Meet Al
Hi folks, my name's Al. I've taken up residence on Alex's travel blog as I made the decision to spend my inheritance on travelling the world for a few months, and I'll document my exploits from time to time as I go. Sometimes I'll be travelling alone, sometimes with friends, and sometimes just crashing at somebody's flat (cough Alex and Lachy cough) - it's going to be interesting, as I'm not one to often leave my comfort zone. My journey starts with a tour of the US, followed by some time in Fiji, a few weeks in Australia, and ends with a brief stint in New Zealand. Let's do this.
Part Five
Here we are, the last section of my USA tour. There's a lot to cram into this one so bear with me. Me, Jonny and Maria set off from Portland in our rented Mazda - which cost a fair amount for two days, mainly because we're under 25 - and headed south towards the Californian coast. I don't count Seattle and Vancouver as being by the Pacific as they technically lie in the Puget Sound Bay, which isn't really ocean, so arriving at an eerily misty seaside town late at night was our first exciting glimpse of the Pacific. That night we slept in a motel run by the creepiest family, to the sound of sea lions barking. The next day was a mad dash down to San Francisco, admiring the amazingly tall redwood trees, checking out the coastal scenery of Route 1, and crossing the Golden Gate Bridge during rush hour (the carpool lane, however, was a big bonus).
San Francisco is one hell of a city. Rammed full of people, about twenty forms of public transport, and hills too steep to be in a city, it's just crazy, colourful and loud. Our first night was spent at an Indian restaurant/Irish bar (that's right, combined) before enjoying a whisky in Little Italy. The next couple of days saw us playing old fashioned arcade games down on the pier, riding the cable car up and down the hills, climbing Coit Tower to admire the view, cycling to the ocean and then up to the Golden Gate Bridge JUST missing sunset by a few minutes, couchsurfing with a woman named Jess who treated us to a meal in Chinatown, bumping into a guy from St Andrews in the street, and watching fireworks on Pier 39 (the famous one) whilst eating Mexican food.
Just a quick mention about the cycling: they told us to return the bikes on the other side of the city by 9pm, but what we didn't realise was they didn't give us lights on our bikes. This meant that after sunset we had to cycle along pavements illegally, and through pitch black parks avoiding pedestrians and just whistling to be make ourselves known - it was stupid and difficult, especially after getting lost. However, we DID play an on-rails interactive zombie laser-shooting game on the pier, as well accomplishing a Mission Impossible style laser maze (where I showed a nimbleness I didn't know I possessed) - so that made things better.
Anyway, one of the highlights of the trip was renting our own campervan and driving through the streets of the city while people admired our paintwork (a massive osprey, for some reason). We even rode down that famous steep winding road in San Francisco, win Jonny telling me "This is it Al, we've made it in life." We took the van down the Californian coast, then camped under the stars just outside of Yosemite. That took a lot of driving, and we did have crappy salad sat in a dark, misty car park on the way there, but it was worth it when we finally camped and saw how many stars were above us (hint: a crazy amount).
People will think we're crazy for not even spending a night in Yosemite Park, but Jonny didn't want to camp in the cold (we were at 8000ft, can you believe), and our lack of time meant we decided to head out for the desert sooner rather than later. However, the day we spent in the park was amazing; the trees, the lakes, mountains like I've never seen before. After all the hectic travelling we'd been doing, it was nice to just sit by a silent alpine lake and do nothing. Hiking's for chumps.
So yeah, that evening we just drove and drove until we'd descended about 7000ft and camped by a desert road in Death Valley.
The next morning, stood outside the campervan underneath a big blue scorching desert sky, I threw a Breaking Bad reference Jonny's way. "Yo Mr White!" I shouted, pretty chuffed when Jonny grumbled "Yes, Jessie?" "When we gonna cook, yo?" It was a good moment, but maybe you had to be there. (If any adults reading don't know Breaking Bad, then just ignore this whole paragraph)
Death Valley is an insane place. Just like a massive, empty park where people drive miles and miles to see each attraction. You just pass each other on the big empty roads with a thought like "I wonder if they're going to see the abandoned mining facility, or the canyon full of colourful rocks?" We camped at a ranch with a pool, golf course, tennis courts, bar, cafe, buffet restaurant, everything. A bit TOO much for one of the driest places on earth... Still, chilling by the pool was a treat. So was watching the sunset from a rocky hill in the middle of the desert, beer in hand.
We woke up early before leaving the valley, to watch the sunrise at the lowest place in the USA (200ft below sea level! I've never spoken about feet so much in my life until I got here.) It's called Badwater Basin and it's just covered in salty crust, salty pools, and surrounded by a mountain range that looks badass in the rising sun. Oh, and we saw a desert fox being all mysterious on some rocks. Like the nomads we've become, me and Jonny then hit the road for Las Vegas - not an ideal place for a campervan.
It turns out that you can park in any of the casinos for free, so we picked one and it turned out we were right in the middle of the Strip. This is the weirdest city I've ever been to: people walk the streets drinking huge cocktails, they smoke cigarettes indoors, they walk past homeless people right outside the casinos where they'll spend hours throwing their money away into slot machines. And then there's the buildings. Pirate ships, castles, volcanoes, the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Canal (complete with fake blue sky overhead so it feels like daytime all night), Roman palaces -they have everything just crammed together on this one road, with outdoor music and escalators to help you move from casino to casino. I put a dollar into a slot machine, and won twenty, which was pretty awesome. Vegas ain't dragging me under.
Me and Jonny spent some time playing arcade games, and spent our prize tickets on some tat from the gift shop (including fake tattoos for him and a sheriff's badge for me), before trying our very first oxygen bar on the Strip. The idea here is that you get tubes up your nose to breathe in oxygen from different coloured cylinders and it's supposed to energise you, while the girl walks up and down giving head massages. Nice. That evening we went to a Vegas comedy show, where Jonny built a little fortress out of our passports and wallets to hide the fact that we were drinking cocktails and so wouldn't get picked on by the comedians. We ended our night by just wandering the length of the strip, watching the volcano spout its lava, and the Bellagio fountains dance to Frank Sinatra. It was then we realised camping in the car park of the Linq casino might be a bad idea, what with the security racing round on segways, so we had to camp out by some casino in the middle of the desert - a real pain in the arse after such a long day.
The following morning started off with an unplanned detour to Hoover Dam; not much to say other than that it's an insanely big wall of concrete built in a big old gorge and it's bloody impressive. No wonder it's one the modern seven wonders of the world. We hit up a classic diner for some ranchos heuvos (I can't even tell you what that is, eggs and cheese and stuff) then rode our way along Route 66 in the sun, blasting Queen's greatest hits on the radio. I then fulfilled a dream I didn't know I had: camping in a Flintstones themed campsite. We drank beers round the campsite and listened to Mumford and Sons which was nice. (Although is it sexist that the campsite laundromat was called Wilma's laundry? You tell me...)
Conquering another classic American tourist landmark, me and John visited the Grand Canyon. It's big. Bigger than it looks on TV. It just stretches off as far as you can see, so obviously we took loads of touristy photos of ourselves, before visiting the geology museum right on the side of the cliff. The next couple of days was just road tripping through the desert back to California to visit Los Angeles, a city so big it's actually made up of 53 cities apparently. It's stupidly big, and not in a 'woah' Grand Canyon way but rather an 'urgh, it's just miles and miles of concrete strip malls' way. We slagged off the city quite a bit on our long drive through it. However, we finished the day driving through the Santa Monica Mountains to camp by the sea at Malibu - that, my friends, is a nice place to camp. Better than the truck stop from the night before, that's for sure.
I'm going to be honest, LA was not what I've seen in the movies. The traffic is horrendous, the pavements are packed, and to get between two places worth seeing it'll take you hours. We still managed to do some cool stuff though: open-top bus through Hollywood led by a tour guide in Slytherin robes, saw Nightmare Before Christmas at the El Capitan theatre with added snow and smoke effects etc., saw the red carpet premiere for Interstellar and even caught a glimpse of Matthew McConaughey, and walked along Santa Monica and Venice Beaches to work on our northern England tans. I'm sure there are many reasons to love LA, but it wasn't mine or Jonny's favourite city, meaning I felt even more guilty hopping on a plane to Fiji and leaving him there.
Hi folks, my name's Al. I've taken up residence on Alex's travel blog as I made the decision to spend my inheritance on travelling the world for a few months, and I'll document my exploits from time to time as I go. Sometimes I'll be travelling alone, sometimes with friends, and sometimes just crashing at somebody's flat (cough Alex and Lachy cough) - it's going to be interesting, as I'm not one to often leave my comfort zone. My journey starts with a tour of the US, followed by some time in Fiji, a few weeks in Australia, and ends with a brief stint in New Zealand. Let's do this.
Part Five
Here we are, the last section of my USA tour. There's a lot to cram into this one so bear with me. Me, Jonny and Maria set off from Portland in our rented Mazda - which cost a fair amount for two days, mainly because we're under 25 - and headed south towards the Californian coast. I don't count Seattle and Vancouver as being by the Pacific as they technically lie in the Puget Sound Bay, which isn't really ocean, so arriving at an eerily misty seaside town late at night was our first exciting glimpse of the Pacific. That night we slept in a motel run by the creepiest family, to the sound of sea lions barking. The next day was a mad dash down to San Francisco, admiring the amazingly tall redwood trees, checking out the coastal scenery of Route 1, and crossing the Golden Gate Bridge during rush hour (the carpool lane, however, was a big bonus).
San Francisco is one hell of a city. Rammed full of people, about twenty forms of public transport, and hills too steep to be in a city, it's just crazy, colourful and loud. Our first night was spent at an Indian restaurant/Irish bar (that's right, combined) before enjoying a whisky in Little Italy. The next couple of days saw us playing old fashioned arcade games down on the pier, riding the cable car up and down the hills, climbing Coit Tower to admire the view, cycling to the ocean and then up to the Golden Gate Bridge JUST missing sunset by a few minutes, couchsurfing with a woman named Jess who treated us to a meal in Chinatown, bumping into a guy from St Andrews in the street, and watching fireworks on Pier 39 (the famous one) whilst eating Mexican food.
Just a quick mention about the cycling: they told us to return the bikes on the other side of the city by 9pm, but what we didn't realise was they didn't give us lights on our bikes. This meant that after sunset we had to cycle along pavements illegally, and through pitch black parks avoiding pedestrians and just whistling to be make ourselves known - it was stupid and difficult, especially after getting lost. However, we DID play an on-rails interactive zombie laser-shooting game on the pier, as well accomplishing a Mission Impossible style laser maze (where I showed a nimbleness I didn't know I possessed) - so that made things better.
Anyway, one of the highlights of the trip was renting our own campervan and driving through the streets of the city while people admired our paintwork (a massive osprey, for some reason). We even rode down that famous steep winding road in San Francisco, win Jonny telling me "This is it Al, we've made it in life." We took the van down the Californian coast, then camped under the stars just outside of Yosemite. That took a lot of driving, and we did have crappy salad sat in a dark, misty car park on the way there, but it was worth it when we finally camped and saw how many stars were above us (hint: a crazy amount).
People will think we're crazy for not even spending a night in Yosemite Park, but Jonny didn't want to camp in the cold (we were at 8000ft, can you believe), and our lack of time meant we decided to head out for the desert sooner rather than later. However, the day we spent in the park was amazing; the trees, the lakes, mountains like I've never seen before. After all the hectic travelling we'd been doing, it was nice to just sit by a silent alpine lake and do nothing. Hiking's for chumps.
So yeah, that evening we just drove and drove until we'd descended about 7000ft and camped by a desert road in Death Valley.
The next morning, stood outside the campervan underneath a big blue scorching desert sky, I threw a Breaking Bad reference Jonny's way. "Yo Mr White!" I shouted, pretty chuffed when Jonny grumbled "Yes, Jessie?" "When we gonna cook, yo?" It was a good moment, but maybe you had to be there. (If any adults reading don't know Breaking Bad, then just ignore this whole paragraph)
Death Valley is an insane place. Just like a massive, empty park where people drive miles and miles to see each attraction. You just pass each other on the big empty roads with a thought like "I wonder if they're going to see the abandoned mining facility, or the canyon full of colourful rocks?" We camped at a ranch with a pool, golf course, tennis courts, bar, cafe, buffet restaurant, everything. A bit TOO much for one of the driest places on earth... Still, chilling by the pool was a treat. So was watching the sunset from a rocky hill in the middle of the desert, beer in hand.
We woke up early before leaving the valley, to watch the sunrise at the lowest place in the USA (200ft below sea level! I've never spoken about feet so much in my life until I got here.) It's called Badwater Basin and it's just covered in salty crust, salty pools, and surrounded by a mountain range that looks badass in the rising sun. Oh, and we saw a desert fox being all mysterious on some rocks. Like the nomads we've become, me and Jonny then hit the road for Las Vegas - not an ideal place for a campervan.
It turns out that you can park in any of the casinos for free, so we picked one and it turned out we were right in the middle of the Strip. This is the weirdest city I've ever been to: people walk the streets drinking huge cocktails, they smoke cigarettes indoors, they walk past homeless people right outside the casinos where they'll spend hours throwing their money away into slot machines. And then there's the buildings. Pirate ships, castles, volcanoes, the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Canal (complete with fake blue sky overhead so it feels like daytime all night), Roman palaces -they have everything just crammed together on this one road, with outdoor music and escalators to help you move from casino to casino. I put a dollar into a slot machine, and won twenty, which was pretty awesome. Vegas ain't dragging me under.
Me and Jonny spent some time playing arcade games, and spent our prize tickets on some tat from the gift shop (including fake tattoos for him and a sheriff's badge for me), before trying our very first oxygen bar on the Strip. The idea here is that you get tubes up your nose to breathe in oxygen from different coloured cylinders and it's supposed to energise you, while the girl walks up and down giving head massages. Nice. That evening we went to a Vegas comedy show, where Jonny built a little fortress out of our passports and wallets to hide the fact that we were drinking cocktails and so wouldn't get picked on by the comedians. We ended our night by just wandering the length of the strip, watching the volcano spout its lava, and the Bellagio fountains dance to Frank Sinatra. It was then we realised camping in the car park of the Linq casino might be a bad idea, what with the security racing round on segways, so we had to camp out by some casino in the middle of the desert - a real pain in the arse after such a long day.
The following morning started off with an unplanned detour to Hoover Dam; not much to say other than that it's an insanely big wall of concrete built in a big old gorge and it's bloody impressive. No wonder it's one the modern seven wonders of the world. We hit up a classic diner for some ranchos heuvos (I can't even tell you what that is, eggs and cheese and stuff) then rode our way along Route 66 in the sun, blasting Queen's greatest hits on the radio. I then fulfilled a dream I didn't know I had: camping in a Flintstones themed campsite. We drank beers round the campsite and listened to Mumford and Sons which was nice. (Although is it sexist that the campsite laundromat was called Wilma's laundry? You tell me...)
Conquering another classic American tourist landmark, me and John visited the Grand Canyon. It's big. Bigger than it looks on TV. It just stretches off as far as you can see, so obviously we took loads of touristy photos of ourselves, before visiting the geology museum right on the side of the cliff. The next couple of days was just road tripping through the desert back to California to visit Los Angeles, a city so big it's actually made up of 53 cities apparently. It's stupidly big, and not in a 'woah' Grand Canyon way but rather an 'urgh, it's just miles and miles of concrete strip malls' way. We slagged off the city quite a bit on our long drive through it. However, we finished the day driving through the Santa Monica Mountains to camp by the sea at Malibu - that, my friends, is a nice place to camp. Better than the truck stop from the night before, that's for sure.
I'm going to be honest, LA was not what I've seen in the movies. The traffic is horrendous, the pavements are packed, and to get between two places worth seeing it'll take you hours. We still managed to do some cool stuff though: open-top bus through Hollywood led by a tour guide in Slytherin robes, saw Nightmare Before Christmas at the El Capitan theatre with added snow and smoke effects etc., saw the red carpet premiere for Interstellar and even caught a glimpse of Matthew McConaughey, and walked along Santa Monica and Venice Beaches to work on our northern England tans. I'm sure there are many reasons to love LA, but it wasn't mine or Jonny's favourite city, meaning I felt even more guilty hopping on a plane to Fiji and leaving him there.
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