Team America

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Our first flight from Christchurch to Aukland was entirely uneventful so they decided to mix things up a little and delay our flight from Aukland to LA by 5 hours on top of the 3 we already had to wait. This was not much fun and the only food on offer was burger king which was not a good start to two weeks in America.

We finally arrived in LA (strangely enough before we actually left Aukland when you account for the time difference) and caught a shuttle to the car rental place. This saw the begining of the upgrades. We had spent time in Queenstown finding the cheapest possible car yet when we were offered the enhanced insurance option we felt it prudent to accept. We were then offered sat nav and given the distance we had to cover and the fact that we would have had to buy a map anyway, we accepted this too. We were then Offered a convertable and given that we'd just accepted to other two options, it made sense to take this one too.

We had booked the cheapest accomodation we could find and really had no idea where it was in relation to anything else. Maybe I have listened to too much hip hop in my time but I was not overly happy about driving down roads like Compton Avenue and watching Inglewood go past on the sat nav. This was made slightly worse by the number of kids dealing on the street corners and the fact that we were the only idiots on the road driving around with the roof down!

After regrouping in our hotel room we took a drive to Hollywood (with the roof up) went to a fairly typical American diner and had just about the only thing that was on offer, a burger. We had a quick wander around the streets then headed back to get some sleep. Rachel who had had less sleep than me on the plane took this quite seriously and actually slept for a total of 16 hours.

The next morning we hopped back into Clyde and set a course for Vegas.

Up to this point I had been displaying some fiarly intersting driving skills and was only just starting to get the hang of it. My excuses being that I was jet lagged, everything is back to front in this country and central LA is not a good location for beginners.

We stopped for brunch in the place that looked most suitable and had the best thing on offer which was a giant sub! Rachel saw her first cop on a Segway, burst out laughing and told me he looked like a wanker. Still slightly concerned about being shot, I asked her to keep her voice down.

The rest of the drive was pretty cool, the roof came down and we retreived our CD which had taken us around Australia. It was starting to feel like a real American roadtrip.

We arrived in Vegas and on checking in to the Stratosphere decided to get some more upgrades but in our defence this one was a bit of a no brainer. For a total of $80 we had a huge room with a living area, two TVs and a jaccuzi which Rachel was in by the time I'd walked through the front door. We took a short walk along the strip, had our free beer with our pizza and called it a night.

The following day we woke up, got some show tickets, refueled with a Denny's breakfast then set about walking the strip. I was walking a bit slower than usual, you know you've eaten a lot when you have 3 empty plates in front of you. We walked as far as the New York New York and after a ride on their Roller coaster we headed back to get showered, get done food and make our way to the Blue Man Group. Due to my poor calculation, we pretty much had to run to get to the show on time but we made it.

I was originally concerned that we wouldn't get the proper Vegas experience but I couldn't have been more wrong. The show was awesome, we followed it with a bottle of wine at the Wynn, I lost $50 at the poker table whilst Rachel beat the system on the slot machines, then we went to support the band playing in the hotel. We woke up around 10.30 and weren't really feeling too hot so enjoyed a room service breakfast and a movie before finally leaving the room at about 2.30.

That evening we went to see Cirque Du Soleil which was also amazing and I think better than the previous nights show, we went to watch the musical fountain outside the Belagio which almost made Rachel cry and then headed back.

The following morning was quite a depressing one. We had fun in Vegas but the truth is that it's a disgusting place and I think it left us feeling a bit disgusting. When you consider the number of people living in poverty in the US alone then look around at this ridiculous place which serves no function other than to ruin peoples lives with gambling, make the people at the top richer than they already are and help use up what's left of the worlds resources so that they can power their volcanoe simulation. I don't think we had one meal which wasn't served on polystyrene with plastic cutlery.

After a long drive we stopped for petrol and realised that climbing around 5,000 feet had caused a slight temperature change and it felt s bit like Christmas for the first time.

We went for a steak and pork chops at a family restaurant and got some sleep in preparation for our trek into the canyon. We already had that now familiar sense of being out of the city and into the country. People are actually interested in being polite and don't look at you like they want to spit on you.

We headed for the canyon in the morning and picked our route. I had a rough idea what to expect but to see it first hand is a real experience. After the first few steps I was already loving it and was disappointed that we weren't doing the two day trek to the canyon floor. However we were warned that we should allow double the time taken to walk down to walk back up again and after walking a total of 6 miles with an elevation change of 2,040 feet I was glad that there was no more walking to be done tomorrow. Instead we were planning to get an early start for our two day drive to San Fran Cisco.

We set off early and covered a lot of diastance pretty quickly. We stopped for a charbroiled burger and if I'm honest I still don't knowwhat that is. I really had no intention of driving all the way to San Francisco but there didn't seem much worth stopping for on the way.  Rachel kept us entertained on the way by inventing games such as 'answer the question correctly and win a cheeto' and after 13 and a half hours of driving we were in what turned out to be a pretty nice room in the Civic Centre Holiday Inn. Spirits were high and we were looking forward to our day in San Francisco City.

Unfortunately what we were greeted with was the harsh reality that 50% of the population was homeless, insane or a combination of the two. It really is quite astuonding. We made our way into the shopping centre and strangely enough the homelessness disappeared. I got the impression they weren't welcome where it was warm.

We continued wandering the city before taking some cheese and wine back to our room and booking our Alcatraz trip.

On the way to the Pier the next day Rachel gave her crossaint to a homeless guy. I didn't see him eat it which made me curious how much crack cocaine you can get for one crossaint.

Alcatraz was awesome. It was good to be back on a daytrip again after doing about 3 a day in New Zealand. We continued up the pier to Fishermans Wharf which is a pretty touristy area of the city. It's like Hastings pier but a little bit better. We had met a guy in the shopping centre who had recommend that we take a trip to his wine bar and given that we were in the area it would have been rude not to. We ended up getting a bottle to take away and went back for the evening.

On our last day we took a drive to Golden Gate Park which was quite frankly disappointing. Americans seem to rave about it and think it's a really beutiful place but given the choice I would rather spend the day in Dunorlan. That evening we went to watch the ballet which wasn't as bad as it could have been. It was slightly lacking in dialogue and I'm pretty sure that I can dance better than a lot if those kids.

We left San Francisco in the morning and started the drive down Highway one. It wasn't long before I think we both decided that this was one of the best parts of our American trip. We took Clydes top off, did some shopping in Santa Cruz which looked like a really cool city, ate some homemade chocolate then found a bed for the night in Monterey.

Our night in Monterey ended up being a drunk one. We went for a beer in the Crown and Anchor (yes it's an English pub) and got talking politics with some of the locals then went to the mucky duck for a half price dinner (i think that was an English pub too).

After breakfast we took our sore heads for a walk to the wharf and when Rachel finally acknowledged that we were unlikely to see any sea otters we hit the road again.

It was around this time that the sky fell down. The weather has failed to interfere with our trip for the most part but it really did try it's best for the next few days. When the sun had gone down the visibility was practically nothing and the spray on the road was imense. At on point we had to pull over and decide wheter or not to drive through the flooded patch if road. It was at that exact moment that a passing train decided to sound its horn and I'm pretty sure that Rachel actually poo'd her pants if only a little bit. We were planning to stay in Santa Maria but it looked a bit ropey so we found a bed in a place called Lompoc. Turned out that was next to a federal prison but we made it through the night. We hadn't eaten for a while and had a craving for KFC which I probably shouldn't even get started on. They don't sell fries, you don't get a drink with your meal and they serve everything with biscuit which can best be described as a scone. I think this was also the cause of me being ill the next day.

We stopped for a look at Santa Barbara and by the time we got to Ventura I was really not feeling happy so we found a place to spend the night. I was asleep by about 5 and felt bad for ruining the day but it turned it that Rachel had one of the best nights if our trip so far. She watched Christmas movies all night and I didn't even wake up to complain.

We stopped in Malibu the next morning then took a look at some of the midiocre houses around Rodeo Drive and Bel-air. The rain had followed us from San Francisco so there wasn't a great deal to do but we found our last American bed then went for a walk in the rain. Feeling better by now we had some dinner and retired for an early night before we fly to Toronto tomorrow.

We had a cool time in the states and it's a big place which no doubt has a lot more to offer but I don't think it is my favourite place in the world. There's a real irony in the president sending troops to civilise countries overseas when they seem to be doing little to look after their own people and the saddest thing about it is that the some if the people we have met don't even see the problem, they just understand that that's the way things are and don't really seem to question it.

Tomorrow is that start of week 18 out of 18 which seems nothing short of ridiculous. Just 7 days and we'll be getting our last flight home.

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