Hurricane Ike

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Day 348 - Friday 12 September

With no idea how long it might take to cross the border we decided to go early so at half past six in the morning we were at the bus station buying our tickets to Brownsville the border town on the US side. As most Mexicans cant go to America not surprisingly the bus was empty and me and Russ were the only passengers.

It didn't actually take us long to cross and we soon found ourselves in Brownsville. Now being in America I expected to be able to revert back to speaking english but all i'm hearing around me is Spanish. After 6 months i'm starting to get sick of it.

There was more bad news in store. Because Hurricane Ike is due to strike Houston later tonight they've cancelled our bus there. Were supposed to be meeting my old university housemate Alistair whos living there and have a flight booked out of their on Monday. We certainly don't wont to be stranded in Browsville for the weekend. Instead we managed to get a bus to San Antonio only 120 miles west of Houston. Early evening we'd arrived into San Antonio but once again it seems its impossible to get over to Houston. Were now stranded here for the weekend. Its a shame I'd liked to have experienced a hurricane.

Now I've been presently surprised by Americans. Whenever you hear a few on holiday they're loud and brash but i've found today that they're incredibly polite, friendly, helpful and courteous. Quite a few people have gone out of their way to help us.

Once we'd found some accommodation we decided that after everything thats happened today we deserve a beer. As were a little bit outside of town we thought we'd just go to one of the local ones. It was a bit of a mission finding one but eventually we found one and three girls wearing short skirts were just walking in, so we decided to follow them. It was only after we'd ordered our beers and looked around that we noticed they were actually the only girls in here. The place was packed with men. We've gone and found probably the only gay bar in the whole of San Antonio. And they certainly weren't descreet about the fact they were gay. Needless to say we quickly finished our drinks. Tomorrow were going to go downtown.

Day 349 - Saturday 13 September

We were still hoping to get over to Houston now that the Hurricane had passed but speaking to my mate Al he cant come and pick us up. The roads are blocked so were here for another night.

We went to see what was in the city centre. Its actually quite nice and theres lots to do and right slap bang in the middle of the city centre we stumbled across the remains of the Alamo fort. It was here in the 1830's that Davey Crockett and 180 men including 16 Brits held out against the Mexican army for 2 weeks before they were finally overrun and all killed.

We ended up spending the whole afternoon down at the fort and after a quick change were back out for the night. I don't know if its because you have to be over 21 to drink here or we just didn't find the right places but its all a bit old and boring.

Day 350 - Sunday 14 September

Yet another day of being stranded. We've found out our flight tomorrows been cancelled and there not 100 % sure when services will resume so we've decided to abandon our attempts to fly to Houston and get a refund. It doesn't look like we'll be able to get there for a day or 2 anyway and theres not going to be anything to do when we do get there.

Instead we've taken a bus to Vegas. Its more expensive than the flights had been and is going to take 36 hours but we've little choice in the matter. Mid afternoon we set off. Not much happened in the journey except in the middle of the night we were stopped for a random routine immigration check. It turns out there was an illegal immigrant on our bus.

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