Biking Golden Gate, hiking Yosemite waterfalls, jumping in death valley, riding through deserts, partying in Vegas, burgers in Route 66, and helicopters in Grand Canyon

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HEY Y’ALL

It’s been a while. Right now I’m sitting on a train, rolling along from Washington DC to Boston while I dust the sugar from my sour lollies off the keyboard. The train has stopped at Baltimore and I’m singing “gooddd morning balltiimoreee” in my head. I guess I’m writing about right now because I’m procrastinating writing about all the things that have already happened. I feel like I’d be butchering my memories if my words were anything short of perfect. We are slowly coming to a stop again. Outside all I can see is shrubbery and a small basketball court where a lone boy is shooting hoops.

The past few days I’ve been surviving on vending machines and free breakfasts. I’ve been spending too much money getting lost and catching taxis. I’ve had multiple conversations with strangers. I’ve somehow burnt my washing, I’ve bought lunch for a strangers daughter and cried with them, I’ve fallen asleep on overnight trains and I’ve navigated my way through confusing streets and cities. But always in the back of my head is a nagging to record the people and experiences of the past two weeks. Thinking about what I’ve got to cover in the next 8 hours of my train ride is massively daunting…

Florence gets it:
But with all my education I can’t seem to command it
And the words are all escaping, and coming back all damaged
And I would put them back in poetry if I only knew how
I can’t seem to understand it

And I would give all this and heaven too
I would give it all if only for a moment
That I could just understand the meaning of the word you see
‘Cause I’ve been scrawling it forever but it never makes sense to me at all

No, words are a language
It doesn’t deserve such treatment
And all of my stumbling phrases never amounted to anything worth this feeling

All this heaven never could describe such a feeling as I'm hearing

Words were never so useful
So I was screaming out a language that I never knew existed before

(If you’ve never listened to all this and heaven too, go ahead and download it) Okay, here we go. Excuse the chopped up writing tense, I’ve written different parts of this at different times and it’s all very confusing and weird. Also, this is going to be long. Some parts will be better than others. I won’t be offended if you don’t read it all because, well, honestly, there are some embarrassing parts in it and its probably for the best.



So my last few days in San Fran were a bit of a mixed bag. On my third day I decided I was finally going to find China town. I made my way up to Union square, obviously picking the route that took me past a Lush shop. It was nice to have some enthusiastic chats with the staff there and to geek out at all the new merch they didn't have in New Zealand yet. I left thoroughly satisfied with 3 free lush samples under my arm. MWAHAHA. Once I arrived in Union Square, I sat down, ate some fruit salad and just chilled for a while. This was San Francisco though, so I wasn't going to be bored for long! In the centre of the square a man wandered around talking to himself in a cowboy accent. With the way he was acting out different characters, it was like watching a weird (and kind of sad) movie.

Mapping where I needed to be in my head, I accomplished my china town mission. I wandered through the streets feeling oddly like I was in a parallel universe... I was so used to seeing Chinese tourists walking round taking photos in New Zealand. Suddenly I had become the annoying tourist taking photos of Chinese people eating and playing card games. I wasn't sure how comfortable I felt with the tables being turned. I picked up some cheap Chinese food and walked back to my hotel, stopping off at an art museum on the way. All the art works were by Chinese people who had immigrated to America. Paintings aren't usually the type of art that gets to me, but after a while walking around I was starting to feel pretty mesmerised and other world-ly. It was all quite magical, yardy yah etc.



On the fourth day I woke up early and headed down to the hotel lobby to hire out a bike. I was going to bike across the iconic golden gate bridge! From the plane I had seen the bridge and did the whole taking photos and oohing and ahhing thing. Confusion set in when I saw another bridge that looked exactly the same. Turns out I was freaking out over the bay bridge. Oh god I’m such a bloody tourist. It’s not a shocking mistake though, considering the thick fog that hangs over the harbour. Anyway, I naturally questioned why on earth the golden gate bridge was so famous or original if it looked just like another! I headed down the steep streets of San Fran on a journey to figure it all out. In the distance I saw a group of cyclists and a sign with the words "Golden Gate bike trail". Feeling pleased with myself, I proceeded to head down towards the cyclists, all the way down a massive hill. I got to the bottom just as they were turning around to head all the way BACK UP. The sign had said "Golden Gate bike trial closed, alternative track up hill". Ugh. Bonding with a group of people with exclamations of how tiring the hill was, we all finally made it back up. Finally, I had met some people! I was lucky enough to have come across Savanna and her family. It was Savanna's 16th birthday and everyone had taken a day off work and school so they could bike across the bridge and to do other cool san Franciscan activities. They were lovely and let me tag along with them while we compared our different countries and discussed our different lives. Eventually we got to the bridge and I finally understood. Huge, red and art deco-ish, we wound in and out of crowds of tourists and stopped regularly to look down at the sheer distance below. It's really sad, heaps of people commit suicide on this bridge - in fact, there were even nets hanging just below certain parts of the bridge to catch people. How you would get back up though, I have no idea! The view out on the city was breath-taking. Some serious wellington worthy wind blew wood chips from passer-by trucks into our eyes. Savanna spotted some seals diving in the water far below. We carried on, biking through the country side to Sausalito, a cute quiet village town. We then caught the ferry back and biked back up the steep streets to get some pizza. This pizza place was apparently one of the top places in San Fran to get Pizza, and I honestly would believe it! We parted ways with each other down at the waterfront - I felt lucky to have met such a welcoming and open family so similar to mine. From there I went to the wax museum and took a headache of photos, convinced I could trick some of my friends into actually thinking I had met some famous people. I guess I've lost my chance if they read this. (But it really WAS George Clooney guys!) I went next door and did the San Francisco dungeon. It was basically a scary and historical underground maze, led by different actors. It featured a boat ride, a bar fight, the lost mines, and Alcatraz prison. My favourite part of it was the 3d effects (for example, lights would go out and you would feel a finger stab into your back or your leg from the chair! To avoid this, we were all leaning "on the edge of our seats" ba dum tssh. (sorry.)



I spent my last day in San Fran resting in the hotel room and recovering from certain unfortunate events occurring on my bike the previous day. Ah well! it was time to start my G adventures trip! I checked out and then checked back in, into my new room that I would be sharing with my new roommate, Eve! I had little idea of the hilarity and sarcasm that she would later entertain our group with. After a strange first impression (panicking about my lost bank card then finding it in the trash, discussions about moon cups, explaining how I had been hit by a car, and demonstrating the use of my green lush face mask samples) we watched some Friends. Eve made the appropriate choice of 'The ones where no ones ready'. We packed up before hand, Eve taking a few minutes and myself taking almost an hour (hence the episode choice become appropriate). In the evening we went down to the lobby for our G adventures meeting. After introductions and trip details, we headed out for dinner at a mall. I cried over a way too spicy salad. It was a nice relief to be surrounded by people again.



Day 6! It was a day of heading out of San Fran listening to Californian music. After stopping for a pic overlooking the bridge and the city, we were off to Yosemite park. With x hours of driving behind us, we were finally at Yosemite.



We exited out of a tunnel and were presented with a sight of Yosemite I’ll remember forever. It was a beautiful moment. Entirely coincidently, one of my favourite songs started the playing on the soundtrack at this moment. I won’t try to explain it.

"No temple made with hands can compare to Yosemite"

After aweing at the huge swooping green cliffs and lush towering waterfalls, we took some group pics, then tried to spot the rock climbers on the cliffs. I was shocked when I finally saw some: Miniscule dots on the cliff. It made you realise how enormous the mountains were. I felt shaky just looking at those climbers! We even met a guy whose daughter and partner were climbing up to have a wedding at the top! Now that’s my kind of wedding. We headed back to our camp site, enjoyed some smores and got some rest for the following day. I was already starting to feel as if I had known these people for ages.



Day 7 was awesome. The morning was spent dashing into a souvenir shop for extra water, teasing Laurence about his fancy shirts and being teased about my pronunciation of Declan. According to Jess I say “dicklan” but I think saying “Well good” is far more ridiculous. Anyway, we parted ways with Jackson, who much to our teasing would hike up a different waterfall track in sandals. He waved us goodbye like a proud father dropping off his children at school. “Bye kids! Have fun! Eat all your lunch!” This would become a familiar routine. Taking off on a huge hike up to one of the top of the waterfalls, It seemed that the further up we got the more beautiful it became! Carly and I lagged at the back of the group, barely talking and out of breath. I was quickly learning our group seemed to follow the pirates code: Those who fall behind are left behind! Nearing the peak, we got to an area where there were streams and mini waterfalls you had to kind of run under. With my life proof phone case set and ready to test, I sprinted up to it and danced under the mini waterfall. It was so magic. When we kept heading up and finally arrived at the massive waterfall, it was stunning. Again, I felt struck by how powerful and dangerous nature can be! But yet so incredible! {cheesy breezy} Looking down over the edge of the tumbling water was crazy. We sat down and enjoyed our lunch; unfortunately, I had already eaten my chips and nice things and only had a smelly squashed banana left. This would become a reoccurring event. Up there it was pretty exposed, the wind whipped at my sopping clothes. Fuck, I was almost starting to regret not putting a rain jacket on like everyone else! I replaced my wet t-shirt with my massive fluffy jacket, despite the protests from the girls I would be way too hot later (cause you're hot then you're cold, you're yes then you're no!) The trip back down required some concentration not to trip on every rock, which I wasn’t really using so there were a few close calls! Laurence and I had some interesting conversations on life and lifestyles. As we got closer to the bottom I was getting hotter and hotter and eventually gave in. The girls laughed as I grumpily asked them to watch my stuff while I got changed again. They had climbed to the top of a huge rock and I left my bag at the bottom. Not sure what they would have done if someone took my bag. Maybe yelled and flapped their arms?

Eventually we got to the bottom. As if the previous walk wasn’t enough, a few of us misguided souls decided to go for ANOTHER walk, this time to mirror lake. The rippled and unclear water was a bit of a disappointment. But I suspect much of our appreciation for nature was lessened by how sore and tired we felt. After I made a clever calculated decision NOT to swim in the lake (good decision bre), I walked back with the others. On the walk back I remarked to Will that I felt as if I was in a tumblr nature blog. He replied that he felt as if he was on an endless treadmill. I couldn’t help but agree.

We waited in line at the end of the track, somehow managing to not make it onto THREE massive buses. This was due to the other crazy tourists diving in front of us for the bus and even clambering desperately through the back doors. Regardless, I found the angry muttering between ourselves entertaining. On the subject of this, Laurence told us about how his friend had gotten into a dispute with a bus driver. And how is friend had then pulled out a gun on the driver. Our crowd went kind of silent and looked at him in horror. “What kinds of friends do you have?!” I exclaimed. We finally made it on the bus after a lot of shoving and pretending not to hear the driver tell our group he couldn’t fit us. We waited in a food court in the park until the others arrived - there was a lot of falling asleep at the table.

We then headed back to the camp, made some dinner and jumped in the pool. Our game of no rules water polo become very intense and competitive. Shout out to Marjolijn and I who beat the boys despite being a team of two playing three players. YAASSSS GURRRLLLLL.



The next day we packed up our things again and set off. The bus was to be a place of education, as we were told all about the massive sequoias trees in the area. My favourite thing about them is how they need fire to reproduce. It reminded me of a phoenix and my symbolic side was going wild. We stopped and got out at a site that had heaps of the huge trees and took a lot of photos of us squeezing inside them. We were all practically buzzing when we came across a fallen tree that was hollow on the inside! A chain of us had a fun time crawling all the way through the tree.

With a quick pee break and a mature prank of hiding Lyods beloved stickered water bottle, we clambered back onto the bus. Continuing our drive, we stopped at various gas stations… I loved the American road trip feel of it all. One of my favs road side stops was a burger stop and gun range in one. SO AMERICAN. Count me in…

We arrived at our camp ground later that day and set up. This was a cool retro campsites, with a wacky old fashioned vibe to it. I loved the illuminated green pool and the backdrop of huge orange mountains. So much of what I saw seemed unreal… We had a stir fry for dinner and discussed the plans for the following day – death valley and Los Vegas! While everyone played cards of humanity, I sat in the games room waiting for my washing and trying to charge my laptop to write this very blog. As you might be able to tell from my delay in posting a blog, I wasn’t very successful. I did however use up all my quarters on gumballs and skittles.



The following morning we set off again, and were eventually we were driving through the heat of death valley! I feel like I rave about this like a billion times, but honestly our themed soundtrack is THE BOMB. It felt awesome cruising through the desert with rango/cowboy music blasting. Cactus and barren land out the window and everything. We stopped at the museum - it was interesting learning about the organisms living there and the history of humans travelling and living in the desert. After taking some cringe jumps photos in the sand dunes, we kept on driving till we got to bad water basin. Bad water basin is 85.5m below sea level. We walked far into the land, our feet crunching on the salt. I couldn't help but feel for the travellers that passed through here so many years ago. From a distance the white salty ground is a mirage of glinting water. Up close though, there was very little water and the travellers knew the water was bad because they couldn't get their horses to drink from the water - hence the title "bad water basin". The water contains a lot of sulphur. A long time ago (I'm being vague here because I have no idea) there used to be an ocean in bad water basin, but it dried up in the heat and left behind lots of salt. Don't I sound so scientific? After a gross drop toilet stop, we hopped back into the bus feeling eternally grateful to however invented AC. Jackson and Brian (our super fun CEOS) took us on a surprise drive through the colourful rocks of the valley, which was again, something I don't think I could describe. Purples, greens, oranges, and steep slopes and corners. Felt like a dream.



Near the end of the day we arrived in Las Vegas... Our tour guides accurately summed it up as being "ridiculous" and like an "adult playground". I don't think any of us were disappointed. Las Vegas boasts imitations of the statue of liberty (which confused me to the max) the Eiffel tower, and roman style buildings and sculptures. It took me a good day to realise that the huge buildings with shopping malls, casinos, and crazy themes were actually hotels! I loved the fake ceilings in the malls that were made to look like a big blue sky. They even rained in certain parts! With this and also the dome shape of the ceiling, I felt like I was in The Hunger Games. I was almost expecting massive fireballs to come soaring out of nowhere. I was feeling pretty stink about the lack of things I was legally allowed to do in Vegas (21 is such a dumb law right?!) but my time in Vegas turned out to still be a kind of typical Vegas experience. That is, minus the gambling and clubbing.

We got ready and embarked on our party bus, which took us through the streets of Las Vegas and down the strip. The bus was fully equipped with blasting music, leather seats and a pole. It was a fun time, and I didn't even feel guilty about not wearing my seat belt. (that was a joke. haha I'm so funny.) Anyway, we screamed to the music and did a lot of pole dancing and laughing hysterically. At some point on the bus Jess spent a lot of time shoving her drink on me and yelling "scull, scull!"... yeah... pretty sure it was like 3/4 vodka and 1/4 cranberry juice, so thanks Jess... We stopped off at various places to take pictures underneath the signs and lights, with each picture looking increasingly tragic. The leather seats of the bus were also becoming increasingly sticky with spilt drinks (guilty as charged).

My favourite place we went was Freemont street! I looked up at the flashing neon patterns on the ceiling - the worlds biggest LDS screen - felt the incredible music and watched the people above us zoom by on the zip lines. It ran shivers through me. We took a photo in front of a couple who were completely all over each other, which was hilarious. I really felt like I was in Las Vegas. Throughout our time here we had seen our fair share of show girls on the street, which made me feel angry sad and kind of confused about how I felt about it all. Anyway, I saw a show girl on Freemont st and went up to her and told her "the most important thing is that you love and respect yourself". God I'm so such a cheesy drunk. It was really nice though, I think she could tell that I really meant it and she looked at me in a really nice way, almost like relief, and gave me a hug. We then got back into the party bus and made our way to go see the water show. I remember looking over a balcony wondering where the water show was, we waited for a while but nothing happened. I was feeling pretty hot and tried to climb into a fountain but thankfully I had some good friends to stop that from happening! After lying on the ground feeling happy and tried, a group of us decided to head home (which absolutely had nothing to do with any drunken states of anyone present.) On the way back I got close to a street fight with a stripper promoter; I called him a sexist, racist (???) pig and he didn’t take it kindly, eeek.. I got dragged away to safety once again by my heroic friends. It was both incredible and over stimulating, walking at night through the big city of bright lights. The hour long walk back was fun and tiring, there was a lot of cussing at people for no particular reason, as well as high fiving homeless people and telling them to "Keep going man, you'll be okay". Insults were thrown, there were deep conversations about religion and science and tears about how everyone will all inevitably die. Fun times all round. Thanks to the team of navigators and drunk support people, somehow we finally made it back to the hotel, I crashed onto a spinning bed. And woke up at 3am and vomited everywhere…. I'm now really hoping that most people gave up on reading this blog entry a while back.... Anyway, I headed down to breakfast and started to feel a bit better.

We spent the day exploring Vegas, shopping, and having a cute lunch together. We went to the most violet roller coaster I've ever been on, it gave us all even bigger headaches and I'm certain I got thrown around more than legal. I now understood why there was so much safety information before we got on. I wouldn't be shocked to see it headlining in the news for coming apart! Throughout the day I discovered what had happened to everyone else; discussing the previous night’s events were almost as fun as the actual night itself! There were some pretty wild stories; but they're not mine to tell and besides what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas 😉

During the afternoon we got back to our hotel. Those bloody cleaners hadn't changed my bed sheets, even though I left them a note and a tip (that they took!) Fuming, I went and got bed sheets from the lobby and changed them myself. The smell of our room got better after that, thank god. (Sorry Eve...I know I'm turning out to be a cracker of a roommate) A group of us went down to the pool, and played some made up games of tag in the pool. I took in a lot of water from laughing so hard!

That evening, a sensible and exhausted group of us decided to go see a local show instead of partying it up on the strip. It probably took half an hour of deciding which show to go to (unfortunately Chris angel was 'off the cards' because of the steep ticket price, and also because I was the only one who knew him). In the end we went to a $20 show that was a short walk from our location. Other than some shit opening acts, the comedy show we went to was awesome. I was half falling asleep sitting in the dark room, so I couldn't keep up with a lot of the humour and quite a few jokes went straight over my head. However, the ones I managed to process were hilarious. It was also pretty cool to be in a crowd of mainly Americans! I loved their accents and their responses to the jokes. I felt like I was a local in disguise. We wondered around a bit after that, then Eve and I decided to head back home, we were just so knackered. In comparison to the others we had a fairly early night, just packing, chilling, and speaking to friends and family. We eventually went to sleep at around 2am.



The next morning our group met and boarded the bus, some of them barely sleeping an hour. I'm in awe, I don't know how they did it. We drove out of Vegas to Katey Perry's "Waking up in Vegas." (all hail the bus soundtrack) I had now been in America for 10 days. I spent my tenth day on the highway... Route 66! We rolled down the road with the exact tunes you would expect (get your kicks on route 66 + life is a highway + highway to hell). We stopped in this little town "Snowcap" which was actually what inspired the movie Cars (Radiator springs anyone?) I loved snow cap - all the old cars, the stickers, the musty tourist shops. We had burgers and milkshakes for lunch at a famous little burger place in the town.

We continued along the highway playing competitive charade guessing games, mainly based on things that had happened during our trip so far. Our good old bus was now very homely - we all had our own little spots. I'm nestled at the back of the bus. Pros: More space, cosier, away from the action/noise of the bus Cons: AC doesn't reach me, away from the action/noise of the bus, No one can hear me, I'm always the last person out. At some point we named our bus Gandalf, because G adventures buses always start with a G and because it was apparently snowing faintly outside at the time. I don't remember hearing anyone saying it was snowing (Cons). At some point Jackson pinned up massive American flag on the ceiling, and somehow our bus acquired a colourful American map up the front. Our last activity before we got to the Grand Canyon was to create masks out of paper bags. We were told this was just for fun + a competition. Mine was a weird purple cat human thing, with a beard and stoned eyes.

We arrived just out of the Grand Canyon itself, and were told to put our masks on. From there we were led in a human chain through the path to overlook the Grand Canyon. I could hear various groups of tourists following us around in amusement. When we were holding onto a rail that overlooked the canyon, we took off our masks all at once to see a breath taking view. We spent the evening demolishing some pretty good pizza while we watched the sun slip behind the Grand Canyon. We got to our camp ground and set up - this was a more basic camp ground - our only facilities were drop toilets and picnic tables. honestly though I didn't even really notice. Our nights were too busy with telling funny stories around the camp fire and dying Brains beard purple (which is just as funny and cool as it sounds). I swear I got some serious stomach muscles from laughing that night.



The next morning, we woke up at 4.30am to drive back to the canyon to see the sunrise. From there the brave Eve, Andrew and Brian headed out on a 26km hike all the way down into the valley of the canyon...and back up. I couldn't do the hike because I had booked a helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon (yeah, THATS the reason why I didn't do the hike...). A few hours later, Marjolijn, Laurence, Steph, Carly, Jess and I were climbing into a helicopter. Even taking off and flying over the huge forests was incredible. The pilot was informative and played a funny playlist of dramatic songs. We dropped into the canyon with "beautiful day" by U2 playing. I was awestruck by the magnitude of it. It felt like we had only been there for seconds when the piolet finally turned the helicopter around after 40 minutes. All of us were tearing up a bit... I couldn't describe it - If you ever go to the canyon, be sure to see it on a helicopter, its truly an awesome way see the Grand Canyon in all its glory.

Some of the girls and I spent the rest of the day doing a very small walk, stopping dozens of times on the way back up. This would result in a lot of shit given to us later on! We looked around the visitors centre, and ALL OF US fell asleep watching a very American movie about the grand canyon. We went home and ate excess avocado. GUACAMOLE GUACA CA CA MOLE



I'm 20 minutes out of Boston now, my train rides almost over... This is also becoming REALLY long so I’m gonna go ahead and stop here, about half way through the trip. I’ll do the rest of the g adventures trip as a separate entry soon! More photos are below if you click on the link 😊 Congratulations on you and I for making it this far, proud of you y’all 😉 I hope everything is going well back home xxxxx

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