It always begins with madness...and American's! - Santa Barbara, CA
Santa Barbara, CA
So here I go with blogging it seems, definitely never an avenue I imagined myself going down! We have only been gone from Whistler, Canada for 10 days and have managed to get ourselves into a whole range of strange yet great situations!
We arrived in Portland via a quick and easy border crossing (unlike last time when I was ridesharing with a guy whose car got searched and had a suitcase full of sex toys in the back) and made our way to our first couchsurfing (CS) host of the trip. We wandered the leafy american avenues and turned up outside a beautiful house which had goats and chickens in the garden and a old school blue bike hanging from the rafters of the porch. We stayed three nights in this big semi-communal house with fantastic and really interesting Portlanders, shared meals cooked from the veg plot in the garden and saw an mbira performance by world renouned Zimbabwean mbira players in the front room of the house. We also witnessed more than 1,000 swifts all somehow fit themselves into a school chimny to sleep for the night, it was like watching the never ending objects appear out of Mary Poppin's bag!
After Portland we found a ride south on Craigslist with an Israeli couple. We headed for the coast and followed the 101 (very very slowly) along the rugged Oregon coastline, camping where ever we could find a pull in at the side of the road. The first night we spent on a grassy verge near a beautiful river which we washed in as the sun rose, we cooked over a fire which Jeremy (the fire and dog master) easily got started. The next day brought ore beautiful beaches and we crossed over into supposedly sunny California. We spent this night camped in another lay-by where we both hardly slept, largely due to the fact that I had the great idea that instead of having a camping mat each, we could just cut one in half. We had such fitful sleep interrupted by the hammering rain and wind on the side of our tent which was perched at the edge of a cliff (to avoid the road traffic noise) and each of us moaning how uncomfy it was!
The next day we spent exploring the redwoods and running around being childish, climbing trees, jumping stuff, that old jazz! We ended up in Arcata, a small town in North California which seems to be the hub of the weed growing industry. Young travelers and 'gutter punks' head here for the trimming season which is about to begin so the town is full of people with dogs and backpacks, just waiting around with cardboard displaying crude drawings of scissors in an attempt to find work on one of the many farms in the mountains. It was really interesting to seehow fine the line is between the legality and illegality of weed in California, Arcata is a town that pretty much is built on money from the industry.
Talking of weed, we spent the night couchsurfing with a guy at his place just on the outskirts of the town. When we arrived we were met by two barking pitbulls with the fattest heads imaginable, when we were sat outside on the deck they would play fight around us and it would turn into proper fighting and I feared for my fingers! Then, when Angel (the girl top dog) won the fight as she always did she would mount Yogi and dry hump him whilst we all watched on! Very strange! Out on the deck, even in the night we could tell that we were surrounded by weed plants. We were chatting to some of the people staying there and this one girl, Pirate was telling us about where she worked up in the mountains on a farm. The farm was on the territory of a mountain lion which she had regular encounters with, so many that she even gave her a name, Karen! There was also a family of black bears who regularly were wandering around but obviously, because we are in America, she had guns for protection!
On Wednesday we left the Israeli's and headed off on our lonesome, dropped on a corner of highway 101 we walked up the side of the road with the sun glimmering on the marshes directly to our right until we found an optimum hitching spot (always of great importance) and stuck out our thumbs. After a short ten minute's an old, bright orange Westphalia camper van pulled in and out climbed Timmy, a tall, chunky guy with thick blonde dreads, a disintegrating Grateful Dead t-shirt and blue dungaree's. He came round to open the door for us and 2 dogs jumped out onto the side of the highway and had to be recaptured before we climbed into the back seat and headed off slowly. We got chatting with Christine, Timmy's girlfriend, a red headed, loud and lovely New Yorker who was in the front seat, but before long we had a petrol problem and the old van was running low but there was no need to worry as we were about to have our first experience of 'jugging'. Jugging, a common past-time of the travelling poor involves going to a petrol station (generally with no attendant on duty due to the illegal nature) and going up to people at the pumps who are filling their cars, jerry can in hand and asking for a splash of gas. They had managed to get across America, in 5 months, only spending $200 on gas! We were amazed but it actually works and later on in the journey when we ran out of gas again I was pushed out into the gas station (due to my English accent that the Americans love), can in hand and headed for a man at one of the pumps, told him we had ran out of gas and could he spare a little, he filled nearly the whole can, 4 gallons which gave me the status of a pro-jugger! (or so I reckon) As the evening approached we were going to split and take another road so got down from the van at a place called Leggit, where we saw some other hitchers who it turned out had been stuck there all day. This probably had a lot to do with the fact that they had scabies (Timmy later told us) and two dogs in tow. So we made the snap decision that Leggit probably wasn't the best place to get stuck so carried on with Timmy and Christine along the 101 into the night. When they took their turning towards Sacramento we jumped out and ended up spending the night on a small piece of grass between two highways (luckily we had ear plugs), camped in some trees directly next to a pile of animal bones which we discovered in the light of the morning!
We packed up, had a delightful breakfast sat in the sunshine next to the highway and then continued on our way. Before we had even stuck out our thumb a truck pulled up aside us and we jumped in on our way to Santa Rosa. The guy who picked us up was telling us many a tale of the bears he had killed this summer, three to be precise!
From Santa Rosa centre we struggled to get back onto the main highway heading to the coast, we were stood in one of the worst hitching spots I have ever experienced but had little choice. Cars were going way too fast to stop and we stood very little chance of being picked up, and we knew it! A red van passed us and 5 minutes after it pulled up on another road just behind us. We struggled over the big wire fence between us, I say we struggled, I really mean I struggled whilst Jeremy hopped over! It was then we met the one and only, Mike Geyser. Within a few minutes of being in the van it came up that he had been in the porn industry for 7 years, we didn't really ask any questions and the conversation flowed on to other topics. We didn't really have much of a plan so we ended up driving round the local area where he had grown up for hours. We went with him to watch the sunset over the rugged beach and as we drove up over a hill we spotted the full moon rising up over the mountains into the clear sky, it was truly amazing! By then, after a few beers the topic of porn had risen again and we had been presented with a kind gift from our new found friend, a signed copy of his latest project, a porno starring him. 'Mike Geyser: I exploit myself Vol.1... With 6 cum dumping scenes!' What can you do but laugh!!
Instead of camping as we were planning on doing we ended up going to a local bar with Geyser in his tiny village of Occidental. As we walked into the sound of a guy singing live country covers and took our seat up at the bar we felt like we were truly in America!! By this time it was too late to set up camp and Mike had offered that we could pitch up at his parents place, where he now lived after falling out of porn. We pulled up to the gate to be greeted by a massive metal sculpture of a siamese cat glued to the gate as a welcome. It was then that this tale got even crazier, turns our his mum had recently become a mad cat women and was now on a cat collecting mission, only siamese cats mind, and she already had a total over 80 which had taken over out building, bed rooms, pretty much everywhere! In the morning when I went to the toilet in one of the cat houses I cleverly took it upon myself to do a little undercover filming! But going back to the night, the craziness had only begun. We went and sat in Mikes bedroom, a reclaimed cat room where he slept on a camping mat surrounded by 40oz bottles of malt liquor, the cheapest you can buy. He asked if we wanted to watch a movie, and we, being the little naive kids we are thought he might put on The Lion King or something, instead we sat there on boxes seemingly watching one of his porno's! We both literally looked each other in shock but laughing, trying to ascertain whether this was actually happening! The movie we were informed was 'cast porn' which there is supposedly a big market for. In it the girl has part of her body put into cast, as though it is broken, in this movie she was in cast up to her shoulder and Geyser was having sex with her, it was so bizarre and an insight into a world I know very little about! It was fascinating but such a weird situation at the same time.
We decided not to spend the whole night up watching porn with Geyser so went out to sleep in the back of his van on the driveway. As we were laying there in the dark I began to think over the situation and whispered to Jeremy, "is it was a bit weird that we were sleeping in the van of a porn guy who has been making us watch his videos, on the property of a mad cat woman, in the middle of nowhere with very little idea of where we are? Should I lock the doors? He answered back with a definite yes and "should I get my knife out?" So we spent the night there with a knife under our pillows and survived it, awaking in the morning to Mike Geyser knocking on his own van window which he was locked out of!
MIke dropped us off in the tiny Western looking town of Tomales after taking us for breakfast and we sat out in the sunshine wondering what adventures this day would bring. After half an hour an old purple 1980's GMC van pulled over and we jumped in, greeted by what would become my favourite dog in the world, Myla. Kelsey and Kyle who picked us up immediately heard all about our Mike Geyser experience which was still hot on our minds! They were a couple, our age from up in Washington, and like the majority of other young people we met in the area, they were trimmers and had spent the last month up in the mountains. They were on their way down to visit a friend in Santa Cruz and seeing as we had no plan again we decided to go with them. We stopped off at Point Reyes State Park on the way and had burrito's on the beach. It was here that we found out that Myla the dog was going into womanhood and was on her first heat so was bleeding. To stop her bleeding all over the bed in the van Kelsey decided to cut a tail hole in a pair of her own knickers which were then tied onto poor Myla. She looked like a dog model, about to head for a swim in her beautiful swimwear!
We didn't arrive in Santa Cruz until after dark and hadn't been able to contact the guy we were meant to be couchsurfing with so Kyle and Kelsey asked their friend Franny if we could maybe stay with her for the night. One night turned into three so we hung out with them all at Franny's dads house in the hills of Santa Cruz, enjoying his hot-tub and beautiful views! We had to keep double checking that we weren't overstaying our welcome but it was so good to sleep in a real bed!
On the day we left, after a swim with the guys we headed back up on the freeway where after five minutes a cop car pulled over and told us it was illegal to be hitching on the freeway. So there we were scared that we were going to be fined or something for ignoring the massive sign telling us NO PEDESTRIANS ON THE FREEWAY, instead, the cop tells us to climb into the backseat (behind the cage bars) and that he would drive us to a better spot! He ended up driving us halfway to our destination, giving us his life story about being an aspiring actor in LA before finding Christ and following a new career path in the force. Me and Jez kept giggling to ourselves in the back about being like criminals in the back seat! When he dropped us off I obviously asked if we could have a picture and then he parted by giving us a religious $1trillion bill.
After another ride we ended up in Monterey, a seaside town a couple of miles from Pacific Grove where we were headed to couchsurf for a couple of nights. We decided to walk there along the promenade and although it was a long walk with our backpacks it was well worth it! As we were walking along a youngish guy ran up behind us, making us think maybe we had dropped something but instead he caught up with us, asked us if we were hitch-hikers and when we replied that we were he got out his wallet and gave us $20, telling us to treat ourselves to a nice dinner! He went on to tell us that he had just hitched all around the states and just wanted to help us out. We were truly amazed at his generosity and, as hitching usually does, it restored my faith a little more in the general kindness of humans.
As we continued walking we stopped to ask a couple from Toronto if we were headed in the right direction, we got chatting, telling them all about our trip and also what had just happened with the $20. When we parted ways the man pushed a $20 into Jez's hand! $40, unasked for in the space of ten minutes, we just must have really good looking faces! What we really found in America is that people were really interested in what we were doing, maybe because it is something that they would never really consider doing, because it is oh so DANGEROUS to hitch in America, we really found that the whole way people went out of their way to help us on our journey south.
We spent two nights couchsurfing with a lovely guy John, who had also hitched all across America. Jeremy attempted surfing for the first time in a very non-beginner spot, where if he had managed to properly catch a wave he was likely to have ended up washed up on craggy rocks!
From Pacific Grove, Kelsey and Kyle came to pick us up and we continued on Highway 1, headed to Big Sur and Sykes hot springs and after a grueling uphill ten mile hike we arrived just in time to dip into the hot springs as the sun was setting. We then lay, drinking rum, in a natural hot spring looking up at the amazing night sky which made the hike more than worthwhile! We spent the next two days there and met a guy one the second day who ran up to us shouting "I have a present for you guys, where can we make a fire?" Turns out he had managed to catch a massive rainbow trout from the stream with his bare hands. We started up a fire in our camp and cooked it up with fresh lemons from John's tree in Pacific grove and a big lentil stew. All the people from surrounding camps came to join us and share the fish. We later found out that it was actually a highly endangered species in the area. (Probably because it's so dumb it can be caught by a man's hands!)
When we left Big Sur it was early evening and we were worrying that we wouldn't be able to get a lift but once again, luck prevailed and we were picked up within ten minutes. Ben, the guy who picked us up, a shoe salesman, was only driving down the road but we thought at least it was a step in the right direction. It turned out to be a great ride and we ended up going to a posh restaurant overlooking a gorgeous sunset over the Pacific whilst the mountains rose up on the other side of us and Ben bought us dinner and beer, courtesy of his company! He then told us about the Henry Miller Library which was just down the road so when we parted we headed towards it in the dark and were greeted by the sound of singing. We followed a trail of fairy lights towards the music and found ourselves on a beautiful porch outside the library listening to a woman singing and playing guitar. She was followed by Panda, a kiwi who played guitar like no one I have ever seen, strumming, bashing, tapping into a strange but cool sound.
By the time we left the library it was dark and we had nowhere to sleep so headed out along the highway with our backpacks on our backs, there seemed to be nowhere good to camp and after getting fed up with each other we pitched the tent on a pile of branches (thinking it would be comfier than the ground) about 5 metres from the side of the highway, slightly ignoring the sign saying PRIVATE PROPERTY. Around six in the morning we both were awoken by someone shaking the tent and shouting "get the **** out of here, this is private property!" ******* off an American on their property where they can legally have a gun is not the best of ideas so we quickly packed up the tent and escaped before he came back with some dogs or something to tear us up! On the plus side though we were up in time to have breakfast whilst watching the sun rise.
Although it was early we managed to hitch a ride pretty fast, getting picked up by two Parisian guys who had been at the library performance the night before. They drove us all the way to Santa Barbara, stopping to see elephant seals and fields of zebra on the way. Santa Barbara is the epitome of SoCal, how I had imagined LA to be before I realised it was a **** hole! Santa Barbara had a beautiful golden beach and roads lined by perfect palm trees and obviously real life Barbie's and Ken's strolling down the promenade carrying surfboards or long boarding!
We were having a struggle finding somewhere to stay as everything was expensive and couchsurfing had fallen through so we went to get something to eat and think out our options. Whilst eating burritos at the side of the road I was eavesdropping on some students conversation who were sat by us. I overheard one mention that he had slept on the beach somewhere so I immediately jumped in and asked where we might be able to do that. We all got chatting and then somehow got invited by them to go to Isla Vista, a university town just outside Santa Barbara where 90% of the towns population are students! It was here I managed to fulfill one of my lifelong dreams... drinking from a red plastic cup at a college party! The Americans all thought I was crazy making a big deal out of the red cup thing but come on, it's such a cliche! Before we headed out onto the streets to search for house parties we went to the 'liquor store' which was lined from the floor to the ceiling with beers, spirits and every other kind of alcohol imaginable and it was all SO CHEAP! I kept laughing to myself about it all which didn't help the view of me everyone must have formed already. Crazy English girl who laughs at liquor bottles and gets over excited about drinking from a red plastic cup!
Once again, luck was with us and we spent the night at the student's we had met house instead of on the beach and the next day two of them were heading to LA so we managed to get a lift with them. Once again I discovered that LA is a total dive and we spent the night in the city's favourite, most luxurious hostel in Inglewood where the grocery store had bulletproof glass and the staff were more miserable than you can imagine, but hey ho, you get free muffins! The next night we decided to treat ourselves, it was our last night on the continent after all so we went to WISPA, a Korean spa/ bathhouse. For a bargain $35 we were given matching t-shirts and khaki shorts on arrival before heading into our separate male/ female floors where we then had to strip down to our birthday suites to enjoy the hot-tubs, saunas, showers and 'vanity area'. After a thorough cleansing we met up on the co-ed floor to enjoy dry saunas with hot salt, jade, clay and just plain old hot hot before grabbing some mats and sleeping in a room full of Koreans on a heated marble floor.
And so the day of departure arrived and we prepared to fly south. We were all excited obviously at the airport, ready for the next big adventures and then our luck turned! We went to check in for our flight only to be told that in order to enter Colombia we had to have a return flight or proof of onward travel, which we didn't have! We then went into a desperate panic, searching desperately on the internet for a cheap flight or bus only to find it was likely to cost us $300 upwards to buy a flight we wouldn't even use. By chance I came across a post on a travel forum mentioning you could buy a return flight with our airline and then cancel it within 24 hours, a little fact the woman at the desk hadn't thought to inform us of! Things had brightened or so we thought, we collected up our stuff ready to check in, only to discover we couldn't find Jeremy's passport. After frantically emptying out all the bags and scaring ourselves shitless we found it tucked into the guidebook and put away in Jeremy's bag which lead to some blame being directed at me for the stress! Eventually we managed to check-in, board our flight and arrive in Bogota, SOUTH AMERICA where our excellent adventure will continue!
I really hope you have enjoyed reading about our travels so far, it has turned out to be a fair bit of writing but that's what comes from a very interesting trip. More than anything we want to sing the praises of the amazing people who picked us up whilst hitching or let us couchsurf (officially and unofficially) with them, told us their funny stories and shared their time with us. Without these people and their generosity throughout making the decision to pick up two scummy hitchers from the side of the road this blog would be a lot shorter and definitely more boring! Hitching is great, couchsurfing is great and more than anything people are great! We can only hope that South America brings us such wonderful experiences as America did.