Advertisement
Published: June 27th 2016
Continued!
The following morning, we woke and resumed the usual pattern: Packing away the tent and gear, eating breakfast, making lunch, and piling onto the bus. It was going to be a long day of traveling. We arrived at Monument valley at around 4pm, where we were given free time to look around the visitors center and buy some snacks if we felt like it. I bought a bandanna for what was to come.... Because at 5pm we met back at the bus, but instead of getting back on it, we packed ourselves into a windowless + door less jeep!
Monument valley is pretty much an orange sandy desert, with huge rocks that stand tall from the ground in cool shapes. In fact, it's not altogether dumb to be fooled into thinking these rocks could've been sculpted by humans… Ehem.
Anyway, everyone from our group had opted to go on an optional overnight trip in the valley, beginning with a jeep ride through the valley. Looking like notorious gang members with our glasses and American flag bandannas, we drove around bushes and through sandy trails. The people who ran the tour guide were from
the native American Navajo tribe. The tribe had lived here for thousands of years. They were incredible guides – generous, hospitable and lively! I felt in awe of all the culture and history.
Driving through the sand trails, I think we all felt like we were in a strange fantasy as we were told about all the different formations of the rock and what they looked like. It was fun trying to figure out how the rocks were eagles, dragons or snoopy! One of our stops was at one of the Hogan huts. Here we learnt about how they made their blankets and traditional clothes. As they were talking, the tour guides mum brushed and tied up Marjolijn’s long hair so it looked crazy neat. My own mum would’ve fallen in love with it and paid a good fortune to know how to do that when we were little. (Sorry mum, but you know it’s true.) We were also talked through the male and female Hogan huts and how they were built. FYI they used axes, even a long time ago. It was also interesting to learn that everything in the Hogan hut was done clockwise (or
was it anticlockwise?) – but not to the extent where you would walk around in a full circle to get something a few steps away from you. I was just clarifying…
We hopped out to the next site which was like a huge dome with a hole in the middle. A trek America group provided amusement as we laughed at Chad-aliade, the ultimate prick, and the show off yoga girl. Lying down on the rocks while the Navajo people played us music was so magical. I especially loved the flute music… After looking at some drawings on the rocks we took off again. X time later we stopped again at a huge sand cliff. After running (or crawling) up the huge hill we got set to run and roll down. I threw myself down the sand and rolled to the bottom; it was a strange mixture of being dizzying, exhilarating and horrible. There’s a pretty hilarious video of me flailing down the hill, limbs flapping wildly. Anyway, I picked myself up and turned around just in time to see the rest of the group sprinting down. It felt like a slow motion movie, watching Amanda desperately try
to keep her feet moving fast enough with the slope of the hill. With a face filled with horror, her head went plummeting to the ground and she rolled down the hill: literally head over heels. After the relief of finding out her neck wasn’t broken, we pissed ourselves laughing and watched the video one of the tour guides had recorded of it. Will and Natalie also went flying right near the bottom, but were out shined by Amanda’s gigantic fall.
Dusting ourselves off, Amanda and I spent a lot of time spitting out sand and digging sand out of our ears and eyes. I realized that it probably hadn’t been such a good idea when I checked my ankle and saw all the sand plastered to my ever swelling cut, ew. The Navajo guides were really accommodating and got a first aid cut out of the jeep, all the while joking about electrical tape and whiskey. (Which I actually thought would be cool, so hard core)
Eventually we arrived at the place where we would have dinner and dance with the tribe. We sat down to demolish some delicious roti style wraps. I was in
a very pondering mood so asked a few people my current signature question: What’s the best piece of advice anyone’s ever given you? Brains purple beard was digging into his wrap, scooping the fillings on the plate up with his hands as he answered with a muffled voice “Be yourself.” I laughed as Jackson exclaimed in imitation: “Yeah, be yourself, I’m a caveman.”
After dinner we sat around the fire to watch some traditional Navajo dancing and singing. This was incredible. We were all told about the different dances and what they meant. Throughout the dancing and singing a guy poured petrol stuff over the fire so it would light up, illuminating the landscape and dancers. It was honestly just so magic. We were then invited to all get up and dance, starting off in a chain formation and eventually ending up in a circle that we would all take turns dancing in. Some of our group needed no encouragement when the Navajo people told us to dance however crazily we liked. When it was their turn they entered the circle throwing their heads back, their chests forward, wriggling their bodies like noodles. Love it.
With our spirits insanely high, we climbed back into the Jeep. Bumping along in the dark, we spent the long drive to our sleeping area singing/screaming loudly and out of tune. Shockingly this was the first night none of us had consumed alcohol and I’ve never seen our group crazier.
Arriving at our Hogan hut, we stored our stuff away, awing at how warm it was inside. However, we decided we were going to brave it out outside under the stars. Us girls set out on a journey to the drop toilets, which was probably no more than 80 meters away. We stuck together, carefully walking in each other’s footsteps, the warnings of rattlesnakes and black widows ringing in our heads. Upon arriving at the ladies drop toilet, we did a bit of an inspection for dangerous things. With nothing sighted, we all still felt pretty uneasy in the dark and took turns peeing and holding the torch through the door for each other. This all fell apart when Jackson called across to us, noting there was a spider inside the basin of men’s drop toilet. “Is it a black widow?!” I yelled back, secretly hoping
it was but knowing it wouldn’t be. Jackson went back into the toilet and a few seconds later reemerged, “Holy shit! It’s a black widow!” “WHAT!?” half the group of girls, including me, sprinted across the dunes to see…leaving the other half - including Carly who was still in the toilet – completely in the dark with no torch. There seemed to be a bit of confusion about thinking the torch had been passed on and running with it? Anyway, while the girls left in the dark yelled angrily at us (and rightly so) we took turns peeking inside the toilet at the large black spider and its red back. Someone from our group had told us that a black widow bite gives you two hours to live… Here we were, out in the middle of nowhere – definitely over two hours away from a hospital. I demanded to know from Jackson what he would do if a black widow bit one of us, to which he hesitated and said “um…. I don’t know?” I made him promise to call a helicopter. Meanwhile, Will and his team of wilderness explorers were smashing the black widow with a car axel. As
the rest of our group snuggled into our sleeping bags, the wilderness team returned with tales of rattlesnake burrows that we didn’t want to hear. With a lot of yelling to turn the torches off, everyone finally got settled in their sleeping bags on the sand. We lay down underneath a huge sparkling blanket of stars. Away from all the light pollution, the stars were bright and vivid and everywhere. As we talked and made stupid jokes we yelled out at every shooting star. Poor Laurence was constantly missing them. “Shooting star!” “What, where?!”. I’m not so proud of a moment where I excitedly told the group to look at a shooting star that was moving particularly slowly across the sky.
Fears of black widows were quickly replaced with fears of each other, as Lloyd let out increasingly powerful gas. Let me just confirm once more that the ONLY time I farted was when the dogs were barking, and that was just because I knew it would be funny and good timing. (We thought the nearby dogs were coyotes, and just after Will said in his Ross Kemp voice “Careful, they can smell fear”, I let one
rip). I’m sorry Melis, I didn’t realise it was that bad until you started gagging!
Slowly more and more of our group started drifting off, likely getting increasingly pissed off at those of us still up and laughing hysterically at bad jokes. After some heightened debates over which of us girls were snoring (thank you Jess for confirming that it wasn’t either of us) all of us finally became silent. I tried to stay awake as long as I could in the quiet, appreciating where I was. Stars soared across the sky as I fell asleep in the middle of this incredible desert.
The following morning a brightening sky woke a few of us up at 4.30am. Jess, Amanda, Steph and I watched the sky get brighter and the blues and purples fade into oranges and yellows as the sun came up and the others awoke.
We rolled up our sleeping bags up and congratulated each other for making it through a night that wasn’t nearly as cold as we had been warned. (quite a lot warmer actually, if our sweaty sleeping bags were anything to go by). Our jeep ride
back to the food area was a lot quieter than the previous night, as we spent most of the time yawning, rubbing our eyes and in Amanda and I’s case, absently picking sand from our scalps. Our breakfast was fab, with lots of fresh fruit (STRAWBERRIES) some chocolate sponge things (which I ate half of) and cereals.
Setting off once again along the bumpy sand trail, it was all too soon time to say goodbye. Monument valley was something I knew I’d remember forever.
Going places that we’d never been and seeing things we might never see again, we headed out of monument valley and back onto the road. On the way we took a pic on the famous road featured in Forest Gump. Dashing in and out the road in the pauses between cars was a bit funny. Back in the bus, we started to make some new bus decorations – American-ish coloured paper chains. I don’t remember who, but someone further up the bus was chopping up the paper while Andrew and I taped together the chains together. All I knew was that after a while I was starting to get sick
of making the chains…. but frantically continuing because I didn’t like the idea of having a pile of paper beside me, taunting me like an unfinished project. Yes! I had finally finished! I held up my long paper chain proudly, totally done with it all. Jackson chose that moment to drop another huge pile of paper onto the seat beside me.
The rest of the day was a bit strange and remains a bit like a blank space to most of us, probably due to how tired we were. We drove to Durango and stopped for lunch - Lloyd and Andrew had an amusing competition over who could carve up each chicken best. After wandering around the national park museum for a bit, we got back into the bus and went to go do a tour of Mesa Verde. Unfortunately, it was closed, something to do with unsafe rocks or something? We still got to look around at some of the formations and went to another interesting museum. Maybe it was for the best that we were unable to do the two hour walking tour of Mesa Verde, because when a new and way shorter walk was
offered to us there was a huge reluctance. Even after Brian accentuated that the optional walk was very FLAT and SHORT, almost all of us piled back into the bus as soon as possible, sinking with relief back into our unspoken assigned seats and quickly falling back to sleep.
That night we arrived at our next camp site and quickly located the washing machines and showers. Our group made breakfast for dinner, which unfortunately for the dishes team involved a horrible amount of disgusting pots and pans. Sorry y’all….
With everyone showered and equipped with fresh clothes (and slightly shrunken clothes in Laurence and Marjolijn’s case…) we did the usual ritual of gathering around the camp fire. It was a nice and chill time giving each other head and shoulder massages… I especially loved Eves look of intense relaxation while Andrew gave her a head message: her head was drooping so much it looked like it was going to fall off.
The next morning, we took off again, heading to the cute lil city of Santa Fe. It was fun looking around and visiting the beautiful church. Everything felt quaint and authentic. All the markets
were really cool too, I loved the sage wreaths. I could so picture myself dancing and doing little chants around a fire with the sage omg. Laurence, Marjolijn and I went to a popcorn place and sampled everything possible and left guiltily without buying anything! Eventually we met up at a bar and I managed to stay for a grand total of about 20 minutes before I was politely asked to leave for being underage. (ugh.) Will, Eve, Jackson and I then wandered around the streets, shops and markets again. At one point we walked past signs for a spa centre and oxygen bar, and on a complete whim decided to go check it out. The place was up a steep and danky staircase, and upon walking in we were greeted by a chill guy who seemed more on the stoned side than anything else. With promises of a ‘natural high’ ‘increased energy’ and ‘vivid dreams’ Jackson and I decided to go ahead and try it out. The more sensible Will and Eve claimed they would be just fine breathing in their own oxygen for free, and spent the remainder of the time sitting beside us, laughing and raising their
eyebrows in a “You’re stupid” kind of way. The guy came around with different aromatherapy oils, the only two I remember were ‘dragons blood’ (the one I went with) and ‘past lives’. They all had different supposed effects – Jackson asked what the ‘pasts lives’ oil did, and without hesitating the guy replied seriously “it makes you relive all your past lives.” I gaped at him, half trying not to laugh and half seriously reconsidering what I was about to do. Was this guy actually crazy? But he laughed and I relaxed again. With our oils chosen, he turned on the oxygen machines and put those tube things into our noses. I don’t think I could describe how WEIRD that felt. We sat there, breathing in our aromatherapy oils and expensive oxygen, all the while taking selfies and breathing it all in as much as we could to get our money’s worth. After a while I was starting to feel pretty sleepy and was fighting hard not to fall asleep right there and then. More than anything else though, I think this just had to do with the fact that I was sitting on a soft couch breathing deeply. Eventually
our fifteen minutes was up and we realised we were late to meet the others in the square. The high guy spent wayyyyy too long packing up and taking our payments. He wanted us to vote for them in the Santa Fe best bar competition (because they were an oxygen bar or something lame like that?) Anyway, we were in a rush so Jackson just quickly gave him his email: Jackson@gmail.com. For the nest 5 minutes, Will, Eve, the high guy and myself discussed in wonderment how incredible it was to score such a good email address. It was only later Jackson told us what should have been obvious: that it wasn’t actually his email address.
After being scolded from the rest of the group upon our late arrival, we all headed out for some lovely dinner. On the walk home, myself and a drunk-ish Jess discussed what kinds of fruits we would be. Other than strawberries because they were seedy, I don’t remember which fruits – I just remember it was funny! That night I slept very deeply and dreamt that I invented Ice skating. I always have vivid dreams though, so I’m definitely not making
any claims that I had oxygen induced dreams. lol.
The following morning, we packed up at camp again. We were off to Carls bad Caverns! On the way we stopped off at Roswell. Being a town famous for its supposed alien landing, naturally it had a very detailed alien museum. I think my favorite part of the whole museum was walking into the mini theater and seeing a family absorbed in the film… Silver tin foil hats upon all of their heads. Who knows if it was serious or not, but for the sake of a good story let’s just assume it was! Walking along and checking out all the other shops was hilarious. This was a town that’s tourism thrived on aliens – with so many buildings plastered in massive alien stickers, there was always a green face with big eyes watching you. I don’t know what else there is to say about Roswell. I felt both confused and entertained by the controversies but definitely remained a skeptic. Brain kindly went and picked us up some lunch, we were super hungry so sat right there and then, on the curb of the pavement. We took off
again after consuming our ‘What-A-Burger’s’ (or “What-A-Disappointment”, as Eve would say).
Back in the bus, we finally judged our masks from the Grand Canyon. Although I managed to contain most of my excitement, I was ridiculously happy that mine made it to the top three. With a tie between the masks, there was another vote off where I emerged mostly victorious (second.) I graciously accepted my Santa Fe sticker prize and stuck it to the back of my phone to always remind me of one of the proudest achievements of my life.
We arrived at the Caverns later that day and set off to do a long walk through the massive underground caves. As it always seems to be with national parks, I struggle to explain it…
We walked down a zig zagged path into the dark mouth of the caves. The terrifying thought struck us that down here in the caves, being gassed out from Lloyds farts was a real possibility.
Walking through the caves was incredible. A few times I hung back and let our group go in front so I could walk quietly through the caves, picturing what It would’ve been
like to come across these caves by yourself, with only a head torch for lighting. As visitors to the cave we had a proper path carved out for us to follow, and soft yellow lighting all over the place to guide us. It would’ve been a whole other experience if not for those things! So many incredible rocks – rocks that looked like popcorn, coral, icicles, mountains, pillars and columns…
At last it we reached the end of the trail. Instead of walking all the way back up (it had been a LONG and STEEP trip down) we got to ride back up in the elevator. (I LOVE TECHNOLOGY). Anyway, there was a pretty big line so a few of us ended up staying back while the rest of the group caught the first elevator up. The park ranger who was working on the elevators was staring at my neck weirdly for a while. I looked down and remembered I had stuck the border of the sticker I won across the neck of my t-shirt. “Oh yeah.” I said “I have this because I won a mask competition.” Maybe I said it a bit too proudly, and
maybe I kind of forgot that I actually came second… Anyway, with a smirk from Jackson I remembered and went red, trying to back track “sorry, second…” The people around me laughed and Andrew reassured me “We still love you Bre” “Yeah whatever, just don’t patronize me” I retorted. Sorry Andrew, I didn’t mean to snap – just wanted to make it 100% clear how much dignity I still had. (FYI, a lot).
The ride up the elevator provided an opportunity to ask some morbid questions about what would happen if the elevator got stuck. Luckily though our trip up was uneventful.
That evening we arrived at camp, set up, and had dinner. The cheesy pasta sauce had apparently been quite nice when it was warm?
With a frantic dinner out of the way we headed out again to carls bad to watch the bats. The bus trip over was a lot of fun with Amanda rocking as the DJ of the bus. My absolute fav was Bohemian Rhapsody, which totally bought the whole bus to life. With some cringe and over enthusiastic rapping out of the way, we pulled up to carls bad for
the second time that day. As we walked towards the bat place, Eve gave Amanda a strict talking to about following the rules i.e not taking photos of the bats. I assured Amanda that I would hold Eve down if necessary as long as Amanda sent the pics to me too. (ahem, where are my pics Amanda?)
I restlessly rotated around three separate areas in the stands until I finally found a prime spot, then sat down and waited. While we were waiting for the bats to come out, a park ranger spoke to the audience about bats. He knew EVERYTHING. The crowd came to a hush as the bats started to emerge from the cave, flying around in figure eights and leaving into the open air in groups. It seemed to go on forever, I was stunned by the sheer number of bats. As they flew off into the distance they looked like swarms of bees or small birds. Some of them flew real close above my head.
By the time the sun had gone down the bats numbers were slowly starting to dwindle and we silently walked out of the bat place
thing. The trip back was much of the same entertainment, along with one of our many stops at Walmart to do some team effort shopping for breakfast. My favorite part of this particular Walmart was the old guy rocking his electric guitar on the driveway.
The next morning, we drove to Austin! We were lucky as we had been warned of flash floods but the weather cleared up enough for us to get and stay there safely 😊 Upon arriving in Austin everyone got ready to go out to 6th street. There were a few hit and misses with us underage peps getting declined, however eventually we got into a cool bar with live music and a rodeo bull. Myself and a few others had a good turn on the bull – Natalie proved herself to be a true cowgirl, and Amanda gained some impressive bruises. It was annoying and almost disheartening getting declined by so many places… One place stopped Will for being underage but as we were in such a big group, let us in purely because they were desperate for the numbers. I strolled right in as they were
sorting it all out so managed to avoid detection. The empty club turned out to be very weird and we all had the impression that the staff were on some funky stuff. After spending way too long there trying to figure out an action plan, we took off again. Eve had sneakily managed to get a fake I.D from Natalie, but Will and I were continuously getting declined and in the end we split from the group. While everyone else was doing some mad partying and drinking (something about drinks that were made with fire!?) Will and I had a chill time just wandering around. It was funny to see all the tragically drunk people on the streets: people vomiting on the curb, stumbling among the police on their horses. We ended up sitting and talking by a pretty canal and going to a flash hotel to use their toilets and WiFi! Will bought some pizza and we sat down on two picnic tables stacked on top of each other. Some strange homeless people gave us cause to relocate, but unfortunately due to the heavy rain the upside down seat had filled with water… As Will went to stand up
the seat became unbalanced and dirty storm water spilled all over Will and the pizza. I doubled over laughing and dubbed it to be the funniest event of the night. I changed my mind about 2 hours later.
It was past 2am when Brian came to pick us up and I watched with a removed sort of sober humor as Jackson managed to trick and bribe everyone into the bus. Eve was one of the first to stumble onto the bus, with the most radiant expression of pure joy I’ve ever seen. One by one more of our party collapsed into their seats. Marjolijn was one of the last to board, out of breath laughing as she informed us she had just peed behind the bus! Finally, everyone was accounted for and we took off onto the highway to get back to the camp. Much of the journey was spent with everyone trying to get Jess to put her seat belt on while she screamed “BRIAN IS BAE!! BAE BAE BAE!” I felt like a spectator in the middle of a wild show, both relieved and jealous I wasn’t involved in the madness. Just before pulling up
to the camp ground gate, there was yelling from some passengers within our bus, after which the bus doors where hastily opened to let out a vomiting passenger. After exiting the bus most of those who had partied made a bee line to the bathrooms. I think the final statistics were that of those 10 who went out, 6 vomited… Just another night out on 6th street I guess. Hey, at least I felt a bit better about Vegas now! The night was concluded with me finding one of our group asleep on the toilet floor, locked inside the cubicle. Natalie, our seemingly one true responsible adult, came to the rescue. After taking a quick pic of course.
The following morning arrived with the hilarious realization that Jess was still drunk. If it wasn’t obvious from her sunbathing on the grass in her undies and t-shirt, it was certainly obvious from all the shouting. Regardless, we decided to head out and explore Austin!
With a bit of a late start we eventually got to the shops and had a look around. All the shops had a lot of character
and I saw a lot of things that reminded me of home. A particularly Maeve-ish op shop was so big it had different areas separated by shades of color. In other shops, the wacky house decorations reminded me of my home and I couldn’t help wishing I had the means of taking stuff back to mum. On the way walking to lunch, we saw a car covered in chalk paint with a cute message “write on me!” We didn’t need any more encouragement. Personally my favorite message from our group was Jess’s “I'M STILL DRUNK” plastered along the bonnet. Brain also crafted an impressive self portrait of his beard + cow boy hat in purple chalk. After writing my initials BMW on the bonnet, I took to the trunk to quickly scrawl a few lines from my favorite poem. I thought the owner of the car might appreciate some thoughtfulness. Besides, it felt oddly comforting to see those words in my messy writing!
After some nice Mexican lunch, we set off again to do some graffiti! We drove through Austin suburbs while furiously shaking our graffiti cans to Taylor Swifts “shake it out”. The concrete graffiti place
was so cool. I wondered how many layers of paint those concrete walls held! As I’m writing this there is likely someone spray painting over my beautiful creations L aw well. I live the life of letting go!
Somehow it just felt right to imprint “Too fast for Freedom” onto the wall. Maybe those lyrics from “Delilah” by Florence were foreshadowing for the next couple of nights, where there would be a lot of Delilah inspired dancing! I also made a little drawing of Max from Where The Wild Things Are – a cute connection to Declan back home. A few of our group tagged some “Coast to Coast Wankers” on the wall and we took some cute group pics. The heat had us set on ice cream, so we piled back into the bus and headed to the coolest ice cream place evA. As we filed back out of the bus a most beautiful smell hit my nostrils. Could it be!?! Yes, it was! I sprinted up to the lush shop and danced around a bit. There are SO many Lush’s in the US (we came across two in Los Vegas as well) and honestly it makes me
the happiest person in America. I fervently promised the lush people I would return, and headed next door to order my ice creams along with everyone else. The staff there must’ve been the most skilled ice cream workers in the world; we all watched in awe as they threw and flipped scoops of ice cream like pancakes. After ordering WAY too much ice cream, I honored my earlier promise – managing to drag a few others back with me too! Brian moisturized and washed his beard out in the sink. The rest of us watched in amusement (or in my case, laughed hysterically.) The bus ride back was also a good time, with exclamations from everyone on how nice they smelt, while Brain stroked his now very fluffy beard. Soon everyone was asleep and so i immediately bought out my phone and chortled at the funny pics and videos I was taking of people sleeping. At this point, Lawrence's polish demon face came into existence.
Back at the campsite, we were getting some massive warnings of heavy rain. Time was spent packing all our backpacks away and into the trailer. Now, as some background context: Every time
we left the campsite, Eve had continuously checked with me “Did you close the tent?” Of course I always had!
Naturally, it was the one day when there were flash floods that we forgot to check with each other. Half way down the highway, Eve turned to me. “Did you close the tent?” Oh shit. “I thought you were the last one who left?” I tried. “Yeah, I was… but I thought you were coming back?” We quickly saw the funny side to it and resigned to the fact that we could always sleep in the laundry mat.
We arrived at a BBQ place for dinner and I stacked up on mac and cheese and an overly sweet apricot pie. We headed out again, getting drenched in the rain. The first place we went to was so awesomely rodeo – with the lines of old people dancing, the country music, the cool games, and the old fashioned set up. Defs some good Texas vibez. Steph and I hung around as long as we could, and had a fun game of shuffleboard together. We spent the remainder of our time out at the next place we were
dropped off at. It was pretty much a younger version of the previous place. Unsurprisingly, I sucked at the whole ‘one step two step’ thing. Majorly. I spent a lot of time laughing and apologizing while various partners tried to lead me around. In the end I just ditched the idea of rhythm and danced as crazily and wildly as I could. Which was way more fun anyway. It was such a good time, with all of us whirling each other around to this awesome country music.
At around midnight the band played their last song of the night, and we decided it was a good cue to leave. While the next band got set up, we rounded everyone up and waited for the bus. This took a bit longer than anticipated… Our spirits were dropping as we shivered in the rain. Meanwhile, Brian ran around trying to find the bus and calling Jackson – who had fallen asleep in the bus with his phone on flight mode. Upon arriving at the camp site, Eve and I were shocked and pleased to find our tent surprisingly dry!
The next day was spent traveling to
New Orleans. Somewhere along the way, we stopped at Bucky’s: the most ridiculous gas station you will ever encounter. This came at a good time as I had just found out my ticket for going through a red light was going to cost me NZ $1000! It goes without saying that I was PISSED. On an already tight-ish budget, I decided I was just going to have to find a way to make it work. Just another travel story I guess… Anyone know people hiring in Canada? Anyway, Bucky’s cheered me up with their insanely clean toilets and massive fizzy drink cups. It’s bigger than a supermarket, with its own themed merchandise. I couldn’t get over the leather scented candle I found. I mean, in what situation you would want a room smelling like leather!? As I climbed back into the bus I saw everyone’s grinning faces, looking almost as insane as the beaver mascot of Buckys. The t-shirts half of our group had bought said in scrawled writing on the back “If it aint Bucky’s I aint stoppin’!” There was a lot of joking among our group about the choice of souvenir – we had been some incredible places,
yet most people had held back from buying tourist t-shirts wherever we went. We imagined how conversations would go back home: “Where did you get that t-shirt from?” “Oh, a gas station.” Nat complained of not having enough time to buy all the stuff she wanted. As she said this, she slipped on her Buckys t-shirt and adjusted her Buckys cap. From there forth she was to be known as Nat the trucker. (Creds to Eve.)
Our final bus games ensured total chaos between the two sides of the bus. I cbf explaining this in a way that will make sense. So for those that know what I’m talking about, I said “Steph” Lloyd said “Talk” and then with a lot of screaming, fist pumping and angry words exchanged, it was revealed that it was a tie. The tensions were soaring high between our group “The winners (formally known as the killers)” and group two “The losers” (I’ve forgotten what their previous name was). It was decided that as a tie breaker we would have a sudden death. Our team was just about to lose when Nat excitedly answered “North Face!” to the mountain question.
Yaaaas. We were back in the game… Somehow despite not being able to talk, Steph answered all our questions and won the game for us. Steph, u r my fav xxxx
A few funny pee stops later; we had arrived at lunch: A roadside Pop Eyes. Honestly I found the greasy and dry food a bit gross. We were driving for only another 10 minutes before we pulled up into a grassy area for the BEST SURPRISE EVER… ALLIGATORS!!! The place was an alligator sanctuary/education centre. It was incredible holding the baby alligators. Their bellies were soft underneath while their backs were tough and scaly. As we carefully passed the alligators to each other, I was handed the bigger one… Which immediately started spasming out on me! Which each twist of its body those razor teeth got closer to my arms. Those gators are STRONG. I heard someone yell “Don’t drop it!” so I tightened my hands into a death grip, trying to keep it still while it thrashed around. I learnt somewhere afterwards that you’re meant to hold them gently cause it makes them freak out less. Poor gator L Maybe it was cause the gator
had drunken too much water, or more likely the poor thing was just freakin out, but I felt something warm on my hand. Yeah that’s right, I’ve been blessed with gator pee. (Don’t mistake this for sarcasm, I’m genuinely pleased about it.) After sanitizing my hands and asking the alligator lady a billion questions, I joined everyone on the short walk back to the bus.
Eventually we made it to New Orleans! The heat of the afternoon was intense. We were all pumped to stay in a hotel. Actual beds! Unfortunately, they were understaffed and were still sorting out some of our rooms. I dumped all my stuff on the pavement and enjoyed sitting for a while, because it’s not like we hadn’t been sitting in the bus all day or anything. With our room finally ready, it was a desperate dash to shower and get ready. Our last night with everyone all together… We took one last group photo and headed off. It was about a 45-minute walk to the restaurant, where we had some traditional New Orleans food. It was starting to rain, so we headed to a shop to buy rain jackets and umbrellas.
I wandered aimlessly around the shop, not interested in spending money on trying to stay dry. Hey, if it was going to rain, I was going to get wet. Whateves. I wasn’t expecting the rain to be so insane though… Peeking out from the shop doors, the rain was pounding the pavements. It had gone from a light drizzle to torrential, monsoon rain. Stepping outside, we were drenched within a matter of seconds. I don’t think we could’ve been more wet if we had been submerged in a pool of water. We all spent the next hour whooping, dancing and laughing and running through the rain. There was a lot of leaping into dirty puddles as we tried to figure out where to go. It was one of those times that everyone is kind of looking at each other in ecstasy and wonderment. Eventually we figured out that in our excitement we had run straight past bourbon.
After walking all the way back, we finally made it to Bourbon street. We picked up some hand grenades and met the others in a bar that was playing some heavy metal. That was a good time. We were running
low on hand grenades though, so a group of us headed out to get some more. Security was checking ID’s pretty thoroughly and I still had a bit of my hand grenade left anyway, so I stayed outside. I leaned against the wall, waited, and people watched.
About half an hour passed and everyone came back out. With a bit of confusion as to where the other half of the group was, we eventually made it to the next bar.
The rest of the night consisted of lots of crazy dancing, some of the coolest drinks, meeting random Irish people on the streets, and general New Orleans antics. My favorite drink was this real strong flashing blue one, but I was also a fan of the tequila fish bowls… I don’t know how many times we screamed to “Mr Brightside” but I know it was more than twice… Upon arriving at a place we would spend most of the night at, I was ecstatic to discover another huge fountain! Hmmmm, I feel like I’m just listing things here! It’s becoming hard to write about because this was a while ago now, also its difficult to write
about these nights because of so many small happy moments, jah feel? Anyway, after some questionable karaoke our last little surviving group finally made our way back home.
I had a quick 2 hours sleep before getting up again to go sing some gospel at a church. My ringing alarm was all in vain though as we were all too tired and drowsy to sort anything out. Anyway, eventually we headed out for a vair delicious breakfast: the most amazing donut things at Café Du Monde J I had pre booked a tour of the plantations and swamps, which I was slightly starting to regret because it meant less time with the group. Anyway, I parted ways with everyone and headed to the river. After confirming my place, I looked around the markets a bit and the live demonstration of kitchen knives or something. It was slightly depressing boarding a bus with strangers, but I made friends with an enthusiastic girl from London so we had a nice chat. The plantation was crazy, I felt like I had been thrown back in time! The architecture in the massive house was beautiful, as was the lush
grass and plants. It was sad looking at how the slaves lived though. After some free time looking around, we headed back off again in our bus to the swamps to see some gators. I found out I’d be away for another 4 hours! Ah well, the massive gators were okayyy.
4 hours later I finally was back in the city and frantically took a cab just in time – everyone was going out for dinner again. I decided to miss out on my haunted tour to spend my last night with the group. However, I was putting my foot down at going out. No way. I needed to go back, have a nice lush bubble bath, pack everything up, and figure out how I was going to catch my train the following morning. In a hurry, I went out to dinner without changing – shorts, t-shirt and Jandels it would be. I figured this was good because I wouldn’t be tempted to stay out too long! At dinner I had the experience of eating some crawfish(?), although I kind of almost accidentally ate it’s butt. We finished eating…. And somehow I still ended up
going out with everyone. I think I was just putting off saying goodbye... besides I didn’t mind having another night like the one before! I just decided to just stay up all night, I could pack once I got back. Luckily, New Orleans is one of the few places my clothes situation could’ve worked. Other than ID’s, there aren’t really any rules for getting in places. You can walk around the streets and into most bars with your drinks too. The second night was a Sunday, so everything wasn’t quite as mad as the night before hand. This didn’t stop us from having a ton of fun though.
The night consisted of listening to some cool live music, giving strangers massages, pretending to be those wind things (you know, the types outside car shops?), and going back to the club with the fountain. At different points during the night we said goodbye to groups of us that were going back to the hostel. It was really sad – but it didn’t really feel real, which was probably a good thing.
At some point during the night, I think we were
going to get some hand granades when I saw a line of fortune tellers on the street. With assurances that I would see the rest of my party later, I went over and sat down on a table with a lady and her candles and cards. She got me to pick some cards and said a whole lot of bullshit. Even in a slightly altered state of mind I was still watching and listening with a detached amusement, maybe a tad cynical. She did talk about me working in medicine, so I talked to her about wanting to be a paramedic. Unsurprisingly the conversation got deep quickly. I kinda reversed the situation and ending up asking her all these questions about her life, her beliefs, and her family. She was a bat crazy. It was hilarious because she was telling me about how much she hated this one guy who was always hanging around – at first I thought she was talking about one of the other fortune tellers, but halfway through our conversation this dude came up and stared at us blankly for a long time. I saw her glare and turned around to see this random person she
obviously strongly disliked. For some reason it was hysterical and she ended up laughing along with me as the guy just kept staring at us.
Anyway, the conversation continued to the point where we were both crying a little bit. I had been anxiously glancing up and down the street as we talked to avoid missing my group walking past me. But we were very deep in conversation when I heard Jess’s familiar yell from the street “Bre’s alive!” the situation was honestly so ridiculous, I broke down laughing, thanked the lady, gave her some money and joined the rest of our party. Back at the club with the fountain, we did some more mad dancing. It was the best, we were all totally living in the moment, dancing wildly for it was our very last night all together. As places started to die down, we finally caught a taxi back. Outside the hostel, it was finally time to face the fact I was leaving. By now I had sobered up and the hugs and goodbyes were full of a few sobs L
Back in my room, I packed away all my
stuff just in time. With some quiet 5am hugs goodbye to those in my room, I sneaked out and caught my taxi to the train station. At the station I had the first vending machine meal, one of many to come. The train arrived; and with it arrived the next part of my journey. I knew things were going to kick off, so I got out of there fast.
And so concludes the coast to coast wankers. It’s incredible how many insane experiences you can have within 16 days, and the friendships you can form! But I still have somewhere in the bottom of my bag a handful of faded beaded necklaces, a sandy bandanna and some misshapen national park pamphlets. And a billion photos of course. May the spirit of Gandalf live on forever! So that’s all I have to say about C2CW!
The set up of this blog is silly so only the first few pics can be seen, if you wanna see a more visual idea of all this writing mess, click the link thingy below.
SO MUCH LOVE TO ALL
xxxxxxxxxxx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.185s; Tpl: 0.024s; cc: 5; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0599s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
