G’day all,
Well the trip of a lifetime has finally come to an end 61 countries and every continent bar Antarctica later. My last week or 2 went fairly smoothly travelling with my brother Simon and we didn’t even have any near death experiences so that was a bit boring. On our Greyhound bus ride from San Fran down to LA we amazingly had the same bus and same driver and sat in the same seats as when we caught the bus to San Fran a few days before. Robo-cop the bus driver was back to his best form dictating the bus ride and at one stage he yelled at me
to get off my phone when I was actually showing a girl some pictures on my camera. We arrived in LA early in the morning and caught a few public buses to our hostel in the beautiful suburb of Inglewood. If you can’t tell I’m being sarcastic about Inglewood as it’s the Ghetto of LA and where many of the gangs like to have street wars and get shooty with each other. The hostel however was nice and cheap so that’s why we stayed there and it had a nice big pool and free meals. I guess real estate must be cheap in the area. Once Simon and I settled in to the hostel we caught a bus straight down to Santa Monica and we went for a nice stroll along the beach to Venice Beach. This is the area where they filmed ‘Baywatch’ and it is exactly how it looked in the show. The walk up to the beach was pretty interesting as there are all different areas where the beach changed from the fa
mily zone, to the gay area, then to the muscles and fake tits area. There was a fair bit of eye candy about but you can see how fake everyone is a mile away. On our second day in LA Simon and I had a bit of a chilled out day and went out to have a look at UCLA, the famous university. UCLA was bloody huge and was like a little city within itself. We found our way to the UCLA store where they had a massive shop selling all the merchandise including everything from pens to shoes with UCLA printed all over them. On Friday we did a tour of Beverley Hills and Hollywood and saw where all the famous people lived. I’d seen it all years ago but Simon was pretty impressed and took about a thousand photos in every direction. We drove past the homes of Julia Roberts, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, Janet Jackson, J-LO, Kevin Costner, and just about every other celebrity you can imagine. Hollywood was pretty cool but a bit overrated being mainly just stars on the footpath and souvenir shops. Seeing
the Hollywood sign is always cool though but again as hard as I looked I never saw anyone famous. For the weekend Simon and I went to San Diego and we actually went first class this time and caught the train down. The train ride was amazing because it actually went along the coast just meters from the sand and you could see people surfing and sunbathing so close to you. Getting accommodation in San Diego was almost impossible and we booked it days in advanced and the only place we could stay at on the cheap was a small hostel way out in the suburbs. The hostel was basically a tiny house with a few beds in it and just ran by this lady who was way too overprotective of us and mothered us even more than our own mum. San Diego is an awesome city and probably the best in the States but t
ravelling for almost 2 hours to get back to the hostel each day really got annoying. San Diego seemed like a pretty nice chilled out city and was quiet clean and safe but the best part were the beaches. After a huge night out on the Saturday night we headed for Pacific beach where we met up with our friend Nessy who we met in San Fran on the ghost tour. The beach was packed but had a great atmosphere and seemed much more real than the fakeness of LA. Nessy was awesome and showed us all the best places to hang out then took us for a nice drive down to Mission bay then along the coast. Mission Bay was also really nice and had a big theme park on the waters edge and some really funky bars. One of the bars actually had an artificial wave in it where all the drunken patrons try to surf it in their board shorts. We had a nice sunset drive then we fare welled Nessy and sat on public transport for the next 3 hours to get home in time for bed. On Monday we bused it back to LA
big malls and bought some last minute clothes as we were flying out of the States the following day. On our last day in USA we rounded up a bunch of Irish lads and headed out to Hollywood to watch a few episodes of Dr Phil being filmed with this ticket we were given on Venice Beach. Somehow we got there in time for the 8am start after winging it on public transport from the moment the sun rose. As tired as we all were it was really interesting to watch it being filmed and we actually had the camera being on us a fair bit. The first show was about older women dating younger men so us being the youngest guys in the crowd, we had the camera on us constantly. We were pretty un-photogenic and eve and had a bit of a shopping spree day at one of thery time the camera pointed at us we laughed and elbowed each other so there’s a good chance we were cut from the show. After the show we had a bit of a walk around Hollywood again then Simon and I had to get our gear together
and head for the airport for our flight to New Zealand. The flight was 13 hours long but we left on Tuesday afternoon and arrived in Auckland on Thursday morning because of the International Date Line. It was very weird arriving in New Zealand because it’s so similar to Australia so it felt like I was home again but it wasn’t quite right. Auckland seemed like such a small city after travelling the world but it had a really nice friendly feeling to it. I think New Zealanders must be the friendliest people in the world as every one you talked to seemed to want to chat forever to you. Heading through immigration was so relaxed after the ego head American Immigration officers who basically strip search you to get from A to B at the airport. When the Immigration officer found out I was only going to be there for 4 days she was begging me to stay longer and see the place properly. She said “Cem on ya gotta stey longer den thet bro” with h
er funny little Kiwi “eccecnt.” We only stayed in Auckand for a day and a night then moved onto Rotorua. Rotorua is a tiny volcanic active town famous for its boiling mud pools and geysers and of course the smell of sulphur in the air. The mud pools and geysers were really awesome and we relaxed the night away in the natural spas in the town. Again we just spent the day and the night there then moved on the following day to a little village called National Park Village at the base of some snow covered volcanic mountains near Taupo. Neither Simon nor I knew the slightest thing about snowboarding, skiing, or the area but we decided to whip up there and give it a whirl. The lady at tourist information in Rotorua told us there would be no need
to worry about booking accommodation ahead so we just caught the bus to National Park Village. Once we arrived we went to a hotel and the guy laughed at me and said its peak season and they’ve been fully booked since about 5 days ago. The second hotel we checked out said the same thing and as he was saying it he got a phone call and somebody cancelled their twin room for the night so we got it. Dead lucky we were because it was bloody freezing and we were stuck in a tiny town without even a shop in the middle of nowhere. Even though this place was as busy as it possibly gets the town seemed like a ghost town and not a car or a person was to be seen but then we figured everybody was up on the mountain skiing. It was midday by this stage and our only day in the snow so we asked around about getting up to the snow fields which
were 20km away. Everyone we asked said there were no more shuttles or busses up there until tomorrow and the only way to get there was to hitchhike….so that’s what we did. Some random tradesman gave us a ride to the highway then we had to hitch again from there. Both Simon and I looked like a couple of homeless men as we had walked the highway with this big foldout bag that mum gave us and had our thumb out for a ride. After being told it was easy to get a ride about 20 cars drove straight past us without any hint of stopping so we decided to get some new tactics. We then hid our homeless can and bottle collecting bag in a bush and smiled and eyeballed the driver with our sad eyes and it worked first shot. A really nice lady pulled over and drove us all the way to the mountain and even gave us a bit of a tour on the way. By the time we got to the mountain we had only about 2 hours of snowboard time left for the day and luckily rented out som
e gear and headed straight for the beginners’ hill. We were too cheap to buy a ski lift pass so we ended up walking back up the hill every time we caught a ride. Apparently it’s the best snow fall they had in about 50 years and the conditions were perfect with blue skies and plenty of powder so the place was packed to the rim with thousands of skiers and snowboarders. We had a heap of fun and after 2 hours I was snowboarding like a champion and could even stop so I was pretty proud of myself. Simon and I had to share 1 pair of gloves the whole day so every time our hands got too cold we swapped for 10 minutes. After returning our gear it was time to figure out how to get back to the village and the bus was no option again so we were back t
o hitchhiking once again. After our 4th hitched ride for the day we finally got back to the hotel and crashed out with exhaustion. The following day we caught a train back to Auckland which broke down on the way. We spent our last night of the 18 month trip just relaxing and chatting to fellow backpackers in our hostel dorm. On our last few hours before flying back to Australia we ran around and spend our last dollars on souvenirs before heading to the airport. Arriving back in Adelaide was so weird after being away for so long and I didn’t know if I was feeling happy or sad about it. Let’s see how long I can stay here for now without the travel bug taking over again.
Thanks for reading my blog!
Woodsy
Labels: auckland, baywatch, california, hollywood, los angeles, new zealand, paul wood, rotorua, san diego, travel book, venice beack
