While the American trip diary remains yet completed, finishing touches are still being applied, I have managed to become a lazy bastard in respect to my levels of blog creativity. I choose to point the blame to my unending search for full time employment and my university for stealing the rest of my time.
But additionally my latest cell (mobile) phone has been stealing a majority of my time, I have become one of the flock. Yes. Sadness. I have an iPhone, not an 4, but an (oldskool) 3S. This latest addition to my pocket arsenal has enabled me to be all sorts of iPhotographer utilizing all sorts of 3.2MP of white knuckle grunt and a couple of photo programs to tweak my shots.
Thusly, I give you, the iPhone Philes.
And to help digest all these awesome fotos, a sweet as mix from RRR. Ennio Styles - Stylin 457 Stylin 457 by Ennio Styles
After our cheap $30 a night high class accommodation we were to vacate the premises and move onto our next destination of Billings, MT. Home of guns, country folk, two-stepping and AJ. Getting to Billing, MT while not so hard in theory, by public transport it proved to be a hilarious combination of amusement and stress.
While we had left a message with the local county bus company the night before (as the bus only ran once a week and only if a reservation is made would it actually arrive in Sweet Grass at all), we still were not completely certain if they were going to turn up or not. We had even been reassured by the bar wench and local alcoholics in attendance the night before, that every Thursday the bus appeared at 7.30am in front of the service area next to the servo. As much trust as I had in the local drinkers, we thought it sound that we call the bus company again that morning as we waited, in order to double check. Getting signal for the cell was challenging in the podunk town of Sweet Grass. While I wandered around various locations to get signal, I was stopped yet again by border patrol and asked to produce identification. Turns out they don’t get too many people around these parts that don’t haves a car. I guess they thought I was some sort of Australian bootlegger, just trying to get my hooch into Canada. 30 minutes later the bus actually turned up, heading in to drop off the local border employees it seemed. But then just as we think it is going to return and pick us up, the bloody bus drives off. Panic resumes again as this is the only way we have out of this town, I take off down the road chasing the damn thing, shouting and waving like a crazy person who got splash back from a portapottie. Crystal at the same time tried calling the bus company for the third time, getting hold of an actual person, who in turn informed the rapidly departing bus that 2 desperate backpackers were still waiting for him to pick them up.
The ride itself was relative uneventful, apart from being completely free, thanks to it being a community bus for the local county, which was awesome. First stop was Shelby, another town that typically does not appear in guidebooks, where we transferred to in another community bus in order to continue on our merry way. Crystal passed out as per usual as soon as we starting rolling, I have come to the conclusion that she passes out at the drop of a hat on any form of public transit, with the exception being if she needs to pee and or poop, which she will then keep me informed at all times as to her bathroom needs and her lower gastrointestinal status. I as per usual made a new friend; Max was an ex-rig pipe fitter, who was on his way to Great Falls to see his doctor about his back problems. When I enquired as to how this unfortunate event had occurred he muttered something about his wife, and ideas in the bedroom (It was actually chronic pain due to someone dropping pipes on him when he worked on a rig). By the end of our 2 hour chat about many topics of a manly nature I managed to acquire the name and address of a friend of his that lived in Billings, that should any emergency occur I could just call him and say Max sent me. It sounded a bit suspect to me, especially after Max had earlier given me two pills with the statement, good for pain. But I figured, Max seemed like a cool cat, why wouldn’t his friend be?
Another greyhound station and we were away off into the wild blue yonder of Rimrock Trailways buses, the chariot of the rednecks. Some classic quotes heard from the crème of society that happened to be riding with us on the bus,
One sided phone conversation of a redneck male speaking to current/ex-female he places his penis into on an irregular basis, “I’m coming all these ways to Billings and I hears off Teddy that you been seen at other mens trailers” “Well, if they’re your friends, then why are they all mens” “No, I can’t get off the bus, it’s a bus” “Then I won’t be seeing you, you whore”
Heard from one of the 4 mothers with snotty nosed rug rats in toe, “I gots 8 kids” she then proceeds to name and age all of them, the oldest being 18, already with kids of their own. Replied one of the other breeders, “Wow, you don’t look it at all, I would have said only five”
The joys of buses and the microcosm of the underclass they can be.
We eventually arrived to our destined location of not Billings, but Boute (pronounced, Boot) where my brother from another mother, AJ picked us up and we promptly headed off to a hot springs resort that he had sprung for. We got a bit messy and warmed up the stiff and sore bodies, which felt amazing on the war wounds still present from the car rollover. Over the next couple of days we stayed at AJ’s parents house, dining like royalty on the delicious food that his mother would prepare for us everyday, I’m pretty sure I gained a couple of kilograms in those 4 days we were there.
Some other country activities fulfilled were shooting some weapons, now Crystal had been complaining for as long as I had know her that no one had ever taken her out on a gun range before. When she heard the news that AJ was going to take us out, I am pretty sure she wet herself in excitement of the possibility of having a loaded weapon in her hand. We drove out to middle of no-where-ville up in the hills overlooking Billings, in apprehensive excitement of some pistol and rifle shooting. In total we had a .22 pistol, 9mm pistol, .22 rifle and a 303 rifle, the latter being the big boy toy I was looking forward to handling, in a completely heterosexual manner. After all her pre-shooting excitement, Crystal didn’t hit a thing on her first clip, turns out she didn’t know how to aim the gun, and was using the camera method of just pointing in the general direction of what you want and shooting. She eventually got better enough to the point that one bullet out of the clip hit the water jug we were using as a target. The author on the other hand was an awesome shot, killing that mother bitch that was the water jug. With the scoped out 303 definitely being my favourite.
Some other activities that we also managed to participate in were a fair bit of two stepping the social activity of choice for the locals for cross-sexual congregation. Where some enjoy the nightclubs with their black lights and anonymous sex, Billings as the largest city in Montana had only one nightclub but copious amounts of bars where one could shake their tail feather two-stepping style. AJ was the master of the two-step, and I was the master of my own domain, which was definitely not two-step. But we had had a fun time doing what we could with what He gave us. Shaking it.
In order to get from Billings, the most cost and time effective method to get from point A in Billings, MT to our next destination of Denver, CO turned out to be renting a car to split the cost between the two of us. It was an enjoyable 9 hours straight shot, busting through the entire state of Wyoming, stopping off for just snack and pee breaks. From what we managed to see of the state from the car windows, there was a lot of yellow grass and not much else. The minimal time spent in Wyoming did not weight too heavily on my heart nor cause much undue loss to my traveler’s soul, ‘cause central Wyoming looked like a fairly unexciting place to be. Before our eventual arrival in Denver we did managed to acquire ourselves a delicious homemade meal in Fort Collins thanks to the work of Michal and family, good friends of young Crystal
Denver, CO Denver was educational to say the least, I expanded my lexicon with many new words and slang, I learnt about the state of Colorado and the many nations that have at one ruled the fine state (one of them being France), I generally froze my arse off in the snow, I was educated as to the process of brewing a fine craft ale and rediscovered that hiking above sea level is very tiring to say the least.
During our time of dormancy in Denver we stayed at the delightful apartment of another of Crystal’s friends, Signey a girl with an amazing personality that is not to say that she is not one to look at, but that she is an all round great person, who happened to study engineering. Because all engineers are awesome does not necessarily impact nor void on previous sentence due to me being biased. She was however living as she said in the real life version of the L Word. For those who do not know of this thing I write of, read the link ya pack of lazy bums. She worked at a lesbian coffee shop of a day and at night was bar tending at Her Bar, the aptly named newest and hottest place to be. The full on dykestyle did lead her to being fair busy most of the time, but she did mange to squeeze some time in for her guests. That being said there wasn’t really much to see in Denver itself, we managed to see the Capitol building, buy some craft beer, expensive cheese and visit a bookstore (Tattered cover book store, the best part of the highly overrated 16th street ‘Mall’). The latter 3 were starting to become fairly standard for most cities we were in. We were budget backpackers, but we could always afford a little for some of the luxuries in life, namely boutique beer and soft cheeses. After which we would celebrate with a meal of ramen.
Signey also had a car, which meant on one of her days off she drove with Crystal and myself to Fort Collins for some brewery tours (a similar concept to winery tours, except more awesome because it is beer). We hit up both O’Dells and the New Belgium Brewing Company. Some highlights included, slides inside the factory for the tourists to get from one level to another, an amusing lack in OH&S with allowances of open toed shoes on the brewery floor, being able to take your pint of beer around with you as you tour the factory all employs at NBB are given a bicycle to ride to work, the company is 100% employee owned and beer is only allowed to be stocked by stores and bars if it is door-to-door refrigeration there by maintaining the character of the beer due to a lack of variations in temperature. We also had some sampler beers and took a growler (refillable jug of an on-tap beer) with us. After all the brewery touring, the girls decided it would be fun to do some hula hooping, it was amusing to not just me, but some passersby had a bit of a chuckle as well.
Some other fun that was had during our time in Denver was at the aforementioned bar, Her Bar. Where I recreated 2003 in glorious form, cutting the dance floor like I was a hot knife, and she was my butter, which I would then spread on some bread, the bread remained more amused than receptive to my spreading skills. Short story short, it was a good night and a rough morning. A couple of days after the groovetastic time of the Her Bar we managed to partake in a fairly easy hike in Bolder with Signey and her girlfriend. Boulder is a small mountain town less than an hour north of Denver and part of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Fairly easy hike in Boulder should be noted that it is a bit of a challenge due to such high altitude, 5430ft above sea level (1655m). There was some fairly heavy breathing going on, and not of the sweaty and sexual variety, more of the passing out due to lack of oxygen type. Signey and her girl on the other hand were barely even breaking sweat, turned out both of them were in training for a triathlon. Then we went to eat some crepes in town and they were delicious.
But like all good things and bad our time with Signey was coming to a warm and sticky end, like a pearl necklace encircling the slender, swan like neck of a duchess, sometimes it is short and sweet, and if you get it in her eye, it won’t be fun. And as per usual we got to experience the bad again in the form of the devilishly fun Greyhound bus system for the onward journey to Albuquerque, NM.
Albuquerque, NM Adventures were had while we were stationed in Albuquerque. We spent most of our time relaxing with Michelle, a friend of mine who also studied with me in Mexico. While the city of Albuquerque may not be up there on the list of must see tourist destinations, for me it really was the people that made it. Everyone I met there were just such chill cats, not in the sense that they were frozen felines, but in the way that they were so welcoming and accommodating to people that they only just met. A majority of the time was spent socializing with Michelle and her friends at house parties, random BBQ chicken nights, Passover with some quality eating of motzo ball soup and potato pancakes. But definitely one of the best days of all was the Sunday kickball day where I got to experience the time honored Nuevo-American tradition of kickball. While I had not played this game before I figured the rules could not be any more difficult than the Australian gentlemen’s sport of cricket.
For those not in the know, kickball has the same layout and pitch as baseball or softball, except there was no bat and only a large kickball that a ‘pitcher’ would roll at speed out to a ‘batter’ who would then boot the thing as hard as they could and hope one of the 20 or more drunken fielders would not catch it, nor tag them with it. While it is a sport, the prime concern of to most involved was a the consumption of beer, according to some rules it seems beers do not come out onto the pitch, leaving the batting side to be the only one drinking till 3 went out and they rotate with the fielding side. This was not case in Albuquerque, as long as you were standing you were able to be A) playing and B) drinking. Some of the more inebriated team members had to be reminded that they needed to place their beverages down before they could catch the ball, lest their beer be displaced from their grip. Interestingly sometimes the kicker had to be told to put down their brew before starting their sprint to first base. As the afternoon progressed into evening, half time was declared so that the players could rehydrate, pet dogs could be let off their leashes and the official half time break grilling could begin. A grill was setup in the back of a pickup (Australian translation: Ute) and dogs and burgers were cooked to perfect for the ravenous players. When play resumed, things got a bit more heated, a bit too serious and a hell of a lot more messy. The game ended as the light faded and the sun set over the field of dreams, the final scores were only a point between the winner and losers, the author of course unfortunately was not the of the victorious side, he chooses to blame inexperience.
The two main touristy type things that we managed to partake in were the University of New Mexico’s world famous duck pond and their Geology Museum, not just because it was free, but because rocks are awesome. A mini tour of the restaurant and tacky gift shop centric Old Town was also conducted, but it seemed this areas was mostly inhabited by geriatric tourists who were being shipped there and bused out again by the all inclusive casinos that they were all staying /slowly dying in.
Getting out of Albuquerque to Oklahoma turned out to be less of a challenge than we expected, after posting a ridesharing request on craigslist, we were not too hopeful on this panning out. But as it turned out we lucked in, or out, depending on your take of what happened on our easterly adventure.
Ride share to Banff While the rideshare itself was relatively uneventful, seen as a fortunate, rather than unfortunate thing, the views of the Rocky Mountains along the way was just mind blowing. We left at 8am and I being somewhat tired from the hat party of the night before, napped for a majority of the morning. The views as can be seen below, speak for themselves. If they could not speak for themselves I’m sure they would be saying things like, “Look at me, ain’t I huge and snowy, like a tall white man”.
Banff We finally rolled into Banff, somewhat after sunset after a massive day on the road, ready to eat, sleep and not much else. This ended up being the first time we could not find someone to host us for couch surfing, Thus we had to be content with a hostel, at about $35 a night, while not cheap, was the cheapest option in Banff. But we did managed to get free breakfast and a bus pass though. Randomly a friend of mine Ben, whom was working on the mountains happened to be at the same place. So he took us out to one of the cheap local restaurants for a 3 course spaghetti meal. We made ridiculously good use of the infinite garlic bread, 5 loaves between 3 people, was not bad I thought.
Some of the good things enjoyed in the time of Banffness was the Hot Pools which had amazing views of the surrounding Rocky Mountains but at the same time, just felt like a small and yet overtly hot public pool with how crowded they were. The ever present danger of ingesting small child super heated urine, kept my head and mouth out of the 40C of liquid fun. The delectable cold snow and ice did lead to some amazing picturesque moments though, while walking along the river, to doing a mild forest trek and even trying to stop Crystal breaking her ankle in the icey conditions.
Downsides, hostels, while they can be a great communal place to meet people from countries other than the one you are currently travelling through, they can also provide an unwilling habitat to the creature most mothers try to keep from escaping from their natural enclosure of the bedroom. The animals I would be writing of are none other than the stinky teenager, and in Banff said stinky teens originated from one of 3 countries, Australia, UK and Japan. The key reason being the easy to get Work and Travel visa, Canada just gives out these things like candy. The largest percentage of stinky primates at the HI hostel I was residing originated from the UK, none of them aged older than 20, thus can only be assumed to be gap year kiddies. Happily working on the slopes for a pittance, while all the time gaining valuable life experiences that Canada had to offer, delving into such as the intellectual forays of drinking and getting blazed. As much as it would seem, I don’t really have an issue with these peanuts, but what I had a problem with was sharing a room with three of them. Upon opening the door to the dorm room, I was olfactorily assaulted, being forced to keep it open for a full 30min while their’ collective scents could be adequately aired out of the room. Clearly general body hygiene and the concept of regularly laundering ones clothes had not been sufficiently drilled into their ethanol fermented brains.
Random Point Steak and BJ day was 14th March.
The travel from Banff to the biggest city in Alberta, Calgary turned out to be far more exciting than most could imagine. Just on the outskirts of Calgary, the car we were travelling in got involved in a spot of bother. According to witnesses, the car rolled about 4 to 5 times and from the point of impact to the time it stopped on its wheels it was about 100 meters down the road on the other side of the highway. With cuts and bruises being the majority of injuries to all four of us, it was a sign from above that it was not my time. Within minutes of it happening, police, fire and ambulance had arrived and treating us all. Side note, health care system of Canada, very good, while my insurance bill is not cheap, it is still very good. We all got sent via ambulance while strapped into C-splints to the hospital and I got sent to another hospital different to everyone else, Rockyview hospital. After some X-Rays to check my head was still attached I was discharged and pointed in the direction bus that could take me to the other hospital where everyone house was being treated.
That night ended up being spent at a hotel, as none of us had access to our bags, they had all been recovered by the police, for us to collect in the morning. A delicious meal of pizza and cola was consumed at the Hotel, which had an indoor pool, unfortunately it could not be used, as all our bathing suits were residing with the constabulary.
This day was also Crystal birthday, it was not celebrated exactly the way she would have liked it to.
Calgary When everything was retrieved from the PoPo in the morning, Praise Jesus, nothing was broken, not my lappy, nor my camera, even my bright ass yellow sunglasses survived the 100km/hr roll over. Calgary is the biggest city in the state of Alberta, incidentally it also looks like it was designed in the 1970’s and hasn’t changed since then, with just the occasional spit polish to get things all spiffy for visitors. But what really made the city for me was Melissa, our courchsurfing host in the Big C. She was her own force of nature, bike riding, volunteering, pen paling and just generally being an all around amazing person. While she was busy most of the time we were there we did manage to have some extended chats with her and her brother late into the evening about travels to Africa and some of the other interesting couchsurfers that had graced her couch.
Calgary to the USA Getting the hell out of Canada, far more challenging overland than first thought. Originally the thought process was, Alberta is north of Montana, we should in theory be able to get out the same way we got in, just take a bus south. Wrong. As far south as buses go from Calgary is to the exciting town of Lethbridge, which is still about another 100km from the Northern frontier. Thus in order to get into Montana from Calgary we had 4 options, rent a car one way from Alberta to Montana (turned out no car rental company allowed one way rentals from Canada to the States), take a private shuttle bus from Calgary to Great Falls for $500, catch a flight, where the cheapest available flight was about $350 each or take the Greyhound as far south as we could get, then hitch for the rest of the way to Sweet Grass, border town USA.
Clearly the first two viable options were way out of our budget for such a short leg of the trip. Thus we took Greyhound and then hitchhiked the rest of the way. Yes there was a slight risk we could be carted away Wolf Creek style, murdered and then our mangled corpses be molested and sodomised by cold flesh hungry rednecks. But it was a highly unlikely risk we were willing to take. Calgary bus station was amusing though, all passengers were metal checked and padded down. Then luggage being pulled apart in search of weapons or alcohol. This was the first time I had seen this occur outside of Mexico. Asking around to the other passengers why the high level of security, turns out a couple of years ago a guy on the same route we were about to travel on down to Lethbridge had randomly used a hunting knife to cut off the head of the passenger sitting next to him. This was not very reassuring news when we were about to hitchhike.
The hitching itself was not too difficult, in the 1.5-2 hours that it took us to get to the border we managed to get 4 rides, essentially just jumping from one tiny town to the next, waiting for 30 minutes at the longest wait time. The worst part about the waiting was that we were stuck out in the freezing cold Chinook wind that was blowing down from the Rockies, so strong at times that we were nearly getting blown over while wearing our packs. In order of drivers, we got lifts off a horse trainer, mechanic, three 18 year old kids, and a mother and daughter to get us to Coutts, the border town on the Canadian side.
When we actually got to the border itself we were presented with a slight difficulty. Unlike the southern border we were so used to, on the northern side there was no pedestrian walkway. Only three lanes for trucks and one for cars, we chose the car lane, mainly because it seemed like the only one that was actually manned. This is where the antics began and lasted for some time as we were detained on the border between Canada and the United States.
Some classic quotes from Border Patrol while being questioned.
“How did you get here?” “We hitchhiked” Looks at us questioningly, “In winter?” We look around, to as if see if our invisible car has magically become revealed to the naked eye. “Yes”
“How did you get so many stamps in your passport?” “I traveled to these countries” “How did you pay for all this travel?” “I worked” “and what did you do?” “Cleaner Production Consultant for a water business” He goes quiet. “that’s enough, sit down”
“You have a flight out of the United States?” “Yes” “Show me the ticket” “I don’t have it on me, it’s electronic” “and then how do you know where it is?” “I use my laptop to check my email….” “Just go sit down”
There were more, but these were just some of the highlights.
We finally walked across to Sweet Grass, MT after the detainment with border security, ready for food, drinking and passing out. We managed to find the only bar, motel and restaurant in the entire town, who were fortunate to have some emergency rooms available for us. Quote from bartender after we enquired about accommodation situation, “The motel is for emergencies only”, we pretty much looked at the bartender, wondering if she meant if we didn’t want this, we could be pitching our tent outside.
But there was no greater way to celebrate St Patricks Day than with a couple of PBR’s and a nice Sub sandwich. A perfect end to a very long day.
As the journey continues, we made our way further north from the ale stained town of Portland to the land of the coffee bean, Seattle, home to among other things, Starbucks and the Pike Place market. The former was not visited mainly because it is considered by the author to be one of the worst brewers of coffee, although they occasionally manage to surprise on the quality of water one can get for free. We got to Seattle in the same method of hilarity as we arrived in Portland, ridesharing. After our first little adventure we felt like veterans of the game, read to take on the next challenge of bemusement, our chariot of rideshare managed to be a huge ass Ford van, this beast was so pimped out with wood panelling to the nines. The half car and half tank, even featured interior lights with wooden accents, so one could roll in style.
The other passengers of the vehicle of glory was 2 kids getting a ride to the airport, a girl by the name of Tortoise, the driver and her maniac of a dog, fortunately the travel time from Portland to Seattle is relatively short, about 5hours, thus the excitement was kept to a minimum. With 2 rest breaks and the dog jumping on everyone in the van at least 20 times. On a more personal note, the pesky mutt managed to step on my nuts a good seven times. Seattle in generally was a pretty chill city with a couple of crazies thrown in. Couch surfing in Seattle was somewhat challenging as we were not exactly located in downtown, we were in Burien, about 50mins by bus from the centre and our host worked afternoon and evenings. But like all ninjas I kicked ass and took names, which had really nothing to do with my awesome time management skills, but regardless, it all worked out in the end.
While waiting on Katies return from work on the first evening, the residences of the first floor left their window open, so we managed to hear the full sexual bravado and performance for a good 15mins. Bets were taken as to if the female was truly enjoying herself or only being vocally participative, the resonance of palm on bare ass also kept the voyeurs bemused.
Seattle, while renowned for having a large amount of rain, for our time there did not produce so much, the occasional chicken spit but not of a significant amount, that one might overhear, “Golly, that is a spot of rain is it not?” Thus time in charming Seattle was spent idly in coffee shops (The best coffee of this current trip, Espresso Vivace Roasteria), shopping for cupcakes, strolling of the waterfront and ferrying to the nearby island of Bainbridge, which was small and relative unexciting, not recommended. One of the more interesting discoveries that was made while thrift store shopping, was a whole host of goodies, an ironic hat to replace my green one that disappeared in the RS blackhole, a metal waterbottle and a replacement cell phone charger for the one the cat destroyed while we were in Portland.
I managed to also find a little taste of home while out in Bainbridge, the Australian meat pie company which was mainly serving up delicious locally made meat pies and sausage rolls. Featured in their line up of fun food products was the traditional Australian breakfast spread, Vegemite, this was nearly purchased in order to replace the dwindling stock contained within my pack, but the 500g glass jar was considered to fragile to the transported within my pack of destiny. Additionally and yet completely unrelated to Australian grub is that while we did not make it to the grave of Hendrix, we did manage to locate a statue of him of which I posed with in my most rocking pose I could muster.
Random observation CS and ridesharing – advantages of this ‘economic depression/downturn’.
Vancouver While it was hoped that craigslist could again provide us with a method of travel through the amazing rideshare service, it was not to be possible for our travels north to the great land of snow, winter Olympics and poutine, that is correct young ones, we were on our way to Canada. Greyhound, the fantastically fun monopoly that it is, provided us with the transport required to cross the northern border into far Northern America where we arrived at 2.30am in Vancouver, ready to do battle in this country that made me feel like I was at home again, I had made a temporary escape from Imperial Units and I was going to live it up in metricland for as long as I could.
After we eventually navigated the night bus of Vancouver, we gots to where we had to get to, the eclectic house of Rain. The antics that were Rain and Joe, Ken, and the two Spanish immigrants, Ivan and Issac the house of hilarity. Laughs were had, card games were played and board games, many and varied discussions, a lot of which about sex, thus my enjoyment of being completely inappropriate in regards to sexual innuendo could be maximized to its fullness.
In my time in Vancouver I managed to catch up with Pat, ex-High School chum of mine, whom now resides in the leafy suburbs of Vancouver, where he has himself is now gainful employed at EA and occasionally writes in his blog. We drank some beers and compared being an Australian outside of Australia and what to do when bogan friends of friends come to visit you. The general consensus being to tell them to pull their head in and stop making the rest of us look bad.
While getting my tourist on I checked out various sites of interest by the standard method of wandering around areas of town, such as Gas town (which had a steam powered clock), Chinatown (where they hide the asians and $10 all you can eat sushi), Kitalano (where they keep the Australians and other white foreigners), walking around the harbour (where they keep the boats and such). For me probably the best part of Vancouver was the market, while small, it had some amazing gourmet food experiences that could be bought, such as goat cheese and spinach tortellini. Some other clunernary experiences that occurred was the creation of the über mac and cheese combination, consisting of macaroni, blue cheese and bacon. A delectable combination to say the least. While a majority of my travels seems to be me eating and seeing parks, that is because I am a cheap skate, museums of significant importance are awaiting on the north east coast.
Some other food highlights were the consumption of some typical Canadian food, poutine. Which for those not in the know consists of chips (USA translation: steak cut fries), fresh cheese curds and covered in beef gravy. A delicious experience of mind, soul and maybe not so good for the body, this stuff was coronary inducing at the least. One of the final adventured we did was a journey to La Casa Gelato which had to have over 200 different flavours, some of them more ridiculous than the rest, thus I chose to buy the most silly flavour I could buy, well not the most, Wasabi flavour was available, I sampled but did not get that one. Instead I bought curry flavoured, while spicy it was creamy too, a wonderful balance of flavours kind of like a nice Indian girl giving you a handjob.
Whistler This is where we got the party started and got the snow on. Getting from Vancouver to Whistler wasn’t really a problem at all, just bussing the way up there via pinche Greyhound again. The residing venue for our antics to come was the bachelorette pad of Martha, hair wizard, party animal, snow border and just all around kick ass person to be around. The other resident of this abode of amusement was Chelsea, nightclubber extraordinaire. Sleeping arrangements were interesting trying in fit in 4 people within a studio apartment, with us sleeping 3 people to the futon and another on the floor.
While most people who come to Whistler are cashed up to the nines and ready to hit the slopes, I on the other hand was the polar opposite. This was the second time I had been to ski slopes, in my life. Thus had no idea what to do, and being fairly broke, renting all the equipment, and ski pass for the day, was way out of my budget. Thus the closest I got to actually engaging in winter sports was tubing. Which was awesome. While yes it is typically designed and made for kids and families, Martha, Chelsea and myself managed to cut up the tube park like nobodies business, Miss Crystal opted out as she didn’t feel like the fun justified the chance of a breaking an ankle.
While it was pretty damn cold I had forgotten how much fun it was to be out in the snow, also how crazy one can party when around Martha. The first night we arrived, shots were had, before the eclectic collection of Martha’s clothes were utilized to get us all into our 80’s look for a party of the same theme. I even managed to sport a blonde wig to truly get out and rock the suburbs. Before we left the apartment things were messy, by the time we left the nightclub, things were a bit more messy to say the least. A large majority of that night was recollected by some via photos that documented how the antics unfolded. The next day was largely spent resting and recovering from all the fun that was had, a couple of nights later we also managed to finish off the evening back at the apartment with an ad-hoc vodka and mustache party, the preferred mustache being ‘The Bandit’.
Random Observation Near to every person that is employed in Whistler, is Australian or from New Zealand.
In order for us to venture to the next intended destination of Banff, we had to return to Vancouver for a couple of days, where we managed to catch up with Pat again, this time at his place for a Going Away / Hat party. The next day we got a rideshare all the way from Vancouver to another ski town of Banff.
After an extended period of time chilling like a pimp in south San Diego, which a lot of the time just felt like an expensive Mexico, but without the pesos and somewhat more higher population of black people, when more or less meant I could not use my extended lexicon of agreement ‘fo shizzle’ in daily conversations, least I be shot for insulting the great language of ebonics with my cracker like ways.
I digress, while the joys of an operational oven and the access to soft cheeses were nearly an incentive to stay far longer than I had initially intended, I had to break myself away from the joys of conventional food and move into the unknown territory of travel and road based food, which in general turned out to be sandwiches and peanuts, I was hopefully pensive this trip may turn out to be a little different as far as food diversification was concerned.
First stop point via Amtrak and falsely adverted wifi equipped connecting bus was the bohemian and self proclaimed homosexual capital of the world, Vatican City. That could have been a dream like choose-your-own adventure, or I may have been in San Francisco. The city of hills and irregular rain pattern, which was to set the cycle for the next weeks worth of atmospheric perspiration (precipitation).
perspiration, a poem of dampness.
Sweat from the sky, but only if it was a cold sweat like you had just seen your mother-in-law naked, sun baking in the lawn chair in all her glory for the world to see.
Other patterns that were to emerge in the subsequent week were as follows, that free wifi could be literally found anywhere, Borders book stores stay open till 11pm not requiring you to purchase anything. Thus you can utilize them as a library, but without the added discomfort of dealing with smelling homeless people, that is not to say all homeless people are smelly, it is just an overwhelming majority seem to have a preference of buying a 40oz of malt liquor than deodorant. Mind you if given a choice I would be taking the handle of gin over a crisp aerosol can of smelly stuff.
San Francisco is a town of hills, literally. The only real flat sections of the town are the waterfront, it turns out the only reason they are, is that rubbish was used to flatten it out. Thus if people were to say I think the waterfront is shit, one should correctly respond, “I wish to disagree with you fine sir/madam, but we are only standing on it, not viewing of it.” But apart from the ass workout that was walking up hills for 3 days straight, it should also be realized that trekking up those fuckers when you are carrying a full pack is no walk in the park either. Getting from the where the bus dropped us off to our first napping location of Kim’s house was slightly more of a challenge than first realized, after some quick research on Google Maps it seemed relatively straight forward journey we had to take, head down the main street, left for 5 blocks then a right. Since Google Maps fails to utilize any topographical features, a feature I am sure they will integrate soon, that and a stalking feature, we did not work out that the 5 blocks to the left would be us gallivanting up the steepest hill in San Fran, yah. With full packs, double yah.
We eventually made it to her house, on the edge of Chinatown, buggered and ready for sleep, turns out she was not there yet but still out ‘working’ at 11pm at night. Once the fine lass had returned, we chatted about where was cool to check out and then crashed out on her futon. Next couple of days were employed in the fun times of seeings different areas of town, the Castro, the gay epicenter of the currently known universe, Haight & Ashburry where the hipsters intertwine with the pot dealers. Ventured around the waterfront area where tasty cheese was consumed and free chocolate samples taken, up towards the Golden Gate Bridge, which was mainly so I could get a photo of the thing so I could demonstrate without a shadow of a doubt to the naysayers that yes I had been to San Francisco. And of course Chinatown the location of our temporary residence, where the most amazing egg tart was eaten.
But by far the best part of San Francisco for me was the City Lights Bookstore which had an entire section on the top floor dedicated to the beat generation, and a recently published graphic novel about the authors themselves, Hunter S Thomson, Jack Karouc, etc. In addition the laneway behind the bookstore, named after Jack Karouc.
In order to get out of San Fran turned out to be slightly more of a challenge than getting in, as the 10 hour journey from SF to Portland was a bit expensive in our opinion via Greyhound funland so the über fun and slightly more dodgy method was chosen, ridesharing through craigslist. Essentially all those beat authors had seeped into my subconscious enough times that I was ready to create my own amazing adventure based on people with variable levels of sanity, drugs and jazz clubs. Or I could be electronic hitchhiking. Either way I was destined to meet some interesting characters.
The variable nature of ridesharing can be a bit iffy with 2 people bailing on us for a ride from SF to Portland, but we managed to grab a lift in the end with a crazy cool 20 year old with a souped up 88’ Ford Escort GT. Adventurous might be a bit of an understatement of how we felt embarking on our first rideshare. In the first hour of driving we were able to miss the turn off to Portland, meaning we ended up driving 50 miles further than we needed and managed to see the capital of California, Sacramento to in order to take a 2nd turn off. This should have flashed a small warning for the antics that were to come. As the night progressed on this 10hr epic drive, the music changed from 90’s punk to less than mainstream hiphop, I think we managed to listen through every single album of Atmosphere through his iPod, which would periodically die when we hit a bump, which would be repaired with the classic man way of thumping it. The driver noted this was his tried and true method of electronic based device repair.
While the music was taking me back to back in the day, it was the road that kept me awake for 8 hours. There were only some headlight issues, with rain and darkness, and the occasional lack of road markings = lack of being able to see the road. In the end after a 9 hour straight shoot with only 3 stops, 2 for gas, and one to check the oil we arrived safely (I was able to unclench my buttcheeks) and without too many issues, although our driver was a bit annoyed that he was to be late to the $8 pitcher night at his local bar.
Portland, Oregon What can only be described as a gentrified and relatively nice city. But, I guess with nothing else to do with their time they have managed to make the beer fucking beyond belief. There seemed to be more microbreweries in this town than white people in a bar for Taco Tuesday, and there is nothing white people like more than trying foreign food and embracing themselves in their strange cultures. One microbrewery was even just releasing a limited oyster brew, which was made using the juice of Canadian oysters. I personally did not try this concoction, but was lead to believe that it may be a fine drop, maybe not in the same league of PBR, but close none the less.
With the scent of malt and hops lacing all corners of the city we knew it to be destined that we perform some sort of sample quest based pub crawl. We were fortunate though, that the 1st annual Nano Beer Fest was in full swing for the weekend we were gracing the presence of fine old Portland town. A bit of bus trek to get there being located out in the burbs we bought a cup and available to us was over 20 different types of beer for sample and generally getting our drank on. Miss Crystal managed to get somewhat more than I each time a sample was requested due to her wily charms and generously proportioned assets, but due in fact that we were at a beer fest, a description sheet was available and gave information as to the type of beer and about the microbreweries themselves. We took it upon ourselves to also rate and critique each beer that we sampled, in order that we appear more professional in our demeanor, the descriptions generally failed to match our attempts at class warfare.
Staggered out of that little event a couple of hours later still in the mild afternoon sunshine to journey into the centre of town and explore parts not yet ventured to. Ie the legendary Voodoo Donut shop. We only managed to find it through sheer coincidence and we breezed through a disappointingly small Chinatown (compared to San Fran everything was minuscule). After an 1.5hr wait in line a glazed classic and a bacon maple butterscotch donut were purchased. True to form mine was the ridiculously silly one, tasted alright though.
Our kick ass couch surfing host for the land of gentrification was the lovely lass Thao, a student of the finest degree. While we did not manage to spend too much time together, the time we did get to spend was full of laughter and cupcakes. On a side note her cat managed to eat my cell phone charger cable.
Random observation Water taps everywhere within the USA, including continuous flowing quad taps dating from the 1800’s in Portland.
To vacate from Portland we managed to organize a ride share to the beaner town of Seattle. And oh what an adventurous ride it was.
If one starts out a journey with a half arse name for their travel plans it truely will never be as awesome as the potential it orginally had before you disabled it with a weak flaccid name, such as 'Hitler's summer holidays in Poland'.
Therefore from here on out my planned conquering of the United Stated via my ninja skills and half decent cross stitch ability shall be dubbed;
the USA Path of Dominance
Next stop San Francisco, home of the homosexuals, hippies and Cowgirl Creamery.
Irritating Scientology adverts on television have reassured me yet again I dislike organised religion, or any religion for that regardless of their ability to organise their sock drawer or the peanuts that follow them in the same level of unquestioning blind faith.
If that made no sense then my point has been proven.
El Fuerte, Guaymas, San Carlos and Baja California (Santa Rosalía, Ensenada and Tijuana)
The final week of my northern journeying can only be described as in one word, weathering.
Getting off the CHEPE for the final time Murry and myself arrived in the somewhat quiet town of El Fuerte. Not too many highlights of this town expect perhaps of the bar we found that stayed open later than 12am, due in fact to this amazing discovery Murry stayed on while I headed to Guaymas for my ferry to Santa Rosalía. On arrival to Guaymas it was pissing down with rain, the next day said rain continued. But by midday the rain had somewhat cleared up, so I headed off to San Carlos a beach and Snowbird town about 20km north of Guaymas. The only things I could really find in San Carlos was a beach of rocks and RV’s. Supposedly there was a really great beach 8km away, but I wasn’t about to walk to that any time soon.
From Guaymas I took the overnight ferry to Santa Rosalía which main claim to fame is the architecture of the houses, as previously the town’s main income was the local French own copper mine. Now days the main income certainly is not tourists, there were definitely some around, but none were staying the night. The town itself was certainly interesting as far as the distinct differences in the French and Mexican sections of town, and the large percentage of weatherboard homes which reminded me a little of the classic Aussie homes design.
After Santa Rosalía I got to Guerro Negro where I intended to take a bus to Ensenada overnight. Fail. Turns out there were no more buses running north for the next 2 or possibly 3 days due to the rains that had been plaguing the area for the past couple of day before I had rocked up. Thus I kept myself happy by consuming cheap cane liquor for the next couple of days until it was possible to leave.
Guerro Negro has 2 main attractions, the world largest salt evaporator and from December to April it is whale breeding season and tourists can be ferried out to see these wonderful mammals at play. I chose to do neither of these things. I figured putting salt on my fish tacos was close as I was going to get to either of them. Though I did not see the ocean based whales I sighted a couple of their land dwelling cousins, I can only conclude the diets of soda and flour tortillas to be the root cause of their lack of migration to the sea.
When I finally managed to escape GN, I got an overnight bus to Ensenada which was probably a much nicer choice of end point than Tijuana. Not that I have anything against TJ it is just that it is a shit hole border town. Ensenada adventuring was slightly more unusual than the normal touristing one does while traveling. Mainly in part due to my awesome couch surfing hosts of Liz and her wonderful warm household. The house itself also doubles as a tattoo and piercing studio, but the payment system for tattoos was a little different than most. They did not take payments in cash, but in bartering or exchange for different things. For example their little dog was an exchange for a tattoo, because if all tattoos were paid for using little dogs, I could see it becoming a some what fraudulent currency. Dog theft would be rife and the world of illegal dog fighting would fall in popularity with the sudden rise of illegal dog breeding.
But I digress, I managed to eat some fish tacos, wander along the wharves, see a local art / museum, visit the oldest cantina in Ensenada (not so interesting) and sit around for a bit as one of the guys got his neck tattoo tweaked.
That night we got a bit of a camp fire going and chilled in their backyard a most awesome way to spend my final night in Mexico. The next day I bused to TJ, waited in line for about 40min, showed my B1/B2 visa and returned to the great northern lands of the USA.
Chihuahua Reading back through my past couple of writing efforts I am definitely starting to see a theme emerge, vague amounts of touristing, partying and antics in getting from A to B. Therefore I will probably keep this consistency in the following set of notes.
Getting from Chihuahua to Durango is relatively easy one just goes to a bus station and takes a bus which more or less run every hour, unfortunately it takes about 9 hours to get to Chihuahua, so I though an overnight bus would be best thus accommodation and mode of transport would be one in the same. But as per usual rolled off the bus after a crappy nights sleep from not a brilliantly comfortable seating position.
Chihuahua could pretty much be summed up as the city of boots and dudes that wear boots. But I also managed to check out the nightlife and have a bit of an alright time too. Jorge was my CS man for the next couple of days with his bach pad of bachelorness. Some nights it distinctly felt like I was back in Melbourne again when I was trying to get to sleep and my sleeping pad happened to be in the lounge room and I had to wait till one of the cats finished gaming, at like 2.30am. Awesome.
Definitely one of the best moments I had was a discovery of an actual use for churches, apart from celebrating the death of some dude on a stick.
Napping in Churches – Only benefit of Catholics to Mexico. While it looks to the outsider that you are hard at pray, in actual fact you are getting in your daily siesta / powernap to continue on for the post lunch sightseeing. You’re not the only one seeking some (sleep) redemption.
Another lesson was learnt on my path of enlightenment and preplanning. Remember to check train timetables before you make a 30min walk with 2 full packs. I made a bit of a late start after a small oversleep thus once packed I had to do a bit of a super sprint to the train station, more like a quick waddle with all my stuff. After a little directional misguidance from my map I arriving at the station just at 6.50am, 10 minutes before the 2nd class train was supposed to leave. Only to be duly informed by the security guard that I had missed the train, turns out only first class runs daily and the second class does not operate on Wednesday’s. Score. Off I trundled back to the bach pad, so I could sleep till 1pm well rested, bright eyed and bushy tailed ready to see actual sights of interest, Las Grutas (some caves on the edge of town) and the museum of Pancho Villa.
After the intensive time that was required to go to those two sites of interest, it was the hour for Jorge and myself to venture out into the great unknown that is finding an open bar on a Wednesday night in Chihuahua, somewhat more of a challenge than one would think. After bar hopping by driving all over town, we eventually settled (it was open) on La Roca, one of the bars we had hit up on my first night in the land of little dog. Nothing really reportable occurred apart from me taking command of the jukebox Jack Sparrow style and the bartender practicing some English with me.
The following day I made my way to the train station and successfully got my train ticket to Creel, also at only 50% of the price due to the kick ass notion of being a student in Mexicoville.
Nug Nug of Info. The CHEPE or the Chihuahua to Pacific Coast train is one of the final operating passenger trains in Mexico
Creel Where I froze. While Zacatecas and Real de Catorce were cold, nothing really prepared me to actually see snow again after such a long time, and certainly not while I was in Mexico. On the way to Creel via the train I got as excited as a little girl about to lose her virginity, a little pensive and yet prepared to take it all in. Big reason for pant tightening excitement, ‘cause there was snow on the ground, I was later to learn this snow had fallen some two weeks ago, but at the time I was all sorts of keyed up for frozen water action.
It was here that I picked up my travel companion for the next week of Canyon adventure, Murry. He needed a hostel and I had read about one that had free breakfast and dinner. Creel was normally a town most people use to take tours of the Copper Canyon from, being cheap, I just rented a bike for a day and did a 6 hour round trip in 3C weather checking out some rock formations and a horseshoe shaped lack, doesn’t sound too exciting, but I did get some nice pictures and sore legs from all the hills.
Urique From Creel we headed to Urique. Urique is pretty much at the lowest point of the canyon, with the pueblito having only one main street, that is more or less 100m of concrete and a random assortment of shops, houses and 2 restaurants. But one of the highlights of Urique would have to be the hostel / hotel we lodged at, Keith Place or Entre Amigos as it was also known. I stayed here for 5 days, not just because it was so cool, because I had to wait for the next second class train to turn up. Reasons it was awesome, hot water for the shower came from a wood stove heat exchanger, huge vegetable garden where all veggies and herbs could be used for cooking, table tennis table and only cost $130 a night.
Murry A character is probably the best description I can give to my unexpected Canadian travel companion for the Copper Canyons. We did the common backpack friends due to being on same transport thing and also possessing backpacks, thus we could then be BFF’s (best friends forever) or something like that. He happened to be travelling in the same direction as me, so he tagged along when I said I was heading to some town in a valley, Urique. Little nugget of info: Lowest point of the Copper Canyon is the town of Urique located in the Urique Canyon of the Copper Canyons.
His key concerns consisted of more or less four items in the agenda for the day; 1. Procure the herb 2. Consume the herb 3. Nap 4. Play guitar
Somewhere in between these four snacking would occur. But basically most days spent with this ex-mayor of Ymir, BC were a hoot.
Once 1 had occurred then 2-4 would generally be repeated every 3 hours of so. Although one day we did do a bit of an extended hike which took up most of the day going to one of the little pueblitos, Guadalupe.
Guadalupe was basically my only form of hiking I did, it was 3 hours uphill journey to get there then a 2 hours trip back again. It had the mandatory church, 1 room school and a tienda, which was basically a house, but they happened to have some stuff for sale in the front room. Where we could stock up on some lunch of water, biscuits and candy, we also somehow managed to get free oranges out of the deal, I guess we looked that poverty stricken or lacking the nutrition.
My final destination after Urique was El Fuerte another 4 hours by train, we arrived in the darkness and there we rested. I stayed until the afternoon as I was heading north and my travel companion south. There Murry stayed on as he had finally found a bar that stayed open later than 12am, one his major gripes he had with Canyon towns, he also managed to wash his clothes, something of a first he said.
The next great adventure, crossing to the Baja.
While not the work of Murry, it is by far my favourite acoustic track. In Flames - Acoustic Medley
Zacatecas Getting from Real de Catorce to Zacatecas could be performed one of two ways, the first I would need to backtrack to Matehuala and then again to San Luis Potosí and from there catch a final bus to Zacatecs, that on a map seemed like the longest distance to travel just to get to another town. I decided to take the second option, which I only found out about through the ninja good (read, hopeless) guide book I possess, and the description to get from RdC to Zacatecas only had 2 lines but it seemed like the more interesting option. I boarded the daily Jeep (Wileys Jeep from the 1950’s) to get down from the top of the mountains to the dessert below, 1.5hr of bumping around and we slowly edged our way down the mountain side to the valley below, from there I got another bus by informing the man at the restaurant / ticket office I wanted to go to Zacatecas, he proceeded to indicate that was no possible, but he could sell me a ticket to another destination and from there I could connect onto Zacatecas, fine and dandy me thinks. Once I reached the next destination it turned out to be somewhat less of another town and more like a restaurant on the corner of the highway where buses occasionally pulled into if you were lucky. Bonza me thinks, hitchhiking it may be. After myself and another traveler, Juan enquired at said restaurant for the availability of buses to Zacatecas we were duly informed that there were no more today. This whole hitchhiking thing, with Alister’s fine white behind becoming a Mexican truck drivers play thing was nearing closer to reality. Juan interestingly enough had just spend 10 days in the desert enjoying the best the desert had to offer while engaging some fairly wild party time and was now on his way home to see his wife and kid.
Back we meander to the side of the road in the hope a bus will rock up sometime so we can flag it down or maybe a vehicle of more repute may venture along the road so that we might be brought towards salvation. Not the salvation a priest thinks he is giving to his alter boys, more the salvation in a walking across the desert one finds an oasis of fine bitches all in need of cock. Fortunately a bus did turn up after about 40mins of waiting around and it was more or less going in the direction that we needed. Eventually I got to where I needed to be in Zacatecas after taking my bus too far and ending up another suburb, I got the final bus of the night to the centre of town to met up with my CS for the next couple of days, Michael at a Dali themed coffee place for a relaxing coffee after my grand 9 hour adventure to travel about 250km.
The town itself is pretty with the entire centre of town being UNESCO heritage listed, thus no sparkly bling bling signs about. As for the touristing part of my journey, it was a bit lazy to say the least. The only part of the town I really wanted to see was another mask museum that was supposed to be far superior to the crap effort the SLP put forward. First day in town after making the bus ride and 30min walk I discovered the museum was closed. On a Wednesday. What fucking museum closes on a Wednesday ? Sat around in front of the museum for a bit contemplating what else could be done to fill in the time. As much as I love scratching my nuts and smoking, that did not appear to be an option at the current time, a bit too much foot traffic was about. Although the foot traffic did keep me amused as more tourists would rock up, trying to enter only to read the hours of operation sign a bit more carefully and discover, oh it’s closed today.
Later that evening I met up with another local CS’er Claudia and her friends for a couple of beers and some local slang lesson. The first bar was amusing, as it was the lucha themed, the 2nd just being really cool, as it was over 100 years old and full of drunks, students, a dude with an accordion and artwork filling every available corner and space available.
Most Important word learnt that evening;
Pistas – Beers
They told me it was just a Zacatecas thing, as I had never heard beer referred in this way, I was later to discover it was more a Northern Mexico thing than anything else from my quizzing of the locals along the way.
After another day of sighseeing, actually getting to see the Mask Museum and not going to the nightclub in a mine I headed on my merry way to Durango, the city most renown for having a shit ton of scorpions and cowboys (vaqueros).
Durango The little fuckers could be found everywhere, under plastic for a belt, encased in an ashtray and even for a key rack. Supposedly near the market you could see a scorpion farm, as much as I love furry things seeing these little pricks scuttling about was definitely going to increase my paranoia and not my enjoyment of Durango. The other major reason tourists venture out to Durango, apart from the insects, is to see some of the backlot sets where a large majority of Westerns used to be shot, one of the most recent ones being Zorro. Interestingly enough Pirates of the Caribbean was not shot there, but in one of the previous towns I’d been in, Real de Catorce.
Thus the only major touristing I did for my weekend in Durango was to get a bus out to one of the sets, Villa de Oeste which had been converted into a sort of theme park Mexican style complete with overacted cowboy’s and indian’s performances and some fine thighs in the form of Kan Kan dancers. The rest of the time was spent getting to know the bars and restaurants of the place with a little help from Anaheim, whose cousin, Serigo I had met the year before in Chiapas while traveling, who also had done IAESTE but to Germany and Austria. Thus I had myself a local connection to the nightlife and daylife of the Duranganese.
Interesting thing learned, while in most small towns and some large suburbs it is traditional for the male drivers to drive their cars up and down the main street, in Melbourne one would call them Chap Laps (referring to laps of Chapel Street, a nightclub and bar district of the South East), as the drivers of the VL Commodores and Skylines show off the shininess of their car, and auditory value of their blow off valves (BOV) and the undeniable penis size to over-compensatory relation they had with their vehicles. In Durango, they did things a little bit differently, the above still existed, but on the street itself, there were no nightclubs with skinny bitches waiting out the front nor clean windows to admire Tony’s new chrome. There were bands set up on more or less every block all generally playing banda of some sort, and the occupants of the cars would stop, enjoy a chevy or 3 and then tip the fine musicians for the job they had been doing. Also strangely enough Sunday nights was the time when all the action happened but again I wrote it off as only in Durango.
Something I forgot to mention in my last post was an addition of another travel companion to my journey. At Casa Caracol a Spanish couple gave me a travel book, this book had traveled around the from traveler to traveler. This book turned out to be the late Herman Hesse’s masterpiece, Siddhartha (in English fortunately, not the original German). Thus I now have the great responsibility of being keeper of the traveling book, ready to pass on the baton of knowledge after I finish reading the thing.
Getting from Xilitla to San Luis Potosí was not so difficult, there was only one bus transfer at Ciudad Valles and then continues I did on my merry way, very much unaware of the trouble about to befall me once I arrived at said destination.
San Luis Potosí, to some it is known as the city of plaza, to others [read, me] it is known as the city of hotels that don’t seem to be open or when found are ridiculously expensive in relative Mexican terms. So what happened after I arrived from an uneventful bus ride was annoying at the time, but bemusing now whence I write of it. I got a taxi to the only hostel in town, HI affiliate and all that shemozzle, I was very much looking forward using the kitchen to mastermind a hot meal of Cup of Noodle I had secreted in my pack. But no, I was thwarted in my attempt to get a bed at 10pm, the fucking place was closed, I even asked at the little food stand a couple of houses up, they were also surprised it was closed with wild claims of normally having a phone number you can call.
Taxi number 2 to next destination hotel, not so far away and this one also possessed a kitchen, by this time my stomach was yearning for the Cup of Goodness. Fucked over again, this time it was closed for renovations. Off to find taxi number 3, finally get to another Hotel Principal, $170 for the night with can only be described as the worlds dodgiest plumbing, a leaking sink had been repaired Maguiver style with an elastic band and a plastic bag. One of the upsides of this place was that I got cable TV in the shoebox of a room, although the reception was so bad I couldn’t see anything. By the end of the night I took 3 taxis, went to 3 hotels and still did not get my Cup of Noodles, I had to make do with a torta, as nothing else was open at 11pm on a Friday night.
After my sever dicking around on the accommodation, I decided I wasn’t going to stay another night, so I awoke early to run around the centre snapping off shots of the various plazas and my illegal photos inside the Museum of Masks. They were trying to make my pay $20 to use the camera, I was having none of that and just took shots when the guard went to tell of another tourist for non-authorized photos.
Just after the hour of lunch I managed to get a bus on my way to the magical and yet very cold Real de Catorce, well not directly. First I had to get a bus to Matehuala, small town of no reall significance except as a transfer point, then wait 3 hours at the bus station for the final bus of the day to get to Real de Catorce.
While at the bus station I made backpack friends, a couple from Italy who happened to be on the same bus as me from SLP to Matehuala. We made small talk about various travel things, where from, what towns before, and how long. It soon eventuated that one of them had been to Mexico 2x before and both times to RdC. After some questioning as to why the mystical cactus was brought up. Peyote. Which is found in the deserts surrounding Real.
Once we all got to the mystical town, I with no plan as usual just headed to the same hotel as they were, hoping a cheapish single room could be procured. Which it fortunately could at Real de los Alamos for the princely sum of $150 night, not bad considering the room was 3 times the size of SLP and with very functional plumbing, ie I had hot water.
The next couple of days were spend hiking to the local ghost town, horse rides to see monuments to the sun, drinking a lot of coffee at cafes to utilized free wifi and the heat. And of course sampling the local delicacy of cactus.
As to the experience itself... you’ll just have to wait for the next exciting episode of Alister in Mexico.
Because updating from every town I hit up is somewhat more difficult than people whom roam around Europe and other western nations where they have a mirade of wifi high speed interwebs available to them. I have dodgy internet cafés and the occasional cafe with wifi the every other man and his monkey are kindly raping the bandwidth with youtube videos of the latest banda or reggaton classic.
Anywho, I digress.
In just over a week and a bit I have managed to veer northish hitting up some interesting and some other not so interesting venues. Starting from Queretaro to Xilitla, then onto San Luis Potosí and finally where I am currently banging out this blog entry in Real de Catorce.
Queretaro I dids the CS thing because it always makes the travel experience 10x more awesome, which it inevitably did. Surfed with a well chill couple, Australian and Mexican wozza, the spritely lad harking from Dalesford (the homosexual capital of Australia, also home to some nice day spas run by said homosexuals). Dalesford is also about 30mins from my old stomping grounds of the 'rat [Ballarat: referred to as the 'rat by the locals, or a shithole by those who have made the escape].
In the fine colonial town that is Queretaro I was given a ninja good tour by a CS local Rodrigo, who goes up there in the books of things and stuff as probably one of the most knowledge guys I know, in terms of Queretaro. He knew dates of construction, who the architect was and why the Neptune looked like Jesus (bad time management meant a bit of modification had to occur) thus he can walk on water and even control the seas, he's super Jesus. Also got to sample some Rattlesnake Mescal, pretty smooth and made for some hilarious photos. Next day Ivan (another fellow CS whom I had met December of 2008 at a Posada in Mexico City, way randoms) explored the surrounding countryside doing a bit of budget wine and cheese tour, where we sampled from cheese and wine stores, and bought only one bottle of wine after the entire day. Then kicked it large in the night times with Rodrigo and some peeps, experiencing 2 for 1 drinks for $50 1L beer and late night tacos.
Following day it was time to journey onto the next destination of Xilitla, a freaking amazing destination, that required a bit of a journey over the awesomely beautiful Sierra Gorda. The town itself is not really that interesting, its got an old church, a central plaza, cobblestone streets and youths loitering with intent to loiter infront of said church in aforementioned plaza. The big draw card to the pueblito is Las Pozas, or the mental cement jungle garden waterfall place, as it can also be described. It was designed and made possible by the slightly eccentric English millionaire Edward James in the 1960-70's. Do some readings on it you lazy fuckers.
I spent all of the 31st of December there, exploring as much as I possibly could, I also got lost in the jungle for about 2 hrs following a path that kind of went no-where, and eventually found a lone waterfall, pool and fire-ants. Worth it in my book. Later that evening I moved from the crap hole hotel I had to hole up the first night due to 10.30pm bus arrive to the much more diverse and slightly eccentric (to compliment Las Pozas) Casa Caracol. While at first I thought I was going to enter a hippy comune with crystal toting yoga idiots, it turned out to be a chilled out and mental party place for NYE. When I eventually slept after, group meal of pizza and salad that we all helped to produce, my contribution to the meal was a nice plastic bottle of Mescal. Drinkings, eating some more, dancing, Ska-P, mental bongo playing from some Chilangas and general chit chattings. I slept in tipi, but with a power point and a light, this was a slightly updated version to the Native North American Indian style. Apart from being such a well designed hostel, it was cheap = 100peso, had wild sculptures and even a zipline.
