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Published: November 20th 2009
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I know i know its been a long time since our last installment however we have been muchos busy!
So we left you after departing Fiji, we landed in LA about midday and wandered around the terminal until a guy approached us and asked us if we were looking for a hostel, he offered us a cheap room so off we went. It turns out "Mike" wasnt expecting to pick anyone up today so the 3 of us plus luggage had to cram into this guys convertible mercedes, not a bad way to arrive hey! anyway we pulled up at this house and thats all it was a house, a dirty smelly scary looking joint. Inside was no better, i suddenly regretted saying yes to this guy, but he was cool so we stuck around. He put us in this bedroom with 2 single beds, a giant bath and a stained glass window. After sorting ourselves out we went for a wander down Venice Beach.
Now if you ask anyone what LA is like they will all say the same thing....its full of freaks! oh and they are not wrong! the beach is nice, bit of baywatch action with
everyone running in tight clothes and roller skating everywhere. Then you have the rappers trying to get you to buy their CDS and the general freaks preaching the lord and trying to convert you. Its a posers paradise, we found the venice muscle beach gym and laughed at the guys checking themselves out! The venice beach basketball courts are right next door so we watched them play for a bit, the guys just slate each other non-stop i was creasing up! After walking up and down the beach and trying our best to avoide getting dragged into any freak shows, we headed back to the hostel for a pizza and then hit the hay.We were only there for a 1 night stop over so we didnt have time to see much else.
The next morning to woke up early around 6am and caught the bus direct to the airport from just outside the hostel, its like $2 bargain. We arrived a little early and just hung out till our flight left, when we were waiting in the departure lounge they had the most random sign telling people the lounge could be intoxicated with dangerous chemicals and to breath with
caution!! lol. Air Canada rules they have great planes and the staff are excellent. We landed in Calgary around 4pm, and after chatting to a guy at the airport found out we had to catch a bus then a train into the city centre. After wandering around like lost tourists for an hr we found out there was only 1 hostel in the whole of Calgary. We booked in for 2 nights to a private room which turned out to be an empty dorm room, great! The next day we booked a bus to Banff for the following day, then headed into town, we bought a "cell" phone and then went and registered for our Social Insurance Numbers so we could work. The whole time we were in Calgary it snowed, the temperature was around -15 bloody freezing! we were really unprepared and bloody freezing! The city is renowned for being very artsy fartsy and they wernt wrong, every corner has a statue or monument or sculpture of some sort. The actual city itsself is bizare, for such a major city its very sparse, the centre is so dispursed you just cant find anything, you need to head out of
the centre to the suberbs to find anything. The City itself is very dull and boring to look at and be in, everybody seems to just be in another world.
The morning we left for the bus station it was -10 andwe had to walk 40mins because we were too tight to pay for a cab, we arrived freezing and just in time. The security at the greyhound is immense better than the airports! apparently its all down to some guy getting his head cut off a few years ago on the bus! wahey! er not! So we arrived in Banff our home for the next 6 months, we had no idea where to go, so we headed into town and caught a bus up tunnel mountain to the HI hostel. We were booked in on a "Jobseekers" package, which was 2 weeks in the hostel in a 4 man dorm and a free bus pass for $320, not too bad. Our room mates were 2 Kiwis called Ben and Jarred.
We will continue this journey later.
Scott & Katie
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