn't good on the whole lol. Megan invited us to drink on her boat but had to go get a haircut. The three of us boarded the boat and drank out in the harbour. We were slightly suspicious that this wasn't Megan's boat at all and that we were being set up. Still we drank and had a laugh for two hours and with no sign of Megan and the weather turning cold, we headed into town for a drink. We found a bar with a pool table and an impossible quiz (like the one in Memphis). Then Megan joined us with her friend Tiffany. They came in briefly and then had to leave. Very random. It disappointed Roy as he quite liked Tiffany. Blondes do nothing for me and I was dying, so I really wasn't too bothered. We headed back to the hostel and joined some randoms in the basement to watch the Boondock Saints which is quite a good film.
In the morning we got sucked into a giant conversation with a guy from LA who agreed it had no soul. He told us of when he saw someone ran over and noone stopped to help. A young guy named Alex was thumbing through my Lonely Planet and gave us some tips for San Fran. There was another Canadian guy and we joked and chatted away for some time. The Bihai guy joined us again and we had a good breakfast before heading out a little later than planned., That hostel was easily the best hostel I had ever stayed in. Too cool. We stopped off in the Washington state capital of Olympia for lunch and had a Jack in the Box. The Jack character had a sinister bobble head and reminded me of the clown IT. Surely he must scare the shit out of little children. Look him up and tell me the photos of him hovering over that bed aren't eery creepy. We stopped off at Mt St Helens on the way south and saw the side of the mountain that had been blown off. We watched a ranger film and read some of the stories of people there. One guy had been close in and commentating from his van, when he realised it was coming in heavy and then just radio silence. Another four loggers had been blasted by the hot air and had their skin scalded off. They struggled on, with one dying in the wilderness and another found on a log after they had wandered off. He died as well. One other died when they were found by a helicopter and the fourth survived with tremendous burns. Really tragic story and impressive mountain.
We eventually arrived in Portland and had a look around the city in the early evening. It seemed really pretty and we had heard about the nightlife and live music scene there so it seemed a shame we would only have one night there. Eventually we made it to Amanda's apartment which she shared with Caitlin. They were watching CNN and we had some great dried fruit whilc discussing life in general. Both had been students in Flagstaff and said we should have seen it. Damn old man. Amanda told us how she wanted to build little models of things for a living and we joked about making coffee tables with mini coffee tables on them. Most who know me well, know how these conversation go. Everyone else thinks I am probably nuts but they are such good fun. We found wrestling man on couchsurfing so I could show Amanda and she told us about the swingers she knew who had 'sexy parties' and had once tried to start one at her house with massages, drinking and smoking. Sounded like Nashville lol. Anyway she had managed to sidestep the weirdness and forbidden them from hosting sexy parties in her place. It was a good night, but the girls had to turf in for work. We got some sleep and in the morning awoke to find out that Ollie had left his bank card in Seattle (The bank informed him they are torn up). I blame the inconsistency as some Yankee machines take your card, some don't. Gets very confusing. We also found we had our first parking ticket. Good day so far. We had lunch in Eugene, Oregon (the State capital) and paid the fine. There was a weird statue to the Japanese American victims of American internment camps during World War II that looked a little creepy. Onwards to California and the last leg of the US section.
Canada
If we thought that Wyoming was a big vast nothingness, then that said nothing for Canada. The Rockies off to the west and nothing of anything anywhere else. We grabbed some money in a small border town and drove onto Calgary. The girls we were supposed to stay with fell through, but this time it wa our fault. Our phones did not work at all. Driving through town just after a Calgary Flames game we experience our first traffic jam since Atlanta and the third of the trip. Felt like home and boy would it. Realising that Canada was much more expensive than the US and more like home we tried to find cheap accomodation and failed. We got a motel, headed to Chillies for dinner (where we got chatting with the waitress who was from a small town in the west about many things until she got busted for chatting with us) and headed back for the first Presidential debate. McCain probably just about shaded it, but Obama hung well with the old timer.
In the morning we decided to hang around and walk into town to see what Calgary was like. We saw the tower and the mall. All very nice, but it looked just like any big north-eastern US city. Good place to work, not so amazing to visit. We left Calgary around lunchtime and began a mental sprint across the country to Vancouver. The Rockied leered immensely in front of us as we approached them over the plains. We headed into Banff and were informed by the cute Canuck ranger that we had best drive through to make Vancouver by night fall. Banff National Park was beautiful what we saw of it and everyone had started speeding again, more like the UK than the US. We were concerned that the pass may be closed due to the snow and because the Candians build around things there were only 3 passes. If one was closed they were all likely to be closed. We passed a place called Enchanted Forest that looked like a theme park and we were in suich a rush we could not even stop to play some mini golf. We were looking decidedly up against it time wise to make the hostel for 11pm when they closed the doors to guests. Only later did we realise we would gain an hour for time zones ala Round the World in 80 Days (sadly we realised it too early to be truly cool like the book and play it for tension). Feeling we were making good time and because we were dying of hunger, we stopped in Kamloops for dinner having seen the Canadian A+W Burger joint. Some guy stopped us out of the car and asked us for directions. Now we had just arrived. Of course we did not know where something was. Only he asked us where the A+W was. The only bloody question we could have answered. Ah the joys of fate. We headed to a pub for food. It was full of chav scum and divided into random groups. This was the first authentically British pub we had been in and it sent chills through me. Here and Vancouver would make Ollie nostalgic for home with its similarities, it would drive through to me what I hate about home and not make me miss it. It would however make both os us homesick for the American middle and the effortless friendliness the local extended to us there, compared to the British/Canuck coldness we now felt. As we left we tried to get petrol, but were not allowed to unless someone filled it for us. Very weird and kind of backwards.
Descending on Vancouver in the encoraching darkness we found a wicked soundtrack radio station (Canada has more variety than the States. On the way to Calgary we had listened to a Celtic radio station playing highland music and a bhangra radio station playing Indian dance). They played us Shaft, O Brother Where Art Thou (sadly not Big Rock Candy Mountain) and a double header from Footloose and Carlitos Way. Great channel. We got into Vancouver in the nick of time and were staying in the Grand Trunk Hostel in the gaslamp district. Someone had rechristened it the Grand Drunk Hostel and we were locked out. Our phones did not work and we could not call the attendant so we were buggered. Sitting outside with loads of people queueing for the clubs it felt like Destiny crossed with Farringdon. Never good if you are sober. Some randoms came back and we snuck in. We wandered aimlessly until some Aussie took us to the attendants room. He was a strange little squat man, like one of those alien observers in the X Files. He proceeded to tell me about the bots he had discovered that lived in computers and tracked currency making you millions, but we had to keep it a secret or the government would get him and kill him for his bots. I nodded along, Ollie was visibly impatient. He eventually let us go and we went out to some local bars. Drinks were expensive and any attempt to start up conversation with the bar staff was met stiffly. Ah it was like a nightmare time warp back to England. We abandoned the night and headed back to the hostel where we hung in the kitchen with a dreadlocked Swedish guy, a Japanese dude, a guy from England who was travelling, an Irish man, a cool Aussie girl and a Belgian dude who looked like Greg Rusedski (and smoked a lot of weed). Everyone sat up drinking and smoking till 4am with people dropping off. English dude was from Southampton (where Ollie lived) and lived in London (my playground) so sadly the conversation became exlcusive for a while. Perils of common ground. You want some to keep it flowing, but not too much to cut everyone out. Especially with my alcohol fuelled gob going ten to the dozen. Eventually we ended up with the Swede Marcus talking to us about the morality of killing a cow with a bazooka. "I mean to kill a cow is not good, but at the same time I have a bazooka. A bazooka man" Absolutely class. Was a fun night, but my cough was beginning to bed down at this point. Apparently with hindsight it is highly contagious at this point so apologies to anyone who inherited it.
We had to get up by 8am the next morning to move the car as it was on a meter and we were yet to get a ticket all trip. Quite the achievement. We whacked it up in Chinatown in the middle of nowhere and abandoned it for the day. It could have been towed but we chanced it. The two of us headed up the big tower to see the city. Really beautiful, situated in a bay with the mountains behind. Sort of like a jewel squeezed between a rock and a wet place. We wandered around the local park and took in a game of 20-20 cricket between some Indian ex-pats. I still maintain that game has legs and will sit behind football as the world's number two game. We used the internet in another hostel and found out that Spurs still suck. We had been beaten by Portsmouth and were still to win a league game. The US financial system was collapsing and Judas joked online that there was a bipartisan movement to get me expelled from the US and also a petition to come back to the UK as Spurs sucked while I was away. Last time I was in Mexico they went unbeaten so it may be a productive two months now. I bumped into a strange Lithuanian guy in the hostel who was stranded in Canada, because the Americans would not let him back in so soon after he had left. He denied he was going to work illegally, but his eyes said different. Given his insistence of me clubbing in the gay district of San Fran, I figured he was heading back to live with his boyfriend down there. Ollie and I headed out to do a mini bar crawl around the town. We went to a pizza place then onto a blues bar (great music, great if unfriendly barmaids. I want Texas now dammit lol) where we got done by some dickhead Canadian at pool (He talked about his Ibiza treks. Enough said). Heading back to the hostel we joined our motley crew in the kitchen. They were accentuated by a Canadian girl, a guy from Chihuahua who had worked all over and a funny guy from Quebec. We got chatting about couchsurfing and it turns out the guy from Quebec and the Aussie girl were on it. Swapping storied, I began to chat about the guy in Venice who makes his guests wrestle in their underwear. The Irish guy had asked if we had met any shady characters. He matches people by their weight and films them wrestling. It turns out the guy from Quebec had actually stayed with him. I only knew of him from some Brazilians in London. Legendary but odd, the Quebec guy said it was really uncomfortable and when he left the Italian guy a negative reference he had gone ballistic and starting stalking him with weird messages. To be fair he sounds like a nutter. But to be fair he has all of this listed on his profile so you should know what to expect. We retired late again and in the morning went searching for our car. Initially we could not find it or the cheap hairdressers. Eventually I realised we had gone down the wrong road. We found the car and headed back down to the US. I was pleased to have visited Canada and would be back in january (which will kill me, to see my mum, flying up from Puerto Rico). There was a massive queue at the border and I was paranoid as Ollie kept getting out of the car to wander round and cutting his toenails with his penknife. I figured it would attract attention but the border crossing was smooth. He wondered how two English guys had taken a Maryland car from New York to Canada (and he didn't even know our long route), but I guess he reckoned the car company needed the car back and let us in. Again border US guards are much nicer than airport ones. Onto the Pacific Northwest.
In the morning we decided to hang around and walk into town to see what Calgary was like. We saw the tower and the mall. All very nice, but it looked just like any big north-eastern US city. Good place to work, not so amazing to visit. We left Calgary around lunchtime and began a mental sprint across the country to Vancouver. The Rockied leered immensely in front of us as we approached them over the plains. We headed into Banff and were informed by the cute Canuck ranger that we had best drive through to make Vancouver by night fall. Banff National Park was beautiful what we saw of it and everyone had started speeding again, more like the UK than the US. We were concerned that the pass may be closed due to the snow and because the Candians build around things there were only 3 passes. If one was closed they were all likely to be closed. We passed a place called Enchanted Forest that looked like a theme park and we were in suich a rush we could not even stop to play some mini golf. We were looking decidedly up against it time wise to make the hostel for 11pm when they closed the doors to guests. Only later did we realise we would gain an hour for time zones ala Round the World in 80 Days (sadly we realised it too early to be truly cool like the book and play it for tension). Feeling we were making good time and because we were dying of hunger, we stopped in Kamloops for dinner having seen the Canadian A+W Burger joint. Some guy stopped us out of the car and asked us for directions. Now we had just arrived. Of course we did not know where something was. Only he asked us where the A+W was. The only bloody question we could have answered. Ah the joys of fate. We headed to a pub for food. It was full of chav scum and divided into random groups. This was the first authentically British pub we had been in and it sent chills through me. Here and Vancouver would make Ollie nostalgic for home with its similarities, it would drive through to me what I hate about home and not make me miss it. It would however make both os us homesick for the American middle and the effortless friendliness the local extended to us there, compared to the British/Canuck coldness we now felt. As we left we tried to get petrol, but were not allowed to unless someone filled it for us. Very weird and kind of backwards.
Descending on Vancouver in the encoraching darkness we found a wicked soundtrack radio station (Canada has more variety than the States. On the way to Calgary we had listened to a Celtic radio station playing highland music and a bhangra radio station playing Indian dance). They played us Shaft, O Brother Where Art Thou (sadly not Big Rock Candy Mountain) and a double header from Footloose and Carlitos Way. Great channel. We got into Vancouver in the nick of time and were staying in the Grand Trunk Hostel in the gaslamp district. Someone had rechristened it the Grand Drunk Hostel and we were locked out. Our phones did not work and we could not call the attendant so we were buggered. Sitting outside with loads of people queueing for the clubs it felt like Destiny crossed with Farringdon. Never good if you are sober. Some randoms came back and we snuck in. We wandered aimlessly until some Aussie took us to the attendants room. He was a strange little squat man, like one of those alien observers in the X Files. He proceeded to tell me about the bots he had discovered that lived in computers and tracked currency making you millions, but we had to keep it a secret or the government would get him and kill him for his bots. I nodded along, Ollie was visibly impatient. He eventually let us go and we went out to some local bars. Drinks were expensive and any attempt to start up conversation with the bar staff was met stiffly. Ah it was like a nightmare time warp back to England. We abandoned the night and headed back to the hostel where we hung in the kitchen with a dreadlocked Swedish guy, a Japanese dude, a guy from England who was travelling, an Irish man, a cool Aussie girl and a Belgian dude who looked like Greg Rusedski (and smoked a lot of weed). Everyone sat up drinking and smoking till 4am with people dropping off. English dude was from Southampton (where Ollie lived) and lived in London (my playground) so sadly the conversation became exlcusive for a while. Perils of common ground. You want some to keep it flowing, but not too much to cut everyone out. Especially with my alcohol fuelled gob going ten to the dozen. Eventually we ended up with the Swede Marcus talking to us about the morality of killing a cow with a bazooka. "I mean to kill a cow is not good, but at the same time I have a bazooka. A bazooka man" Absolutely class. Was a fun night, but my cough was beginning to bed down at this point. Apparently with hindsight it is highly contagious at this point so apologies to anyone who inherited it.
We had to get up by 8am the next morning to move the car as it was on a meter and we were yet to get a ticket all trip. Quite the achievement. We whacked it up in Chinatown in the middle of nowhere and abandoned it for the day. It could have been towed but we chanced it. The two of us headed up the big tower to see the city. Really beautiful, situated in a bay with the mountains behind. Sort of like a jewel squeezed between a rock and a wet place. We wandered around the local park and took in a game of 20-20 cricket between some Indian ex-pats. I still maintain that game has legs and will sit behind football as the world's number two game. We used the internet in another hostel and found out that Spurs still suck. We had been beaten by Portsmouth and were still to win a league game. The US financial system was collapsing and Judas joked online that there was a bipartisan movement to get me expelled from the US and also a petition to come back to the UK as Spurs sucked while I was away. Last time I was in Mexico they went unbeaten so it may be a productive two months now. I bumped into a strange Lithuanian guy in the hostel who was stranded in Canada, because the Americans would not let him back in so soon after he had left. He denied he was going to work illegally, but his eyes said different. Given his insistence of me clubbing in the gay district of San Fran, I figured he was heading back to live with his boyfriend down there. Ollie and I headed out to do a mini bar crawl around the town. We went to a pizza place then onto a blues bar (great music, great if unfriendly barmaids. I want Texas now dammit lol) where we got done by some dickhead Canadian at pool (He talked about his Ibiza treks. Enough said). Heading back to the hostel we joined our motley crew in the kitchen. They were accentuated by a Canadian girl, a guy from Chihuahua who had worked all over and a funny guy from Quebec. We got chatting about couchsurfing and it turns out the guy from Quebec and the Aussie girl were on it. Swapping storied, I began to chat about the guy in Venice who makes his guests wrestle in their underwear. The Irish guy had asked if we had met any shady characters. He matches people by their weight and films them wrestling. It turns out the guy from Quebec had actually stayed with him. I only knew of him from some Brazilians in London. Legendary but odd, the Quebec guy said it was really uncomfortable and when he left the Italian guy a negative reference he had gone ballistic and starting stalking him with weird messages. To be fair he sounds like a nutter. But to be fair he has all of this listed on his profile so you should know what to expect. We retired late again and in the morning went searching for our car. Initially we could not find it or the cheap hairdressers. Eventually I realised we had gone down the wrong road. We found the car and headed back down to the US. I was pleased to have visited Canada and would be back in january (which will kill me, to see my mum, flying up from Puerto Rico). There was a massive queue at the border and I was paranoid as Ollie kept getting out of the car to wander round and cutting his toenails with his penknife. I figured it would attract attention but the border crossing was smooth. He wondered how two English guys had taken a Maryland car from New York to Canada (and he didn't even know our long route), but I guess he reckoned the car company needed the car back and let us in. Again border US guards are much nicer than airport ones. Onto the Pacific Northwest.
Rockies
We popped across the border into Colorado and stopped for breakfast at the town of Grand Junction. There appeared to be a lot of money floating around this west Colorado town as there were a number of stunning people driving expensive cars around the starbucks. Maybe these were the legendary California imports, who had come for a taste of the Rocky Mountain high and stayed on long after the high took hold, unable to come down and unable to get that fix at lower altitude. Ollie had suffered a few nosebleeds by this time due to our incessant climbing and falling between ground level and 12,000 feet over the last couple of weeks. We parked up in town, slapped enough money into the parking meter for an hour and a half and pursued the library and some breakfast. We found a lovely Italian breakfast place and were awed by every way you looked. Whichever street you looked down would be framed at the end by some of the Rocky mountains. It must be cool to live in a place that looks like a painting in every direction, but unlike Venice actually has some life to it. When we finished we rolled back to the car to see a parking ticket pen in hand hovering over our car. Fuck it. We'd managed to avoid a parking ticket all trip, but then I noticed it was still green (meaning we had time left). We climbed into the car and the parking attendant gave us a wink and a smile. I wondered why and then the meter clicked red. Hmm we'd cut that one fine and now we were laughing along with the attendant. He wasn't too bothered as he'd snagged a van right next to us. As we left and headed on towards Hunter S Thompson's hometown we managed to avoid some guys with a tape measure who seemed to be intent on making the cars do some impromto skipping.
We swung by Hunter S Thompson's old bar in Woody Creek while we ascended into the mountains. The guidebook has assured us it was shut, but as usual Lonely Planet were sloppy on the US. We arrived and piled into a small bar which was covered in photos and excerpts from the Gonzo journalists life and adventures. In honour of the man (a hero of mine and the inspiration for my book title 'Beer and Loafing on the Gringo Trail', riffed from 'Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail') I had some key lime pie and the strongest Margherita I had ever had. It had zero mixer and took my head clean off in the altitude. Today was going to be a fun day. Having paid my respects and wobbled to the car we headed up into the mountain ski resort of Aspen. Its a really pretty mountain town and we decided to hike up one of the hills that would provide a ski run in the winter. On the way down from our briskly steep hike we spotted on of the ski lifts and a summary of the runs. They began with the difficulty labelled 'more difficult' and went up to an X for 'extreme terrain'. Now if that was the lowest one then what exactly was it more difficult than. More difficult than extremely difficult. This was obviously a ski run for the professionals, though some of the other surrounding mountains cater for beginners. I wondered how easy it would be to come here and work a ski season. I was falling in love with Colorado by this point. As we left Aspen we followed a scenic pass to the east that closes after the Autumn. It was an immense swirl of snow, green, yellow, red, blueish hues of rock, crystal clear skies, imposing peaks and winding roads. Deciduous mixed with evergreen trees and they danced up the mountain sides forming vista after vista. This was a truly scenic drivem ruined only by two fat trucks that had got stuck together going alternate ways through the narrow roads. We didn't mind being stuck though as it gave us time to witness the snaking streams through the forest floors and the many other colours Colorado threw at you in Autumn. This was real America, this was the best it had to offer. With the South and Texas included with the Rockies, we were now certain that tourists were missing the best of America. Maybe one day it will rise phoenix like from the coasts to replace America's LA/NY image, like Obama will cut through the image Bush portrays to the world politically. We stopped off at the old ghost town of Independence (It had been an old mining town) and wandered amongst the battered and rotting buildings, corpses to a better time. Ollie began to feel a little nauseous (altitude sickness was biting) and so we had to accelerate over the 12,000 foot pass that holds the highest film festival in the World. Brief panic gripped Ollie while we were held in traffic lights near the top and this overflowed into a breakneck sprint down the mountains narrow winding roads on the other side. It wasn't altitude sickness that began to grip me with fear, but the fear of plunging off altitude at a fast speed and suffering a horrible death. Luckily we made it down and took the lower route to the highway, past the old town of Leadville (colonial and pretty with wooden buildings and home to National Mining Hall of Fame). The town was at 10,200 feet and said it was proud of being such a high town community. Ollie started bleeding again. I don't think this was the town for him.
Hitting the highway we proceeded to find out we may need the 'chain rule'. We were worried we may be in violation of this and have another run in with the law, but then Ollie realised it meant the chains you tie to your wheels in the snow to help you climb over difficult terrain. Hmm it wasn't snowing yet so we were probably ok. We then ran full force into perfect demonstrations of the insane Yankee engineering prowess. Here we were on a 6 lane wide motorway that ascended to 10,666 feet (We thought the highest in the World and we still reckon the highest of that size) and then passed throuh a tunnel at 11,158 feet high (must be the highest). Along with the 'over the side of the mountain hanging' freeways on the Blue Ridge and the bridge over the Hoover Dam, we were beginning to conclude that impossible was not a word in the US lexicon. While Canadians would build roads around mountains, so long diversions were necessary, the Americans would build over it no matter how insane. 'Hey theres a huge lake here in Louisiana' (Lake Pnchartain), 'shall we go around it?'. 'No lets build a 23 mile long bridge over the top of it because we can'. I imagine most US engineering meetings went that way. Brilliant demonstration of US positivity and 'can do' attitude marrying into one. As we marvelled at the highway and tunnel at the lofty heights of American achievement, we would soon descend out o it into the depths of Americas less impressive side. Its excessive legal culture. We descended on Denver to be consulted by a road sign that said 'Don't be fooled truck drivers, there are still 4 more miles of steep gradients.' Don't be fooled by what? They must surely know they are hurtling downhill with the ubiquitous runaway truck ramps. While we were laughing at that we encountered 'Truckers you are not down yet.' Well fuck me, really. Did the steep drop give it away. I can imagine all these dribbling truck drivers that need these instructions (probably why they need the ramps). We turned off at this point, so we did not get to see if it continued with such greats as 'congratulations truck drivers you are now on flat ground. You did it. Woohoo. Have a cold one on me, but remember drinking and driving kills. Also remember when the sun goes down, this is called night and you need to turn your lights on.'
We rolled into the student town of Boulder and found our hostel. It was right between a frat house and a sorority house so the nightlife should be good. We wandered out to the first bar we found intent on a quiet one. When we got there we found the bar was a subsidiary of the New Belgian Brewery, that it was a student bar (sortof, as they can't drink there) and did a coin toss for beers. If you guessed right you paid 50 cents a beer. I ended up guessing right six out of seven times (my luck again), but was only given 5 of them. They have to toss it four times for a pitcher, one per pint and they figured 2 dollars for a four pint pitcher was taking the piss. Damn cheats. By this point we were a bit mashed and ended up chatting with a 'Welsh' girl, who wasn't really from Wales. She was playing YMCA for her brother on the juke box and her mate Robert (he'd studied in Cambridge and was dating an Alabaman French teacher) got us playing beer pong. This game was fun but stupid. You line up about 10 cups like a pool rack and chuck balls from the other end of the table. If you land the ball in a cup the other side has to drink. We played for a bit but ended up getting chucked out for closing. The main dude invited us to his place and so we set off with a minor detour for food. On a side note the bar was full of really cool murals on student life including one for Robert Redford who I believe once washed dishes there. We met a weird tramp outside of the food place, where the owner insisted in his words that 'we must find pussy in Boulder with our accents. Its easy just get them drunk'. Charming man. At this point I was clearly the drunk one and then we met a cool tramp outside. The dude used to do capoeira and gave me a Roman style forearm handshake. Very cool and unexpected. We headed back to main dudes house for some strong weed smoking. Ollie passed out on the couch, I met some guy named Brian who was Roberts brother and in a band but not. Then some hippy dude called John showed up and insisted we all watch Jim Carey sing 'I am the Walrus'. He said you can only just make out its him singing. I disgaree. I think its obvious, but then I don't live in a house of many people where one of them lives in a closet. Strange night, strange people and we made our way out just as everyone was heading onto the roof.
The next afternoon I awoke with the mother of all hangovers. God I was destroyed. I should have realised then that I was coming down with the Whooping Cough. I would however not realise that until two days ago in Tijuana when I met a medical student who diagnosed me. It should be almost gone by now and takes between one and two months. Fucking diseases. Ollie had wanted to go up to Fort Collins and take a tour of the New Belgian Brewery. I didn't really care but agreed to go, map reading intermittently when I could force my eyes open. It proved a good free tour around a funky little brewery. They are entirely energy self sufficient and lay on all sorts of games for the staff. They are also staff owned. But more importantly they make great beer. We tried some 'Voodoo beer' on the tour (a kind of hair of the dog) and then listened to some dense blonde woman asking how good a lubricant the beer would make. Quite amusing. I was beginning to feel marginally alive at this point and we decided to go and check out Denver. We may have been joined by a couchsurfer later but they cried off and for the first time we had been left high and dry in Boulder when our host fell through with no contact.
Denver is an awesome little town. I want to live there. At least for a year. Maybe longer. It is my favourite US city bar none. We parked up by the new art gallery they had constructed which was like an insane little futuristic castle. The down town is really pretty, we found a Cuban restaurant that looked like someones house. We were even tentative to approcah it but Ollie decided the prices were too high. In the end we settled on a really good Italian and carried on our tour. You can feel the crispness and freshness of the air in every breath you take. People cycle and jog around. In every direction are mountains. The city still has half a million people and weirdly, given that we were as far from the coast as it was possible to be, at times it looked like you were in a Scandinavian port town with the rigging just in the distance. Like an ethereal spirit it creeps through you till you are hooked. Beautiful people, beautiful place, surrounded by beautiful scenery. This city would not be out of place in Scandinavia or Switzerland and yet it felt like a European/American hybrid. The best of both worlds. We decided to nip into an Irish bar while we waited for a piano bar to open. In there we met Andie. She was a cute, cool barmaid who was taking a photography course and so took random snaps of the clientele. After mocking my red bull ('what no alcohol' 'no a beer pong hangover') we got chatting on travel. It turned out she had spent many years travelling Europe and teaching in Spain. We talked about her times living with Italian men twice her age, the trashing of a Paris apartment while the owner was away checking into a Mental Asylum and the wonders of travel. Exchanging stories we made a Faustian pact that she should come to South America to take the photos for my book (I don't take any as I believe they trap you in the past, never do justice to the subject when i take them anyway, can't capture a feeling and are less romantic than memorising something through the imperfect romanticised haze of memory). Whether or not it comes to fruition it was a fun night. Ollie had been joking about what would happen if the pianists were asked to play a song they did not know and we got chatting with some random guy, only to find out he was one of the pianists. He had lived for a while in New Zealand, while dating a member of an Abba tribute band and we all chatted about how cool San Antonio was, for he had lived there also. The bar had a rubber chicken with the keys on ala Monkey Island and we chatted with Andie some more about concussions in youth as she grew up in Montana and taking photos of random kids at skateparks, all the way to DUI's and how you can't enter Canada with one. We said our goodbyes to Andie and headed next door to listen to a bit of the duelling pianos. Eventually we made it back to the hostel and found out our frat place was called Rush Pi Kapp.
The next morning we set off on the brutal drive to Yellowstone National Park. I was compiling lists of the best US radio stations (Rick and Bubba in Tennessee, The River in Athens and our new favourite Jack in Boulder) when we overheard an article relating to a kid in junior school. An 11 year old kid had been suspended for wearing a t-shirt that had said 'Obama, a terrorists best friend'. It sparked a debate on parental values where someone mentioned a sign they ahd seen saying 'Clinton is a rapist'. Hmm interesting stuff that was superceded as we entered Wyoming. There was a farmer there named Chris Crop (he'll make you jump) who was an Organic Apple Farmer. What an awesome name. Apparently there are more people in Denver than Wyoming, so we settled in for one of the most boring drives through norhingness I have ever had. Wide open nothing in every direction. So I fell asleep. We popped into Casper for lunch and I began a futile quest for somewhere to show the Spurs game or for a hairdresser. Both failed.. There was nothing here and it is only known as Cheney's hometown, with the main government building named after him. We saw two pretty girls playing with a camera and thought about offering them the option of 'coming with us if they wanted to live' but dismissed it as too cheesy. It was a dead town though. We carried on to Cody where we had dinner and had just passed through a vry scenic part of Wyoming. Looked like the west was picking up. The girl behind the counter asked what language we speak and then if we were doctors, because apparently a lot of English doctors come through town. Very odd and she was a sweet girl even if she was confusing her colleagues. We left this weird scenario and headed into Yellowstone down the road once described by Teddy Roosevelt as the prettiest in the World.
It started unpromisingly but within a few miles we weren't going to disagree with him. Beautiful vista after beautiful vista met us time and again. It was like Colorado only much more rugged. Phenomenal lakes, powerful mountains. This was some scenery. Then we hit the park. A cute ranger chatted with us about her previous trip to London and the buses there. Meanwhile we descended into the park, around the huge Yellowstone lake and into a col safari. We saw Elk and Moose on the way in and while we stopped for petrol, some Bison wondered through the middle of the petrol station. Very surreal. The we headed round to the boiling mud pits and watched them bubble and steam while crapping ourselves that a bear would get us. We saw powerful rivers hurtling over rapids and towering waterfalls. We did not however see any mountain lions, bears or wolves though they have them there. Detouring briefly in the evening out to Idaho we returned and I fell asleep. I woke up suddenly and saw a seventy foot tall moose in the middle of the road. Scared the shit out of me, until I realised dusk was playing with my eyes and instead there was a Bison eyeing us up from the middle of the road. Still quite intimidating and the stand off lasted a while before it backed off and we went to pitch our tent in the disabled spot as nowhere else was left. Our camping equipment from Walmart had held up well in the Appalachians but it was no match for 7,500 feet of Rockies. Boy did we freeze to death. All night long was sub zero. I woke up and could not feel my feet or other body parts. Ollie had abandoned the tent midway through the night to sit in the car and drive round a bit to fire up the heater.
In the morning we were direly in need of some internal heating and headed over to the geyser Old Faithful. I went inside the tourist shop to grab a hot chocolate and came out to find Ollie gone. He had caught the end of an eruption and I had missed it for a hot chocolate. True we had seen some other geysers erupt earlier, but this was Old Faithful. A hot chocolate. It wasn't even that great a hot chocolate. We did not have time to wait around and grabbed some lunch on the way out. Here we had to walk around the perimiter as the Elk had taken over the town and you weren't allowed to get within twenty feet of them. We set off driving into Montana and stopped in Bozeman for a while before hitting Missoula in the evening. As we rolled into town the radio blasted out 'The next song I wrote after I killed a drifter to get an erection'. Each to their own I guess. Some dude at the motel was pestering Ollie for a lift into town until he told him we were walking. Missoula is a pretty little quiet town and we walked across the river (Ollie tried to convince me it was better than the Thames because it moved. He's wrong) looking for a vegetarian Indian. We got to a corner of fourth and looked both ways. It was pitch black either way. Didn't look promising and I did not trust Lonely Planet enough to go hareing into the dark after a phantom restaurant. We wondered if they had even updated anything since the BBC had taken them over. At this point I realised that the other two computers in this cafe had broken and I had a monopoly, but ah who cares. I need to finish this damn thing. We settled on a pizza place, but they ignored us because it was 8.45pm and they shut at 9pm. So we were told by a barmaid next door to head to the Missoula Grill for a burger. Great service and great food. Then we headed to Top Hat for some pool. The barman was incredibly rude and just sat on the bar ignoring us for ages. We ended up playing pool and then table tennis, where we were joined bvy two Chinese girls who were studying in Missoula. Tx and Ollie were clearly the better players so we left them to it and had some drinks. We learnt the Chinese for various things and were offered the chance to stay with them in Beijing if we headed that way. Ollie may do on his trip. I would have to much later. Apparently I looked like their English teacher Lawrence as well. Maybe he had been travelling across the States. It would explain why people in Santa Fe, Boulder and Cody thought they had met me before, as well as the conman with his gas tank in Denver who had talked $5 off me.
In the morning we set off past Flathead Lake (huge and really pretty) on our way to Glacier National Park. We stopped off in Kalispell for brunch and while Ollie fiddled with the car I wandered over to a drive through coffee place and began chatting with the Candian girl there. She was from Calgary and had moved here so I asked her for some tips. She wondered what we were doing there and we chatted for a bit until someone tried to run me over looking for his caffeine fix. I don't think he needed any more caffeine. Glacier National Park is really pretty, but we didn't have enough time to hike out from Lake McDonald to one of the glaciers. We started but realised it would take too long and I think Ollie was concerned about the poster there for a missing Korean guy along with other missing posters and warnings of bears. It had become obvious to us why some States wanted guns. Too many things could kill you. The Republican and Democratic mindsets were easy to get inside of. They just led completely contradictory lifestyles and fears and hopes. The main pass was closed and would add hours onto our journey, but we decided to head up the winding road to the top (all the time behind a tour bus that looked like a cable car on wheels) and when we did it was worth the wait, as we got to tramp out over the snow debating philosophy, life and relationships with people. On the way down someone said it was a bad thing the British could just remove their Prime Minister. I replied, much to his surprise, that no it wasn't when Brown is your leader and your currency was nose diving, wiping out an eighth of my travel budget. We undertook our massive detour and headed to the Canadian border where we were grilled and Ollie had to confess his US court appearances. they let us through anyway and I was now in my 31st country. Only problem was my Yankee phone that had had no reception since Boulder and would not have any until we got to Seattle. Onwards into Canuckland.
We swung by Hunter S Thompson's old bar in Woody Creek while we ascended into the mountains. The guidebook has assured us it was shut, but as usual Lonely Planet were sloppy on the US. We arrived and piled into a small bar which was covered in photos and excerpts from the Gonzo journalists life and adventures. In honour of the man (a hero of mine and the inspiration for my book title 'Beer and Loafing on the Gringo Trail', riffed from 'Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail') I had some key lime pie and the strongest Margherita I had ever had. It had zero mixer and took my head clean off in the altitude. Today was going to be a fun day. Having paid my respects and wobbled to the car we headed up into the mountain ski resort of Aspen. Its a really pretty mountain town and we decided to hike up one of the hills that would provide a ski run in the winter. On the way down from our briskly steep hike we spotted on of the ski lifts and a summary of the runs. They began with the difficulty labelled 'more difficult' and went up to an X for 'extreme terrain'. Now if that was the lowest one then what exactly was it more difficult than. More difficult than extremely difficult. This was obviously a ski run for the professionals, though some of the other surrounding mountains cater for beginners. I wondered how easy it would be to come here and work a ski season. I was falling in love with Colorado by this point. As we left Aspen we followed a scenic pass to the east that closes after the Autumn. It was an immense swirl of snow, green, yellow, red, blueish hues of rock, crystal clear skies, imposing peaks and winding roads. Deciduous mixed with evergreen trees and they danced up the mountain sides forming vista after vista. This was a truly scenic drivem ruined only by two fat trucks that had got stuck together going alternate ways through the narrow roads. We didn't mind being stuck though as it gave us time to witness the snaking streams through the forest floors and the many other colours Colorado threw at you in Autumn. This was real America, this was the best it had to offer. With the South and Texas included with the Rockies, we were now certain that tourists were missing the best of America. Maybe one day it will rise phoenix like from the coasts to replace America's LA/NY image, like Obama will cut through the image Bush portrays to the world politically. We stopped off at the old ghost town of Independence (It had been an old mining town) and wandered amongst the battered and rotting buildings, corpses to a better time. Ollie began to feel a little nauseous (altitude sickness was biting) and so we had to accelerate over the 12,000 foot pass that holds the highest film festival in the World. Brief panic gripped Ollie while we were held in traffic lights near the top and this overflowed into a breakneck sprint down the mountains narrow winding roads on the other side. It wasn't altitude sickness that began to grip me with fear, but the fear of plunging off altitude at a fast speed and suffering a horrible death. Luckily we made it down and took the lower route to the highway, past the old town of Leadville (colonial and pretty with wooden buildings and home to National Mining Hall of Fame). The town was at 10,200 feet and said it was proud of being such a high town community. Ollie started bleeding again. I don't think this was the town for him.
Hitting the highway we proceeded to find out we may need the 'chain rule'. We were worried we may be in violation of this and have another run in with the law, but then Ollie realised it meant the chains you tie to your wheels in the snow to help you climb over difficult terrain. Hmm it wasn't snowing yet so we were probably ok. We then ran full force into perfect demonstrations of the insane Yankee engineering prowess. Here we were on a 6 lane wide motorway that ascended to 10,666 feet (We thought the highest in the World and we still reckon the highest of that size) and then passed throuh a tunnel at 11,158 feet high (must be the highest). Along with the 'over the side of the mountain hanging' freeways on the Blue Ridge and the bridge over the Hoover Dam, we were beginning to conclude that impossible was not a word in the US lexicon. While Canadians would build roads around mountains, so long diversions were necessary, the Americans would build over it no matter how insane. 'Hey theres a huge lake here in Louisiana' (Lake Pnchartain), 'shall we go around it?'. 'No lets build a 23 mile long bridge over the top of it because we can'. I imagine most US engineering meetings went that way. Brilliant demonstration of US positivity and 'can do' attitude marrying into one. As we marvelled at the highway and tunnel at the lofty heights of American achievement, we would soon descend out o it into the depths of Americas less impressive side. Its excessive legal culture. We descended on Denver to be consulted by a road sign that said 'Don't be fooled truck drivers, there are still 4 more miles of steep gradients.' Don't be fooled by what? They must surely know they are hurtling downhill with the ubiquitous runaway truck ramps. While we were laughing at that we encountered 'Truckers you are not down yet.' Well fuck me, really. Did the steep drop give it away. I can imagine all these dribbling truck drivers that need these instructions (probably why they need the ramps). We turned off at this point, so we did not get to see if it continued with such greats as 'congratulations truck drivers you are now on flat ground. You did it. Woohoo. Have a cold one on me, but remember drinking and driving kills. Also remember when the sun goes down, this is called night and you need to turn your lights on.'
We rolled into the student town of Boulder and found our hostel. It was right between a frat house and a sorority house so the nightlife should be good. We wandered out to the first bar we found intent on a quiet one. When we got there we found the bar was a subsidiary of the New Belgian Brewery, that it was a student bar (sortof, as they can't drink there) and did a coin toss for beers. If you guessed right you paid 50 cents a beer. I ended up guessing right six out of seven times (my luck again), but was only given 5 of them. They have to toss it four times for a pitcher, one per pint and they figured 2 dollars for a four pint pitcher was taking the piss. Damn cheats. By this point we were a bit mashed and ended up chatting with a 'Welsh' girl, who wasn't really from Wales. She was playing YMCA for her brother on the juke box and her mate Robert (he'd studied in Cambridge and was dating an Alabaman French teacher) got us playing beer pong. This game was fun but stupid. You line up about 10 cups like a pool rack and chuck balls from the other end of the table. If you land the ball in a cup the other side has to drink. We played for a bit but ended up getting chucked out for closing. The main dude invited us to his place and so we set off with a minor detour for food. On a side note the bar was full of really cool murals on student life including one for Robert Redford who I believe once washed dishes there. We met a weird tramp outside of the food place, where the owner insisted in his words that 'we must find pussy in Boulder with our accents. Its easy just get them drunk'. Charming man. At this point I was clearly the drunk one and then we met a cool tramp outside. The dude used to do capoeira and gave me a Roman style forearm handshake. Very cool and unexpected. We headed back to main dudes house for some strong weed smoking. Ollie passed out on the couch, I met some guy named Brian who was Roberts brother and in a band but not. Then some hippy dude called John showed up and insisted we all watch Jim Carey sing 'I am the Walrus'. He said you can only just make out its him singing. I disgaree. I think its obvious, but then I don't live in a house of many people where one of them lives in a closet. Strange night, strange people and we made our way out just as everyone was heading onto the roof.
The next afternoon I awoke with the mother of all hangovers. God I was destroyed. I should have realised then that I was coming down with the Whooping Cough. I would however not realise that until two days ago in Tijuana when I met a medical student who diagnosed me. It should be almost gone by now and takes between one and two months. Fucking diseases. Ollie had wanted to go up to Fort Collins and take a tour of the New Belgian Brewery. I didn't really care but agreed to go, map reading intermittently when I could force my eyes open. It proved a good free tour around a funky little brewery. They are entirely energy self sufficient and lay on all sorts of games for the staff. They are also staff owned. But more importantly they make great beer. We tried some 'Voodoo beer' on the tour (a kind of hair of the dog) and then listened to some dense blonde woman asking how good a lubricant the beer would make. Quite amusing. I was beginning to feel marginally alive at this point and we decided to go and check out Denver. We may have been joined by a couchsurfer later but they cried off and for the first time we had been left high and dry in Boulder when our host fell through with no contact.
Denver is an awesome little town. I want to live there. At least for a year. Maybe longer. It is my favourite US city bar none. We parked up by the new art gallery they had constructed which was like an insane little futuristic castle. The down town is really pretty, we found a Cuban restaurant that looked like someones house. We were even tentative to approcah it but Ollie decided the prices were too high. In the end we settled on a really good Italian and carried on our tour. You can feel the crispness and freshness of the air in every breath you take. People cycle and jog around. In every direction are mountains. The city still has half a million people and weirdly, given that we were as far from the coast as it was possible to be, at times it looked like you were in a Scandinavian port town with the rigging just in the distance. Like an ethereal spirit it creeps through you till you are hooked. Beautiful people, beautiful place, surrounded by beautiful scenery. This city would not be out of place in Scandinavia or Switzerland and yet it felt like a European/American hybrid. The best of both worlds. We decided to nip into an Irish bar while we waited for a piano bar to open. In there we met Andie. She was a cute, cool barmaid who was taking a photography course and so took random snaps of the clientele. After mocking my red bull ('what no alcohol' 'no a beer pong hangover') we got chatting on travel. It turned out she had spent many years travelling Europe and teaching in Spain. We talked about her times living with Italian men twice her age, the trashing of a Paris apartment while the owner was away checking into a Mental Asylum and the wonders of travel. Exchanging stories we made a Faustian pact that she should come to South America to take the photos for my book (I don't take any as I believe they trap you in the past, never do justice to the subject when i take them anyway, can't capture a feeling and are less romantic than memorising something through the imperfect romanticised haze of memory). Whether or not it comes to fruition it was a fun night. Ollie had been joking about what would happen if the pianists were asked to play a song they did not know and we got chatting with some random guy, only to find out he was one of the pianists. He had lived for a while in New Zealand, while dating a member of an Abba tribute band and we all chatted about how cool San Antonio was, for he had lived there also. The bar had a rubber chicken with the keys on ala Monkey Island and we chatted with Andie some more about concussions in youth as she grew up in Montana and taking photos of random kids at skateparks, all the way to DUI's and how you can't enter Canada with one. We said our goodbyes to Andie and headed next door to listen to a bit of the duelling pianos. Eventually we made it back to the hostel and found out our frat place was called Rush Pi Kapp.
The next morning we set off on the brutal drive to Yellowstone National Park. I was compiling lists of the best US radio stations (Rick and Bubba in Tennessee, The River in Athens and our new favourite Jack in Boulder) when we overheard an article relating to a kid in junior school. An 11 year old kid had been suspended for wearing a t-shirt that had said 'Obama, a terrorists best friend'. It sparked a debate on parental values where someone mentioned a sign they ahd seen saying 'Clinton is a rapist'. Hmm interesting stuff that was superceded as we entered Wyoming. There was a farmer there named Chris Crop (he'll make you jump) who was an Organic Apple Farmer. What an awesome name. Apparently there are more people in Denver than Wyoming, so we settled in for one of the most boring drives through norhingness I have ever had. Wide open nothing in every direction. So I fell asleep. We popped into Casper for lunch and I began a futile quest for somewhere to show the Spurs game or for a hairdresser. Both failed.. There was nothing here and it is only known as Cheney's hometown, with the main government building named after him. We saw two pretty girls playing with a camera and thought about offering them the option of 'coming with us if they wanted to live' but dismissed it as too cheesy. It was a dead town though. We carried on to Cody where we had dinner and had just passed through a vry scenic part of Wyoming. Looked like the west was picking up. The girl behind the counter asked what language we speak and then if we were doctors, because apparently a lot of English doctors come through town. Very odd and she was a sweet girl even if she was confusing her colleagues. We left this weird scenario and headed into Yellowstone down the road once described by Teddy Roosevelt as the prettiest in the World.
It started unpromisingly but within a few miles we weren't going to disagree with him. Beautiful vista after beautiful vista met us time and again. It was like Colorado only much more rugged. Phenomenal lakes, powerful mountains. This was some scenery. Then we hit the park. A cute ranger chatted with us about her previous trip to London and the buses there. Meanwhile we descended into the park, around the huge Yellowstone lake and into a col safari. We saw Elk and Moose on the way in and while we stopped for petrol, some Bison wondered through the middle of the petrol station. Very surreal. The we headed round to the boiling mud pits and watched them bubble and steam while crapping ourselves that a bear would get us. We saw powerful rivers hurtling over rapids and towering waterfalls. We did not however see any mountain lions, bears or wolves though they have them there. Detouring briefly in the evening out to Idaho we returned and I fell asleep. I woke up suddenly and saw a seventy foot tall moose in the middle of the road. Scared the shit out of me, until I realised dusk was playing with my eyes and instead there was a Bison eyeing us up from the middle of the road. Still quite intimidating and the stand off lasted a while before it backed off and we went to pitch our tent in the disabled spot as nowhere else was left. Our camping equipment from Walmart had held up well in the Appalachians but it was no match for 7,500 feet of Rockies. Boy did we freeze to death. All night long was sub zero. I woke up and could not feel my feet or other body parts. Ollie had abandoned the tent midway through the night to sit in the car and drive round a bit to fire up the heater.
In the morning we were direly in need of some internal heating and headed over to the geyser Old Faithful. I went inside the tourist shop to grab a hot chocolate and came out to find Ollie gone. He had caught the end of an eruption and I had missed it for a hot chocolate. True we had seen some other geysers erupt earlier, but this was Old Faithful. A hot chocolate. It wasn't even that great a hot chocolate. We did not have time to wait around and grabbed some lunch on the way out. Here we had to walk around the perimiter as the Elk had taken over the town and you weren't allowed to get within twenty feet of them. We set off driving into Montana and stopped in Bozeman for a while before hitting Missoula in the evening. As we rolled into town the radio blasted out 'The next song I wrote after I killed a drifter to get an erection'. Each to their own I guess. Some dude at the motel was pestering Ollie for a lift into town until he told him we were walking. Missoula is a pretty little quiet town and we walked across the river (Ollie tried to convince me it was better than the Thames because it moved. He's wrong) looking for a vegetarian Indian. We got to a corner of fourth and looked both ways. It was pitch black either way. Didn't look promising and I did not trust Lonely Planet enough to go hareing into the dark after a phantom restaurant. We wondered if they had even updated anything since the BBC had taken them over. At this point I realised that the other two computers in this cafe had broken and I had a monopoly, but ah who cares. I need to finish this damn thing. We settled on a pizza place, but they ignored us because it was 8.45pm and they shut at 9pm. So we were told by a barmaid next door to head to the Missoula Grill for a burger. Great service and great food. Then we headed to Top Hat for some pool. The barman was incredibly rude and just sat on the bar ignoring us for ages. We ended up playing pool and then table tennis, where we were joined bvy two Chinese girls who were studying in Missoula. Tx and Ollie were clearly the better players so we left them to it and had some drinks. We learnt the Chinese for various things and were offered the chance to stay with them in Beijing if we headed that way. Ollie may do on his trip. I would have to much later. Apparently I looked like their English teacher Lawrence as well. Maybe he had been travelling across the States. It would explain why people in Santa Fe, Boulder and Cody thought they had met me before, as well as the conman with his gas tank in Denver who had talked $5 off me.
In the morning we set off past Flathead Lake (huge and really pretty) on our way to Glacier National Park. We stopped off in Kalispell for brunch and while Ollie fiddled with the car I wandered over to a drive through coffee place and began chatting with the Candian girl there. She was from Calgary and had moved here so I asked her for some tips. She wondered what we were doing there and we chatted for a bit until someone tried to run me over looking for his caffeine fix. I don't think he needed any more caffeine. Glacier National Park is really pretty, but we didn't have enough time to hike out from Lake McDonald to one of the glaciers. We started but realised it would take too long and I think Ollie was concerned about the poster there for a missing Korean guy along with other missing posters and warnings of bears. It had become obvious to us why some States wanted guns. Too many things could kill you. The Republican and Democratic mindsets were easy to get inside of. They just led completely contradictory lifestyles and fears and hopes. The main pass was closed and would add hours onto our journey, but we decided to head up the winding road to the top (all the time behind a tour bus that looked like a cable car on wheels) and when we did it was worth the wait, as we got to tramp out over the snow debating philosophy, life and relationships with people. On the way down someone said it was a bad thing the British could just remove their Prime Minister. I replied, much to his surprise, that no it wasn't when Brown is your leader and your currency was nose diving, wiping out an eighth of my travel budget. We undertook our massive detour and headed to the Canadian border where we were grilled and Ollie had to confess his US court appearances. they let us through anyway and I was now in my 31st country. Only problem was my Yankee phone that had had no reception since Boulder and would not have any until we got to Seattle. Onwards into Canuckland.
Friday, October 10, 2008
South West
We left in the morning and headed into Las Cruces for breakfast. They tried to recruit us for the Obama campaign again and then we moved on northwards. For some strange reason they had a border patrol checkpoint in the middle of I-10. We then proceeded up a long straight road which went 70 miles without even one curve. In the small town of Baynard we passed the McCain-Palin straight talk express. I thought we should have stopped as we may have missed a chance to meet one of the candidates (Later on we checked their schedules and it wasn't McCain. it could still have been Palin though). We travelled along route 15 to the Gila Cliff Dwellings. Now I was under the impression that this was where we would find the fabled Gila Monster lizards. It turned out to be the longest 45 mile road ever as it was full of 'tree works ahead' and was so winding with only the one lane the whole way. it took us between 2-3 hours to make the length of the road as it was dangerous to take it at any kind of speed. At the end of this odyssey we took a one mile hike up to the ancient cliff dwellings that noone could really account for. It made for a pleasant walk and a cool experience as we got chatting with a couple of rangers. The first one gave us some tips on stuff we needed to see in New Mexico. We ascended the cliff side and the second guy gave us the ranger's best guesses on what actually happened here. It seems noone really knows what these rock dwellings were really for, but boy were they going to guess randomly anyway. At one point you can descend a dodgy wooden ladder down the side of the cliff and the fact I achieved this feat convinced me that maybe my vertigo was fading. At the end of this we headed back down the windy road, only to be caught and passed by a mental UPS driver. He was taking this road at about twice the speed of any sane man and boy do they take some serious risks to deliver their promises on delivery times. It was insane, sort of like watching Colin McCrae deliver parcels for people. Further on down the road we ended up in a face off with a Bull and his cows. That resulted in some rather rural waiting as we weren't willing to take him on. New Mexico has some very pretty scenery but it is rather arid and being the lover of green, mountains and water it didn't quite suit my tastes. We stopped off in Emory Pass and because these roads were so bloody sloe wna windy we ended up getting to Alburquerque really late. With time constraints an issue (The Santa Fe hostel would not allow guests to check in after 11pm), we got dinner in Frontiers on historic route 66 before blazing north. After much driving back and forth we eventually found the hostel at 10.55pm and checked in. We were informed that we would have to pay 10 dollars extra to avoid having to do the chores in the hostel. Being the gypos that I am, we elected to do the chores and would have fun in the morning working out what they would be. Then we died from lack of sleep.
We awoke in the morning and headed down to choose our chores. Ollie opted for cleaning a shower and was done relatively quickly. I picked up a card (the chores are on cards so you can choose which one you want to take on) which had sweeping a hallway as an option. Seemed easy enough, but then the woman on the hostel informed me that card had been laid out in error and I could have this other one instead. This other one involved sweeping and mopping all the social rooms and cleaning the front map. I felt this was a shit swap and the chore took me a reasonable amount of time. On the plus side the rooms are good, the buildings are adobe style and internet is two dollars for the whole day. We headed into town and paid the speeding fine. It was at this point my mum called me and informed me that I had been defrauding the UK government for four years. Not your everyday occurance. Apparently I had been operating on the wrong national insurance number for this time period and so they required details of everywhere I had worked before they could consider refunding me the 890 quid they owed me. I had been a student for some of this time and virtually all my work was declared to the tax office as somebody. I just don't know who. Bugger. Its difficult enough dealing with the arseholes at the tax office when you are in the UK. It was going to be impossible while travelling. They wanted me to sign a declaratory letter, even though the idiots knew I had emigrated. I had luckily left some blank bits of paper with my signature at home for this occassion but noone in my family was happy forging my signature. I suppose I will have to wait and see how quickly I get my tax, whether I owe them any more than I think I do and whether they are competent enough to sort it out. Can't get too angry when I have been the one working illegally, but it was a frustrating turn of events. AIB eventually got round to selling my shares as well and due to their immense efficiency they had managed to sell them at the base of the market and got me a whole 13 quid. Back in actual Santa Fe we headed to the cathedral and around a really posh hotel. The town is really pretty and the Adobe architecture makes it look very different to every other town in the States. The Georgia O'Keefe museum was sadly shut (she is my favourite modern artist). We managed to pick up some lunch from a really cool chicken vendor in the square who had been featured in a documentary by The Two Fat Ladies. After this busy morning we decided to head out to the 10,000 waves Japanese water baths.
Only it turned out it is a spa. Neither of us had ever been to a spa before and were not exactly sure what to expect. We wandered in, paid our $20 and headed upstairs to the random public pools that were full of naked old men. One of them looked like the Austrian guy who locked his daughter up in his basement and another was a fat naked man with a weird belly button thing. Everyone was at least slightly odd. The open air pools were really cool however. They had a sauna set to 90 odd degrees, a cold plunge pool set to 28 and a jacuzzi pool, as well as a cold water shower. We moved cyclically between these pools and came out feeling incredibly cleansed and with great feeling skin. At the end we even got some refreshing cucumber water. It was an odd experience, but besides the weird naked old men it was really beneficial for our health. Afterwards we drove down to borders where Ollie experienced his first Quiznos Sub and then we illegally took pictures of maps from the Indonesian Lonely Planet. Ollie had just found out that the flight he had been sold by STA travel from Bali to Singapore did not exist and he had to find an alternative route (I suggested overland through Borneo after a stop off at Komodo). We managed to listen to some 'underground' God music on the radio. Surely that is just a euphemism for the music of the devil. We headed off into town for some quiet drinks and stupidly I had opted to wear all white. I had to suffer one stupid bint taking the piss because she thought I was a gym instructor and then Ollie picked an underground rock bar for us to sit in with my all white clothes. Needless to say I stood out a little in that bar and noone was willing to chat with the odd 'gym instructor' and his 'buddy'. The place played really cool music like Fine Young Cannibals and some early 90s hip hop. (Totally out of context but I just remembered somewhere in South Carolina there was a preacher with a notice telling his congragation to come and watch him walk on water. So watch that space). The Bell Tower bar shut at 8pm so we sadly didnt' manage to get a rooftop drinking session in. We shot some pool and on the way back were battered with some sprinkler systems that we had to run the gauntlet on. Obama was doing a rally the next day in Northern New Mexico, but sadly it was sold out so that cut our options down.
The next day we were up and doing chores again. I opted to clean a toilet, because it seemed faster than doing all the recycling or emptying every bin. Ollie took the option of cleaning our room which counts apparently as a cleaning task. I think I was coming off with the short end of the stick in these deals. Just as we were leaving some old man accosted us and proceeded to ask where we were headed. We gave him the skeleton itinerary and he proceeded to take it apart as being completely unfeasible. Despite being annoying and wasting some of the time we had to complete our 'impossible' itinerary, he did leave us with some interesting information. He let us know that the original route 66 before 1937 had actually passed through Santa Fe. The governor of New Mexico at the time was from Alburquerque and he had been hassled by the Santa Fe leaders during his governership. In order to spite them he decided to build a freeway to cut off that part of the loop and Santa Fe was removed from route 66. So we had actually driven along new route 66, old route 66 and also pre-1937 route 66. Eventually escpaing the old man's useful anecdotes and pointless wind, we set off up towards Taos. It was at this point we realised the additional sprint up to Canada was going to leave us very tight for time and reliant upon some very fast movement between all our destinations. The road up to Taos was very picturesque as we swooped in and out of mountainous desert like scenery. As we descended out of the mountains we saw a sign for a runaway truck lane. They had appeared all over America and left you feeling a sense of unease at truck drivers inability to keep their vehicles on the road. Perhaps at some point we would be faced with a Duel style scenario where a raging truck descended onto the rear of our little Toyota Highlander.
We arrived in Taos and headed for the Taos Pueblo, which is the oldest continuously occupied dwelling in North America. It costs a lot to enter and you have to pay seperately for photos. Ollie chose to ignore this and snap away inside the dwelling regardless. It was interesting to wander around the buildings, but sadly their primary focus nowadays appeared to be to sell whatever they could to as many tourists as possible. I can't imagine in its ancient functional status there was quite so much of a demand for 1/3 of the villagers to make easily transportable sized jewelry and pottery. Without the time to do the Taos scenic drive the Michelin road map implored us to do, we left Taos to the north west and headed up to the bridge over the Rio Grande gorge. This is a breathtakingly beautiful scenic bridge, towering over a gorgeous gorge. The river cut like a slither between the great cliffs and you can get a much greater view from over the middle of this gorge than you can from the Grand Canyon, because you can literally get right on top of it. Beyond the bridge is the area that is home to the Earthships. These strange pod like structures that jut out of the landscape like organic world war two shelters are constructed entirely from recyclable materials and are fully functioning off of the main national grid. As we drove through this weird urban landscape I was thumbing through the USA today. They had a feature on a housing estate that had been built on top of an old bomb range. They had had to disarm 200 munitions in the last year including one that was under the long jump landing pit. That would have made for an explosive athletics day, but seriously who decides to built housing projects on that kind of terrain. I am certain that their housing prices will be suffering even more than the rest of the country in this slump.
We rolled out of New Mexico through a mountain pass and headed into Colorado for the first time. As we pulled around the corner the barren and dying landscape gave way to a mountainous valley of greens, trees and rivers. It was like that bit in Land Before Time when the dinosaurs descend into the Great Valley. Colorado is a state all to itself in terms of beauty and it would continue to draw gasps of wanderment long after other areas would inspire scenic overload. We made it to Durango (a small former mining town in the mountains, that had now become a funky ski retreat and the starting point for the mountain railway to Silverton). We had originally planned to head to Silverton, as it is apparently a really cool one road town in the mountains and has some excellent 4wd'ing that we wanted to put the Highlander through. Again we were short of time and had to push on towards Monument Valley for dusk. Having stopped briefly in Cortez for petrol and been stuck in a queue with an apparent ZZ top convention we realised we were running low on time. We began to hurtle down the freeway, the sun dropping ominously on our right, until we ran smack into a traffic jam. It did not appear to be one of those random American jams where everyone is forced to slow to 15mph for roadworks (a speed that the speedometer does not even register). Everyone was milling out of their vehicles so we got out to see what the fuss was about. Walking round the car we saw a really long truck stuck horizontally in the road, with the cab slightly in a ditch and the end sticking across the road. We tried to work out what happened. Maybe he'd skidded (but the back wouldn't have slid out so far), could he have tried to avoid an accident (the angle was too weird) or had he tried a U-turn (could this idiot be so moronic as to try to U-turn a huge truck on a four lane road). Ollie reckoned no, but we concluded that was the only excuse for this moron's predicament. I can't drive and I could see he could not have made that turn. Fucking idiot from 'Knight Transportation' (name and shame) cost us our sunset. As the only alternative route was not really an alternative, we sat and waited for a rescue truck to hoist his cab out of the ditch. We motored past and arrived just too late for four corners. This is an area of land that borders Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. So you can stand with one limb in each state and is the only place in the US where four boundaries come together. On the way along we hit some sort of giant insect and as we had just been discussing Cheney, we wondered if it was him out on one of his night flights. Needing a piss but having nowhere to go, we pulled to the side and had a slash while the hazard lights were on. It was a weird experience having a piss in strobe lighting. Now I know what that weird muscley dude in 'I Love Techno' must have felt like when he had a slash in the corner of the dance tent in Belgium. We arrived in Monument Valley too late to camp, as we could not find the campsite and ended up staying in Goosenecks State Park campsite just north of Mexican Hat. It was free, so we couldn't complain and there was a bus of schoolkids discussing their college choices. We pitched a tent on the edge of a massive ravine and packed in for the night.
The next morning we awoke early and set off for Monument Valley to catch the sunrise. It was a beautiful vista as the sun rose above the monuments, but I was dying from the wind so headed back to the car while Ollie tried to get a good shot. We had managed to get in and out before the park rangers arrived and so we did not pay. You can do ranger led horseback rides into the Valley, but again we were short on time. This would prove to be the biggest difficulty with our expanded Western route. We grabbed some breakfast at Tuba City and headed on to the Grand Canyon. Now the Grand Canyon is fairly spectacular, but has been ruined by the large number of photographs you have seen of the place. It is hard to be too awed with a place you have seen many times before and through the photography of a man who handles his lense better than we handle our eyelids. It looked so dull and lifeless. Impressively grand, but at the same time impersonal because of it. Where was the green. Where was the life. Where was the intimacy. It felt like you could get close to the edge, but not really get a feel for it. Still it was well worth the visit and there had been some bikers saying how Zion was more impressive. I was getting more excited for Zion by the day.
Leaving the Grand Canyon we took the largest surviving original section of route 66 between Seligman and Kingman. It proved to be a very long and boring road (how I imagined the rest of the Route would be). Ollie defended it as the great road trip and I read the Lonely Planet's route 66 sections as my defence that it would be dull and gimmicky. Now Ollie loves the gimmicky, so that wasn't going to wash and it was difficult to assert that it would be dull because I had not been. I did however find about 5 freeways that actually crossed all of America from east to west (not half of it like Route 66) that looked like they would pass more interesting places than the dustbowl towns on that antiquated route. On the way into Vegas there was a police checkpoint (Again I don't know why they have these places internally, but Ollie reckons it is to protect the Hoover Dam from terrorists). The Hoover Dam is an impressive feat of engineering and there was a very pretty blue lake that had been produced from damming the Colorado. They had also begun to build one of those typically insane American engineering projects. It appeared they were building a freeway over the top of the dam to allow trucks, that currently can't cross, to take the shorter route into Vegas. As we made our way to our hotel we passed a van made into a ghetto blaster and we realised then that it was 'Welcome to Vegas, baby' (Ollie was excited, I was luke warm at best).
Now Vegas lacks the glitz and the glam that you would associate with the place. Somehow I expected everything on the strip to be so much bigger and so much more larger than life. Another trick of the lens I imagine. It was also a lot less seedy than I had expected, but I think that is because America is traditionally more conservative than Europe. What they see as seedy would be tame in places like Amsterdam and Prague. Although to give it its due, it is only the second place I have seen with good looking prostitutes (the other being Madrid). The ones in Paris would have to pay you a lot of money themselves as you see them decrepit as I cycled south from Gare du Nord. Overall we went to 13 casios on the first night. I became a tiny bit addicted to the Blackjack machines and went on a marathon to see all of the casinos. I was up on the first three casinos and having never been beaten by one I figured this was easy. Then I lost money by accidentally pressing bet all, chased it with more money in anger and suddenly this game was not so fun anymore. Originally we had started off betting small and I was about $60 down. Then Ollie suggested with the odds you may as well bet maximum each time, so I started playing for $20 a hand. My luck swung dramatically and from $60 down I ended up leaving about $30 up. If you take into account all your drinks are free, Vegas was effectively paying me to have a night out. Ollie's luck was nowhere near as good and I think he was getting sick of losing $20 in one bet, while I was watching my money rocket. Overall I beat the Sahara, Circus Circus, Wynn (the new multi billion casino), Casers Palace, Bellagios, Paris, MGM and the Mandalay. I tied with Treasure Island and lost to Excalibvur, Mirage, the Venetian and the Palazzo. Not bad. I had still never had a night of gambling end in a loss (I love my luck). Some woman won $2000 next to us on Poker in the Palazzo which was cool for her. They had new virtual blackjack machines, but playing at the tables was more fun. Chip bets were often a little too high though and a lot of people were badly cained in the money and from the drink. We watched the Sirens Cove Pirate Show which was not bad and you can tell the variations of clients. The Wynn has stunning people wandering through the artificial internal gardens past the Ferrari show, where you have to own one to get in at a reasonable price. Its a decadent town, but at the same time you have some casinos that have a distinctive Butlins feel about them. Full of old grannies and down and outers. One thing you quickly notice though is how every casino is identical inside from the decor to the machines. The outside may wow you, with the Venetian's full scale Venice replicas impressive and the Bellagios large lake immensely pretty, but the insides are just efficient money strippers. The exception being Paris (possibly the best of them) where they have created an articially blue sky effect inside that makes you feel as if you are outdoors in the day. It fooled me initially even though I knew it was night outside. Thats how good it is or how stupid I am. The barmaids were also depressingly despondent as well. Older, but generously proportioned I posited to Ollie that they are most likely older strippers no longer able to profit from their primary job and discarded into the trash heap of offering free drinks for meager tips. Reminded me of LA a bit. Still the city was fun for what it was and I enjoyed both nights we had here. I think Ollie was more disappointed as he had come in with higher expectations than I had.
The next afternoon when we got up, we drove out to Death Valley for the day. It was very hot down there and at one point we were concerned that we were going to tun out of petrol again. We really needed to sort this out given the number of times it had almost happened to us. We hiked up Zabriskie point to get a good view of the utter barrenness of the surrounding landscapes. It was an impressive vista of nothingness. As foreboding as it was barren. We descended down to Badwater (The lowest point in North America and the site of the Badwater Ultrmarathon, an insane 200 odd mile run through the desert). It was cool to walk out on the salt plains at the bottom of this barren land and there were even small pool of water that had risen from beneath the surface. For some reason this salt plain was like a catwalk as well. There was a remarkable number of good looking people wandering this barren plain. Probably more than in some towns we had passed through. On our way out we passed a sign saying 'danger of flooding' and figured the Yankee caution had even gone too far in an area where it almost never rains. We took the shortcut back to Vegas through a town called Pahrump, which appeared to only have one tourist attraction. Albeit it was a brothel museum, but then again perhaps that was just a front. We hit the town again that evening, but Ollie had got sick of gambling and I didn't want to spent too much as we had an early drive the next day. I smashed Sahara again, turning $6 into $70 and came out on top again. This casino lark was getting easy. Ollie headed up Stratosphere but I didn't want to spend any more money. I ended up leaving Vegas with more money than I entered it with, minus the petrol to Death Valley. Back in the hotel I turned on the TV to get a hilarious spoof of Barrack Obama on Fox's Mad TV. At first it did breaking coverage that Obama is not really an optimist. It had a scene where someone offered him coffee and he said ok as his glass was half empty. They then ran a diagnostic piss take like CSI that showed the glass was actually 52% full and so he had lied and been pessimistic. They then ran a skit on him not really wanting change. This had him going to pay for the coffee. The woman said 'what about your quarter'. He said 'keep the change' and she replied 'you don't want change'. The final one had them saying Obama had had an affair. It said all throughout December to April he had been spotted with a mysterious woman and whatever state he was in, so was she. Obviously they were spoofing the Clinton-Obama race but it was funny none-the-less. Apologies to anyone reading who doesn't care or doesn't follow politics. Ollie came back a little later complaining that he'd just bought a shitty super strength beer that they handed to him in a brown paper bag. Ah good to see every country still has wino drinks.
We set off early in the morning for Zion National Park. Any description I give it will be inadequate and my advice is to not look at any photos. Just go. Like a green valley running through a cliff desert it is sensational. You can see how it earned its name. We parked up (you can't take your car in as it ruins the local system and took the shuttle bus out to a walk that climbed the cliff edges ever higher to three Emerald pools in the rock. It was a good hike and at the highest pool there were a group of Christians (I suspected Mormons as we were in Utah) who were jumping and playing around the rocks. I left Ollie at the top and descended with them, listening to them discuss the last few sermons at the end of the season. I was unaware that Christianity had seasons. Do they have off season trades as well. As I descended down I realised I had gone to the wrong ground station (thought it seemed a long walk) and had to take a bus back over to meet Ollie and get some food. We then took the bus down to the end and here is a really cool river snaking through an ever narrowing canyon that you can wade or canyon up. Originally I set off in just my socks, but my feet were cut up so we switched to shoes knowing they would get destroyed. It was un wading about a couple of miles through knee deep water as you explore deeper into the canyon. We did not have enough time to make the end, but if you have a day I would advise doing that as its so much fun. Having made it back we excited up the canyon walls through a tunnel while I cut my toe nails out of the car window. We pushed on out of Zion (having stayed there longer than we anticipated) and sprinted for Bryce Canyon before dark. The sign when we got there said 'moderate risk of fire', but a bit further along the pathway we saw one saying 'forest on fire, please remain in vehicles'. We drove one past this forest fire, which was not too large and saw the sunset from the final landing. Bryce is like a jagged teeth of a canyon and quite impressive, though not as cool as Zion. On our way out Ollie was still speeding as we wanted to get to Moab (we would miss it and Dead Horse Point due to time) and when he realised someone was tailgating him he pulled over to let them through. Then on came the sirens. It was a park ranger and we had been done for doing 60 in a 35. Another court date loomed it seemed. Only Officer Jackson was a pleasant kind of guy and informed us you have to be doing 30mph over the limit in Utah to end up in court. So we could expect a fine. Only Officer Jackson also decided to let us off with just a warning and a stern rebuke as we could have killed a deer. Breathing a huge sigh of relief we shot off across Utah. We would pass the Big Roick Candy Mountain (which we could not see in the dark, but presumed was the same one from O Brother Where Art Thou fame, which I thought was cool). We found some goddamn spearmint altoids (all was well) and ended up walking into a Wendys drive thru because we were too lazy to go and get the car, almost getting run over by a huge monster truck thing. That night we camped up in Green River. In the morning I was up early and restless. Being the cock I can be when tired I proceeded to strip the tent while Ollie was still in it as he wasn't getting up. Not the smartest of my decisions and it didn't endear me to him that morning. The pace we were running was beginning to tell and we managed to sneak out eventually without paying and it was off into the Rockies. The next ten days were all originally not in the trip plans.
We awoke in the morning and headed down to choose our chores. Ollie opted for cleaning a shower and was done relatively quickly. I picked up a card (the chores are on cards so you can choose which one you want to take on) which had sweeping a hallway as an option. Seemed easy enough, but then the woman on the hostel informed me that card had been laid out in error and I could have this other one instead. This other one involved sweeping and mopping all the social rooms and cleaning the front map. I felt this was a shit swap and the chore took me a reasonable amount of time. On the plus side the rooms are good, the buildings are adobe style and internet is two dollars for the whole day. We headed into town and paid the speeding fine. It was at this point my mum called me and informed me that I had been defrauding the UK government for four years. Not your everyday occurance. Apparently I had been operating on the wrong national insurance number for this time period and so they required details of everywhere I had worked before they could consider refunding me the 890 quid they owed me. I had been a student for some of this time and virtually all my work was declared to the tax office as somebody. I just don't know who. Bugger. Its difficult enough dealing with the arseholes at the tax office when you are in the UK. It was going to be impossible while travelling. They wanted me to sign a declaratory letter, even though the idiots knew I had emigrated. I had luckily left some blank bits of paper with my signature at home for this occassion but noone in my family was happy forging my signature. I suppose I will have to wait and see how quickly I get my tax, whether I owe them any more than I think I do and whether they are competent enough to sort it out. Can't get too angry when I have been the one working illegally, but it was a frustrating turn of events. AIB eventually got round to selling my shares as well and due to their immense efficiency they had managed to sell them at the base of the market and got me a whole 13 quid. Back in actual Santa Fe we headed to the cathedral and around a really posh hotel. The town is really pretty and the Adobe architecture makes it look very different to every other town in the States. The Georgia O'Keefe museum was sadly shut (she is my favourite modern artist). We managed to pick up some lunch from a really cool chicken vendor in the square who had been featured in a documentary by The Two Fat Ladies. After this busy morning we decided to head out to the 10,000 waves Japanese water baths.
Only it turned out it is a spa. Neither of us had ever been to a spa before and were not exactly sure what to expect. We wandered in, paid our $20 and headed upstairs to the random public pools that were full of naked old men. One of them looked like the Austrian guy who locked his daughter up in his basement and another was a fat naked man with a weird belly button thing. Everyone was at least slightly odd. The open air pools were really cool however. They had a sauna set to 90 odd degrees, a cold plunge pool set to 28 and a jacuzzi pool, as well as a cold water shower. We moved cyclically between these pools and came out feeling incredibly cleansed and with great feeling skin. At the end we even got some refreshing cucumber water. It was an odd experience, but besides the weird naked old men it was really beneficial for our health. Afterwards we drove down to borders where Ollie experienced his first Quiznos Sub and then we illegally took pictures of maps from the Indonesian Lonely Planet. Ollie had just found out that the flight he had been sold by STA travel from Bali to Singapore did not exist and he had to find an alternative route (I suggested overland through Borneo after a stop off at Komodo). We managed to listen to some 'underground' God music on the radio. Surely that is just a euphemism for the music of the devil. We headed off into town for some quiet drinks and stupidly I had opted to wear all white. I had to suffer one stupid bint taking the piss because she thought I was a gym instructor and then Ollie picked an underground rock bar for us to sit in with my all white clothes. Needless to say I stood out a little in that bar and noone was willing to chat with the odd 'gym instructor' and his 'buddy'. The place played really cool music like Fine Young Cannibals and some early 90s hip hop. (Totally out of context but I just remembered somewhere in South Carolina there was a preacher with a notice telling his congragation to come and watch him walk on water. So watch that space). The Bell Tower bar shut at 8pm so we sadly didnt' manage to get a rooftop drinking session in. We shot some pool and on the way back were battered with some sprinkler systems that we had to run the gauntlet on. Obama was doing a rally the next day in Northern New Mexico, but sadly it was sold out so that cut our options down.
The next day we were up and doing chores again. I opted to clean a toilet, because it seemed faster than doing all the recycling or emptying every bin. Ollie took the option of cleaning our room which counts apparently as a cleaning task. I think I was coming off with the short end of the stick in these deals. Just as we were leaving some old man accosted us and proceeded to ask where we were headed. We gave him the skeleton itinerary and he proceeded to take it apart as being completely unfeasible. Despite being annoying and wasting some of the time we had to complete our 'impossible' itinerary, he did leave us with some interesting information. He let us know that the original route 66 before 1937 had actually passed through Santa Fe. The governor of New Mexico at the time was from Alburquerque and he had been hassled by the Santa Fe leaders during his governership. In order to spite them he decided to build a freeway to cut off that part of the loop and Santa Fe was removed from route 66. So we had actually driven along new route 66, old route 66 and also pre-1937 route 66. Eventually escpaing the old man's useful anecdotes and pointless wind, we set off up towards Taos. It was at this point we realised the additional sprint up to Canada was going to leave us very tight for time and reliant upon some very fast movement between all our destinations. The road up to Taos was very picturesque as we swooped in and out of mountainous desert like scenery. As we descended out of the mountains we saw a sign for a runaway truck lane. They had appeared all over America and left you feeling a sense of unease at truck drivers inability to keep their vehicles on the road. Perhaps at some point we would be faced with a Duel style scenario where a raging truck descended onto the rear of our little Toyota Highlander.
We arrived in Taos and headed for the Taos Pueblo, which is the oldest continuously occupied dwelling in North America. It costs a lot to enter and you have to pay seperately for photos. Ollie chose to ignore this and snap away inside the dwelling regardless. It was interesting to wander around the buildings, but sadly their primary focus nowadays appeared to be to sell whatever they could to as many tourists as possible. I can't imagine in its ancient functional status there was quite so much of a demand for 1/3 of the villagers to make easily transportable sized jewelry and pottery. Without the time to do the Taos scenic drive the Michelin road map implored us to do, we left Taos to the north west and headed up to the bridge over the Rio Grande gorge. This is a breathtakingly beautiful scenic bridge, towering over a gorgeous gorge. The river cut like a slither between the great cliffs and you can get a much greater view from over the middle of this gorge than you can from the Grand Canyon, because you can literally get right on top of it. Beyond the bridge is the area that is home to the Earthships. These strange pod like structures that jut out of the landscape like organic world war two shelters are constructed entirely from recyclable materials and are fully functioning off of the main national grid. As we drove through this weird urban landscape I was thumbing through the USA today. They had a feature on a housing estate that had been built on top of an old bomb range. They had had to disarm 200 munitions in the last year including one that was under the long jump landing pit. That would have made for an explosive athletics day, but seriously who decides to built housing projects on that kind of terrain. I am certain that their housing prices will be suffering even more than the rest of the country in this slump.
We rolled out of New Mexico through a mountain pass and headed into Colorado for the first time. As we pulled around the corner the barren and dying landscape gave way to a mountainous valley of greens, trees and rivers. It was like that bit in Land Before Time when the dinosaurs descend into the Great Valley. Colorado is a state all to itself in terms of beauty and it would continue to draw gasps of wanderment long after other areas would inspire scenic overload. We made it to Durango (a small former mining town in the mountains, that had now become a funky ski retreat and the starting point for the mountain railway to Silverton). We had originally planned to head to Silverton, as it is apparently a really cool one road town in the mountains and has some excellent 4wd'ing that we wanted to put the Highlander through. Again we were short of time and had to push on towards Monument Valley for dusk. Having stopped briefly in Cortez for petrol and been stuck in a queue with an apparent ZZ top convention we realised we were running low on time. We began to hurtle down the freeway, the sun dropping ominously on our right, until we ran smack into a traffic jam. It did not appear to be one of those random American jams where everyone is forced to slow to 15mph for roadworks (a speed that the speedometer does not even register). Everyone was milling out of their vehicles so we got out to see what the fuss was about. Walking round the car we saw a really long truck stuck horizontally in the road, with the cab slightly in a ditch and the end sticking across the road. We tried to work out what happened. Maybe he'd skidded (but the back wouldn't have slid out so far), could he have tried to avoid an accident (the angle was too weird) or had he tried a U-turn (could this idiot be so moronic as to try to U-turn a huge truck on a four lane road). Ollie reckoned no, but we concluded that was the only excuse for this moron's predicament. I can't drive and I could see he could not have made that turn. Fucking idiot from 'Knight Transportation' (name and shame) cost us our sunset. As the only alternative route was not really an alternative, we sat and waited for a rescue truck to hoist his cab out of the ditch. We motored past and arrived just too late for four corners. This is an area of land that borders Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. So you can stand with one limb in each state and is the only place in the US where four boundaries come together. On the way along we hit some sort of giant insect and as we had just been discussing Cheney, we wondered if it was him out on one of his night flights. Needing a piss but having nowhere to go, we pulled to the side and had a slash while the hazard lights were on. It was a weird experience having a piss in strobe lighting. Now I know what that weird muscley dude in 'I Love Techno' must have felt like when he had a slash in the corner of the dance tent in Belgium. We arrived in Monument Valley too late to camp, as we could not find the campsite and ended up staying in Goosenecks State Park campsite just north of Mexican Hat. It was free, so we couldn't complain and there was a bus of schoolkids discussing their college choices. We pitched a tent on the edge of a massive ravine and packed in for the night.
The next morning we awoke early and set off for Monument Valley to catch the sunrise. It was a beautiful vista as the sun rose above the monuments, but I was dying from the wind so headed back to the car while Ollie tried to get a good shot. We had managed to get in and out before the park rangers arrived and so we did not pay. You can do ranger led horseback rides into the Valley, but again we were short on time. This would prove to be the biggest difficulty with our expanded Western route. We grabbed some breakfast at Tuba City and headed on to the Grand Canyon. Now the Grand Canyon is fairly spectacular, but has been ruined by the large number of photographs you have seen of the place. It is hard to be too awed with a place you have seen many times before and through the photography of a man who handles his lense better than we handle our eyelids. It looked so dull and lifeless. Impressively grand, but at the same time impersonal because of it. Where was the green. Where was the life. Where was the intimacy. It felt like you could get close to the edge, but not really get a feel for it. Still it was well worth the visit and there had been some bikers saying how Zion was more impressive. I was getting more excited for Zion by the day.
Leaving the Grand Canyon we took the largest surviving original section of route 66 between Seligman and Kingman. It proved to be a very long and boring road (how I imagined the rest of the Route would be). Ollie defended it as the great road trip and I read the Lonely Planet's route 66 sections as my defence that it would be dull and gimmicky. Now Ollie loves the gimmicky, so that wasn't going to wash and it was difficult to assert that it would be dull because I had not been. I did however find about 5 freeways that actually crossed all of America from east to west (not half of it like Route 66) that looked like they would pass more interesting places than the dustbowl towns on that antiquated route. On the way into Vegas there was a police checkpoint (Again I don't know why they have these places internally, but Ollie reckons it is to protect the Hoover Dam from terrorists). The Hoover Dam is an impressive feat of engineering and there was a very pretty blue lake that had been produced from damming the Colorado. They had also begun to build one of those typically insane American engineering projects. It appeared they were building a freeway over the top of the dam to allow trucks, that currently can't cross, to take the shorter route into Vegas. As we made our way to our hotel we passed a van made into a ghetto blaster and we realised then that it was 'Welcome to Vegas, baby' (Ollie was excited, I was luke warm at best).
Now Vegas lacks the glitz and the glam that you would associate with the place. Somehow I expected everything on the strip to be so much bigger and so much more larger than life. Another trick of the lens I imagine. It was also a lot less seedy than I had expected, but I think that is because America is traditionally more conservative than Europe. What they see as seedy would be tame in places like Amsterdam and Prague. Although to give it its due, it is only the second place I have seen with good looking prostitutes (the other being Madrid). The ones in Paris would have to pay you a lot of money themselves as you see them decrepit as I cycled south from Gare du Nord. Overall we went to 13 casios on the first night. I became a tiny bit addicted to the Blackjack machines and went on a marathon to see all of the casinos. I was up on the first three casinos and having never been beaten by one I figured this was easy. Then I lost money by accidentally pressing bet all, chased it with more money in anger and suddenly this game was not so fun anymore. Originally we had started off betting small and I was about $60 down. Then Ollie suggested with the odds you may as well bet maximum each time, so I started playing for $20 a hand. My luck swung dramatically and from $60 down I ended up leaving about $30 up. If you take into account all your drinks are free, Vegas was effectively paying me to have a night out. Ollie's luck was nowhere near as good and I think he was getting sick of losing $20 in one bet, while I was watching my money rocket. Overall I beat the Sahara, Circus Circus, Wynn (the new multi billion casino), Casers Palace, Bellagios, Paris, MGM and the Mandalay. I tied with Treasure Island and lost to Excalibvur, Mirage, the Venetian and the Palazzo. Not bad. I had still never had a night of gambling end in a loss (I love my luck). Some woman won $2000 next to us on Poker in the Palazzo which was cool for her. They had new virtual blackjack machines, but playing at the tables was more fun. Chip bets were often a little too high though and a lot of people were badly cained in the money and from the drink. We watched the Sirens Cove Pirate Show which was not bad and you can tell the variations of clients. The Wynn has stunning people wandering through the artificial internal gardens past the Ferrari show, where you have to own one to get in at a reasonable price. Its a decadent town, but at the same time you have some casinos that have a distinctive Butlins feel about them. Full of old grannies and down and outers. One thing you quickly notice though is how every casino is identical inside from the decor to the machines. The outside may wow you, with the Venetian's full scale Venice replicas impressive and the Bellagios large lake immensely pretty, but the insides are just efficient money strippers. The exception being Paris (possibly the best of them) where they have created an articially blue sky effect inside that makes you feel as if you are outdoors in the day. It fooled me initially even though I knew it was night outside. Thats how good it is or how stupid I am. The barmaids were also depressingly despondent as well. Older, but generously proportioned I posited to Ollie that they are most likely older strippers no longer able to profit from their primary job and discarded into the trash heap of offering free drinks for meager tips. Reminded me of LA a bit. Still the city was fun for what it was and I enjoyed both nights we had here. I think Ollie was more disappointed as he had come in with higher expectations than I had.
The next afternoon when we got up, we drove out to Death Valley for the day. It was very hot down there and at one point we were concerned that we were going to tun out of petrol again. We really needed to sort this out given the number of times it had almost happened to us. We hiked up Zabriskie point to get a good view of the utter barrenness of the surrounding landscapes. It was an impressive vista of nothingness. As foreboding as it was barren. We descended down to Badwater (The lowest point in North America and the site of the Badwater Ultrmarathon, an insane 200 odd mile run through the desert). It was cool to walk out on the salt plains at the bottom of this barren land and there were even small pool of water that had risen from beneath the surface. For some reason this salt plain was like a catwalk as well. There was a remarkable number of good looking people wandering this barren plain. Probably more than in some towns we had passed through. On our way out we passed a sign saying 'danger of flooding' and figured the Yankee caution had even gone too far in an area where it almost never rains. We took the shortcut back to Vegas through a town called Pahrump, which appeared to only have one tourist attraction. Albeit it was a brothel museum, but then again perhaps that was just a front. We hit the town again that evening, but Ollie had got sick of gambling and I didn't want to spent too much as we had an early drive the next day. I smashed Sahara again, turning $6 into $70 and came out on top again. This casino lark was getting easy. Ollie headed up Stratosphere but I didn't want to spend any more money. I ended up leaving Vegas with more money than I entered it with, minus the petrol to Death Valley. Back in the hotel I turned on the TV to get a hilarious spoof of Barrack Obama on Fox's Mad TV. At first it did breaking coverage that Obama is not really an optimist. It had a scene where someone offered him coffee and he said ok as his glass was half empty. They then ran a diagnostic piss take like CSI that showed the glass was actually 52% full and so he had lied and been pessimistic. They then ran a skit on him not really wanting change. This had him going to pay for the coffee. The woman said 'what about your quarter'. He said 'keep the change' and she replied 'you don't want change'. The final one had them saying Obama had had an affair. It said all throughout December to April he had been spotted with a mysterious woman and whatever state he was in, so was she. Obviously they were spoofing the Clinton-Obama race but it was funny none-the-less. Apologies to anyone reading who doesn't care or doesn't follow politics. Ollie came back a little later complaining that he'd just bought a shitty super strength beer that they handed to him in a brown paper bag. Ah good to see every country still has wino drinks.
We set off early in the morning for Zion National Park. Any description I give it will be inadequate and my advice is to not look at any photos. Just go. Like a green valley running through a cliff desert it is sensational. You can see how it earned its name. We parked up (you can't take your car in as it ruins the local system and took the shuttle bus out to a walk that climbed the cliff edges ever higher to three Emerald pools in the rock. It was a good hike and at the highest pool there were a group of Christians (I suspected Mormons as we were in Utah) who were jumping and playing around the rocks. I left Ollie at the top and descended with them, listening to them discuss the last few sermons at the end of the season. I was unaware that Christianity had seasons. Do they have off season trades as well. As I descended down I realised I had gone to the wrong ground station (thought it seemed a long walk) and had to take a bus back over to meet Ollie and get some food. We then took the bus down to the end and here is a really cool river snaking through an ever narrowing canyon that you can wade or canyon up. Originally I set off in just my socks, but my feet were cut up so we switched to shoes knowing they would get destroyed. It was un wading about a couple of miles through knee deep water as you explore deeper into the canyon. We did not have enough time to make the end, but if you have a day I would advise doing that as its so much fun. Having made it back we excited up the canyon walls through a tunnel while I cut my toe nails out of the car window. We pushed on out of Zion (having stayed there longer than we anticipated) and sprinted for Bryce Canyon before dark. The sign when we got there said 'moderate risk of fire', but a bit further along the pathway we saw one saying 'forest on fire, please remain in vehicles'. We drove one past this forest fire, which was not too large and saw the sunset from the final landing. Bryce is like a jagged teeth of a canyon and quite impressive, though not as cool as Zion. On our way out Ollie was still speeding as we wanted to get to Moab (we would miss it and Dead Horse Point due to time) and when he realised someone was tailgating him he pulled over to let them through. Then on came the sirens. It was a park ranger and we had been done for doing 60 in a 35. Another court date loomed it seemed. Only Officer Jackson was a pleasant kind of guy and informed us you have to be doing 30mph over the limit in Utah to end up in court. So we could expect a fine. Only Officer Jackson also decided to let us off with just a warning and a stern rebuke as we could have killed a deer. Breathing a huge sigh of relief we shot off across Utah. We would pass the Big Roick Candy Mountain (which we could not see in the dark, but presumed was the same one from O Brother Where Art Thou fame, which I thought was cool). We found some goddamn spearmint altoids (all was well) and ended up walking into a Wendys drive thru because we were too lazy to go and get the car, almost getting run over by a huge monster truck thing. That night we camped up in Green River. In the morning I was up early and restless. Being the cock I can be when tired I proceeded to strip the tent while Ollie was still in it as he wasn't getting up. Not the smartest of my decisions and it didn't endear me to him that morning. The pace we were running was beginning to tell and we managed to sneak out eventually without paying and it was off into the Rockies. The next ten days were all originally not in the trip plans.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)