Jan 2009

Well this is it, the last blog entry. After a year of circumnavigating the world we are almost back at Heathrow where we started 358 days ago. Not exactly up to Phileas Fog standard, but still a good effort.
So what happened on our last few weeks, you ask? Well…..

We flew out of New Zealand on Saturday 27th December and after a 12 hour flight from Auckland found ourselves in Los Angeles 4 hours before we left….which was weird. After getting over our Time-Travelling experience we spent the next three days waiting in line at LAX passport control to have our photo’s taken, fingerprints scanned and an anal probing. I swear security gets tighter every time I come here. We finally made it out on to the streets of LA in our Chrysler Hire Car and spent a few hours driving around the block trying to find the interstate over to Santa Monica. We learnt the hard way that LA is quite a difficult city to navigate without a map after narrowly avoiding spending the night hanging out with the Bloods in Compton. But we finally stumbled on to our Motel and went to a café to eat the best beef burger in the world. The side order of fries were the size of my head and when the waitress brought out the burger it was so big it caused a total eclipse, temporarily blocking out the sun…welcome to excess America.

A 15 hour kip recharged the batteries and the next day we headed out to Hollywood for a walk down the Boulevard and past the Puerto Ricans hanging around the Ricky Martin star over to the Chinese theatre to see the hand and footprints of people we’ve never heard of. A quick stop at the Hollywood Museum then on to drive around Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive. The second day we ticked off the other sights, Walt Disney Hall, a church, the library, Venice Beach and other things I’ve already forgotten about, then spent the afternoon and evening hanging out in Santa Monica. Disappointingly, in the two days we were there we didn’t see one police chase, nor even a drive-by shooting, but what was surprising was how much we enjoyed LA…shhhh, don’t tell anyone but we kinda liked it.

Destination number two was Vegas, a place that needs to be seen to be believed. This was New Year and like everywhere in the world at this time it was insanely busy. But we fought the crowds and spent the next couple of days drinking free Budweiser and Miller light (the worst beer ever) while playing the 1 cent slots in Venice, then Paris, Luxor, Rome and New York. We watched the high rollers gamble away a years salary on the turn of a card, while a volcano erupted and the fountains danced outside the Bellagio. Weirdly a highlight here may not of been the casino’s or the free beer or the Lions in the MGM or the Flamingos in The Flamingo, it was probably the best buffet ever in the Bellagio hotel. What other buffet do you get Shrimp Nigiri, Hungarian goulash, grilled swordfish, roasted mussels, Chilean sea bass, African Bluenose, lobster, lavender scented quail, Kobe beef, Alaskan snow crab legs and many things served with Jus, not sauce, jus!…and if that’s not enough, just look at the photo’s of the deserts…crème brulee, chocolate covered strawberries, pies, tarts cakes and cookies…And all this for a measly $19.95! I bow down to the Chefs of the Bellagio. Remember if you’re eating a buffet, rule number one is find the most expensive thing offered and eat your money’s worth, after that everything else is a bonus! Of course the buffets here are so popular you’ll have to queue for ten hours and it will be a battle of nutrition just to get a seat, but once you do, it will be a taste sensation. If you’re ever in Vegas I demand you eat here.

After the New Years celebrations we left Vegas with our clothes smelling of fried food, beer and fags and drove over the Hoover Dam towards destination three, the Grand Canyon.

We didn’t read about snow in the brochure, but there was definitely plenty of it here. None of that slushy crap we get at home, this was Columbian Class-A winter wonderland stuff. Unfortunately we hadn‘t planned for the -19 degree temperatures, but as wise man Sir Rannulph Fiennes once said “There is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing”. So after putting on every single t-shirt we had plus wearing a pair of socks on our hands like mittens we ventured out to the Grand Canyon. Now it might be blasphemous to say, but even with all the stunning and majestic scenery around us (it is very grand that canyon) the highlight of the trip might not of been the canyon but rather the snow around it. I think we were like the kid at Christmas who unwraps his expensive present only to spend the day playing with the box. We even built a life-size Joe Pesci Snowman.

After we’d had our fill of the Canyon and the snow we started the very long drive back past Vegas up to San Francisco. On the way we spent one night sleeping in a Fairytale Castle on the Vegas strip, then just as a contrast spent the next night in a Truckers Motel off the dull, nothing to see here, Interstate 5.

For our last day with the car, we drove north of San Francisco to Muir Woods to see some Redwood trees, the tallest living thing in the world, then down across the Golden Gate Bridge, around a big park, over to a Japanese Tea garden and through a modern art gallery. As usual we did other touristy things I don’t really need to describe, but our favourite place by far was Vital Tealeaf in Chinatown. Owned by 76 year old Uncle Gee, officially the nicest man in the world, we sat and drank free Chinese tea for hours while he explained about tea and its place in the world. It almost turned me in to a tea drinker…almost. If you’re ever in San Francisco I demand you go there. Other notable mentions in the city are the Museum of Modern Art and Alcatraz. If you fancy mixing with homeless people, drunks, beggars, prostitutes, tuneless buskers, weirdoes and screamers, have a walk around the Tenderloin area. You might even be lucky enough like we were to have a guy stop in front of you, pull down his pants, squat and take a piss in the street. Fortunately we were around the block before the turtle came out of his shell, if you know what I mean. Now that’s the real San Francisco right there.

Sadly this is the end of the blog and the trip, as tomorrow we leave America with a couple more inches around our waists, thinner arteries and the bank manager calling every five minutes wondering where all his money is. We come back to a different world from which we left all those months ago. Without MFI, Woolworths, Jeremy Beadle and Captain Birdseye, I just don’t know how we’re going to cope in 2009.

See you all soon no doubt and if anyone has a job lying around the house that you’re not using anymore give me a call.

And they all lived happily ever after. The End.

Cheers,

Joe n Rachel.x