The (wet) Cook Islands & San Francisco: City of Crazy People!

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Greetings from San Francisco!

Oh at last we make it to America!! I say at last because it took such a lot of faffing around to actually get here, more of that later.

So, we finally got to leave Fiji after 2 more days of constant rain, in a bland hotel, in an area with no visitor attractions (or beach!) whatsoever. But I've already caned Fiji on previous blogs, so enough. The flight to the Cook islands, just 3 hours further east was memorable only because we crossed the date line. That is SO weird. In effect, we were 11 hours ahead of home in Fiji, but once we landed in the Cooks, we were a day behind! So we had two Saturdays!? Shame it wasn't my birthday, i would've had two!!!

We had rented a beach house in Rarotonga, so peace, quiet and no strangers/dudes/American shouty 18 yr olds to bug us at all. We were right on the beach, the sound of the ocean kept us awake the first night!

The next day, we found out why - our back door was about 20 feet from the sea!! The house was self contained, so we had everything we needed, complete with freaky upstairs bedroom.....and I also noticed that from the front, our beach house looked a bit like the Amity house too. Yuck. After a hard day's sunbathing, we rented some DVDs from the main house. There were no bars within walking distance, and we'd had enough to drink in NZ so we were happy enough to watch Lord of the Rings. Until I looked up at the ceiling and saw we had company.
It was just a small lizard, and he was keeping still, so I didn't mind. However, he was soon joined by 5 or 6 relatives so it made it hard to concentrate on our film! Over the 4 nights we learned to ignore them, which was pretty hard to do when they ran past the back of the tv. Bug eyed horrors!

The second day was more of the sunbathe & read trashy magazines on the beach variety, but by the 3rd day, sadly the Fiji weather caught up with us - it chucked it down for the rest of our trip!! All we could do was jump on a bus and head into town for a look around. 'Town' it turns out made Reepham look like New York city. It had one cafe, one ATM and a post office. It was great for people spotting though, and there was a classic 'white trash' family on the bus - the mum was quite large, but unfortunatley wearing hot pants that would've made Kylie blush. She also had long pigtails and orange lipliner. Dad White Trash had a skull earring, long hair at the back (none on top) and only about three teeth. They were pointing everything out to their kids as we went along on the bus:

"Look there Samantha-Rae, that there's the ay-port'
" Hey Sammy-Rae, those there licence plates are all short" (??)
"Sammy-Rae, Momma sure does love yooo..."

Hilarious, made the journey fly past. I mean who gives their kids double barrelled names?! It was all a bit Dallas really, except this family were actually from NZ and not some redneck part of America. Ah, they were happy enough.

Our flight to LAX (Los Angeles) wasn't until 11.15pm, so we waited that evening with the lizards, listening to the rain hammering down and hoping it wouldn't mean a delay. When we checked in, we were greeted by a 12 year old Air NZ employee, who wanted to check our tickets. Fair enough, that's what check-in is for. But no, this jobsworth wanted to check our New York to London tickets. Eh? That's in November?! Off he went with our tickets, and when he returned he was making noises about 'not letting us travel' ?! WTF?? ( WTF stands for something quite rude - you work it out). Our tickets basically all have the wrong dates on them, due to us booking them way in advance, but normally we show up on the computer at the airport and it's fine. He said our tickets to the Cooks were fine (er,we know) but our New York ones had the wrong date on them. I had politely explained why, but it wasn't going into his head. It did not compute.

I asked WHY it had anything to do with Air NZ, especially as we fly home with Virgin, actually, and he kept saying 'I'm just doing my job'. Well, I realise that, but I want an explanation. He disappears again, by which time we've found our printout that confirms all dates - this it seems, is acceptable for him, at long last. I must admit, I flung it at his head and stalked off, leaving Ju to deal.........this guy was such a weasel with no customer service training and no people skills!! Turns out they didn't want us to enter the US without a ticket to leave the US............Surely that is up to US immigration to worry about, not a poxy south Pacific island? Anyway, we got through!

The plane was old, there were no seatback tv's and some Dutch midget reclined on me the whole way there, but the flight actually went pretty quickly. We flew for 90mins, then landed at Tahiti, where we all had to get off (for an hour, at 2.30am!) so that's another country on the visited list, sort of! Then, back onboard for 8 more hours across the rest of the South pacific to LAX. Ah, America, one of our favourite countries. Not exactly challenging, unless you count the number of people that don't understand our 'proper' English accents,(No, I'm not from Australia/Canada/Germany etc) but fun to travel around nonetheless.

So after nearly ten hours on a plane, with about 3 hours sleep, what do we do at LAX? Board another flight! We must be mad. I didn't want to stay in LA, it's expensive and we'd been before. We had two days spare before we met Ju's brother, so we flew to Sacramento, California's state capital for a couple of days.
We flew on Southwest, and I was really hoping to close my eyes for an hour, but then this sweet little old man from Texas sat next to me. Boy could he talk. I would say we had a conversation but I was only able to say Yes or Uh-huh every time he stopped for breath! He talked about everything, from whether we had air-con in the UK, to Bush, to horse riding and then his ancestors. I kid you not, he is related to Billy the Kid!! He even drew me a map on a napkin showing where to visit in the US.
Ju was killing himself laughing into a newspaper next to me - he was too far across for the Texan to be able to talk to him too, so he had fun by digging me in the leg and giggling! Cheers! Anyway, upon landing, Mr Texan gave me his card and told me he wanted me to go to his riding school in Louisiana, er, right you are then!
Sacramento was a fun distraction, there's an Old Town where the Pony Express started and it's still all 'Wild West' looking which made for a pleasant stroll. Limited funds prevented us from taking a trip on a paddle steamer, for the full Mark Twain experience, but it was a beautiful part of town.
We were also brave and caught a bus to a nearby mall (there's a CD Ju has been hounding for since Oz, which has just come out) which was fun, but not nearly as much fun as the journey back! We had a 20min wait for our bus back, in a salacious part of town - we weren't the only white people there, but I think we were the only ones not in need of medication! There was 'clappy hand man' who kept leaping up in delight, and, well, clapping his hands about every 12 seconds. Then there was the basketball fan who talked to himself, and had a comb wedged into his hair?! I REALLY wanted to pull it out, but restrained myself. Sacramento is friendly, but it felt like the dumping ground for California's mentalists! the weather was beautiful and the food was extremely good, we were in heaven.

Our trip to San Fran should have been straight forward, but when we were on the train here, a conductor told us the train station we were heading to didn't have an underground station in it. You can't get the train right into San Fran, you have to get the tube from Oaklnd you see. Anyway, we ended up getting off early, lugging the bags onto a remote underground train and crossing our fingers we were going the right way. Then, we needed to get a bus, and finally, we dragged our bags up a hill to our hotel!! Our bags way in excess of 14kgs each, I'm going to have a muscly right arm by the time I get home! The hotel isn't in a particulary glorious part of town, in fact it's on the edges of the Tenderloin, the area you're not meant to wander into, but it's a fab hotel with a room far better than you would expect for the rate!

We decided to wander down to Market St for some window shopping and to stretch our legs and we headed out, smiling and relaxed at being back in one of our favourite cities. However, we soon realised that we were on a stinky street block, with no other obvious tourists. We'd somehow wandered into the Bronx/ Tenderloin area! Groups of (probably) harmless blokes lounged around on the floor, in amongst the rubbish, smoking dubious smelling cigs and shouting at each other.......it got worse when we saw one guy going to the loo, in the middle of the road! Our pace quickened, we knew we didn't have far to go, but I found I was holding my breath and scowling at every one - in a desperate attempt to look a bit 'street' and thus avoid being mugged, and probably just looking like a grumpy tourist. When we 'made it' to the touristy area of Market, we laughed and decided that we'd just seen 'the other side' of San Fran and congratulated ourselves on not being stabbed/mugged/shouted at!!!

Comforting ourselves with a quick purchase in Old Navy, we found a much nicer and safer way home, which we'll stick to in future! This afternoon, we meet Ju's brother Mark, AKA The Muppet and we're really looking forward to seeing someone from home. He's even promised us a trip to the Cheesecake factory on him, hurrah! Did I mention money was getting tight 😊
We'll do all the touristy things with him, cycle across the Golden gate bridge and eat Clam Chowder (well, I'll eat the Chowder, Ju & Mark will just stand there going 'urgh, how can you eat that!?) before we head to Yosemite NP and three nights with the bears in the wilderness!! Well, we have a cabin, but still.

So, not long til we return, not long at all.....hopefully Worthy will be out of a job by then and Ipswich will have remembered that they're actually a rubbish team and slump to their rightful position of oh, about 18th!! hey uncle Max?!

Bye for now, take care
Kelly & Ju xxxx

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