29/9/98
Greetings crazy funsters
Oh my GOD!!!… We’re back in the western world!!!!!!! …And not a moment too soon… The Latino world was fun, but we had run out of our favourite hair mousse and desperately needed to get to the USA before our hair got a major soft-on!!!!
Hence we did the horrific 2 day bus ride from Mexico city to Tijuana on the US border (holding our hair up all the way mind you)…
Initially we thought we had bought first class tickets… but that was until the really smelly locals with their chickens and ducks got on the bus with us… Well by then we knew that we had been sacrificed to the Mayan god of chicken poo.
Anyway, we must have picked up the aroma because it took us 3 hours just to get across the USA border into San Diego…
The border officials couldn’t believe that tourists would enter the USA thru Mexico so they honestly didn’t know what to do with us… so of course we got lumped with a massive line of Mexicans who all spoke like Speedy Gonzalez… South Mexico was sooooo much better…
Well fortunately my uncle came to our rescue and whisked us away to a friend’s condo on the beach in San Diego where a real shower and real toilet reminded us that we had to behave like we were human again… darn it… just when we were having fun de-evolving.
…and yes, much like all you other repatriated third world travellers out there… we too took quite some time to relearn how to use a toilet and stop saying “si!” and “gracias!!”… Who would have thought it would be so hard giving up the joy of playing with your used toilet paper….
So anyway, here we are in the big US of A now, and although we are having such a great time, our adventures are decidedly less exotic to write about… everyone’s been so nice to us that we have nothing irreverent or degenerate to tell you about… so be warned….this is mostly a nice letter….
Well, my uncle was kind enough to loan us a minivan for our big west coast excursion, so with Avril constantly yelling in my ear “stay on the right!!! stay on the right!!!”, we headed from San Diego up to Manhattan Beach near Los Angeles to see the lovely Christine who we met in Peru. Here we did the typical touristy things like the Hollywood sign and Sunset Boulevard etc, and Christine was kind enough to let us stay in her beautiful house and loan us bicycles so we could cruise around Venice Beach and Muscle Beach and check out all the beautiful people with all their beautiful egos….
From there we then did an absolutely gorgeous drive thru the beautifully rugged coast line of the Big Sur in Southern California to Palo Alto just south of San Francisco where my relatives live… and we’ve pretty much been bumming around here at my cousin’s house for the last month and a half, being spoilt rotten by my uncle and his delightful family.
Well, because we felt that we should re-adjust to society….. it’s been sooooo tough, but we’ve forced ourselves to visit CD and bookshops and sit in cafes and drink cappuccinos… My God, we even watched MTV all day, caught phantom of the opera, and bought NEW clothes…
We did enjoy a lot of San Francisco though and loved the place and even roller bladed across the Golden Gate bridge which was really cool.
But then full reality set in… Our budget really died in the arse thanks to the drop in the dollar and we were forced to take a loan from my father and we had to even cut our holiday short by a month…
We initially had entertained thoughts about working in England…. but sadly Mr Debt from Debtville has summoned us home… violin music please….
Happily though, we took the minivan to see Lake Tahoe in eastern California where we bummed around with Greg a friend we met in Bolivia… an absolutely beautiful lake, but the only wildlife we saw were the hairless butts of the gay nude sunbathers running amongst the trees…
From there we headed north along the Californian coastline where enormous forests of redwood giants hug the roadside… Met up with Nigel and Jacqui again, two kiwis who we initially met in southern Chile… and with them, we managed to hunt down the elusive tallest tree in the world and have an elk with very large horns run at us…
We then headed to Crater Lake, the deepest lake in North America situated in the crater of an ancient volcano… very spectacular!!!
Well, despite hearing my uncle’s story of being attacked by bears and several locals telling us that there are heaps of big foot sightings here, we put on our bravest “That can’t happen to us” faces and hiked down the rim of the crater to the Pacific Crest Trail… a hiking trail that runs 3000kms from Canada to Mexico… and of course we got a little lost so we pitched tent in a clearing we found…
Well, we made sure we had no food around our tent and we’d read our guidebook on what to do in a bear attack… so we felt better about camping. But then when it got dark, we realised that the bush sounded all wrong compared to an Australian bush… It was deathly quiet… so much so that there weren’t even insect noises and our ears were ringing because of the silence…
Needless to say by then we were feeling pretty uneasy, so we put on our “That can’t happen to us… but what if it does” faces and crawled into bed…
About a half hour later we completely shat ourselves when a very large, very heavy animal came crashing thru the woods towards our tent… I don’t think we’ve ever been so scared in our lives!!! The only thing we could do was lie very quietly with our “Holy shit, this is really happening to us” faces on….
Well, whatever it was lumbered around for a while, while we turned blue from being too scared to breathe and then lumbered off… We are assuming it was an elk or something just so that we feel better… But deep down in our hearts, we figured it was definitely a bear or a BIGFOOT…
We really didn’t sleep well that night, but it was pretty funny afterwards when we realised both of us were thinking “Oh my God… bears have an amazing sense of smell and we’ve got duck down sleeping bags… what if it thinks that we’re just big duck spring rolls and eats us…”
Still, somebody really has to invent the tent toilet for those who really have to pee when a big scary animal with big teeth who wants to bite your pee pee off is waiting outside.
Recomposing ourselves and vowing never to camp in America again, we headed along the Oregon coastline admiring magnificent dunes and spectacular coastlines. We hiked briefly at Mt Rainier in Washington and then headed across to Victoria on Vancouver Island in Canada…
Met up with Chris and Sheila who again we met in Bolivia and stayed with their lovely family who spoilt us rotten… We got to see the rural side of Canada with them… complete with Elvis impersonators and strange looking vegetable shows.
We absolutely loved Victoria with its quaint colonial buildings and tranquil nature… not to mention that the Canadian dollar had choked too, so we felt rich again.
We then shot across to Vancouver where we marked the northernmost milestone on our Americas trip. Those of you who saw us when we left would know that our original plan was to go from Antartica to Alaska overland…
Well we didn’t quite make it due to lack of money and motivation… but we can now say that we have travelled mostly overland from Antartica 62 degrees south to Stanley park drive, Vancouver at 50 degrees north… yay for us!!!!!!
The trip back to San Francisco took us via Mt St Helen’s, the volcano that erupted in 1980 killing 57 people…. It was a great experience that put us in awe of the power of nature and we got to hike into the lava flows amongst the regenerating forest and thru a 2 mile long lava tunnel deep in the earth…. We’ve decided that we definitely want to be volcanoes when we grow up.
And now tomorrow we are about to get onto a greyhound bus and do the dreaded 4 day bus ride across to Boston on the east coast… possibly our biggest trial yet… And then, we will then shoot up to Quebec before leaving for London….
Yep… to all you funsters in England… we’ll be there on the 17 oct…. so hide before we show you the 1800 photos that we had developed!!!!!! You have been warned!!!
Keep those emails coming!!!
Lots of love and smoochy doo das
ced and avril
professional whoopee cushion impersonators
ps thanks heaps to all you guys who let us stay at your houses and play with your cats… we love you all!!!!!!!!
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