As I mentioned in my last post the GT was an incredible experience. Lying on a communAL bed is a great way to travel, especially when the beers get flowing. Over the last week we did:
Joshua Tree National Park (NP) where we managed to get lost on a 1 mile hike (those mountains needed to be tamed!) and ended up sprinting through the prickly desert to try and find our bus. There was blood a-flowin and stories-a-tellin after that one. The campsite there was beautiful, framed by incredible rocks and a most spectacular sunset. I slept under the stars that night waking a few times to admire the bright moon and the incredible array of stars. The next morning I was up in time for sunrise which I watched from a rock about 50ft off the ground. Listening to the coyotes howling while watching the sun rise behind a mountain with a plain of joshua trees in the foreground was some experience.
After that we drove to Zion NP in Utah where we hiked the Angels landing trail. This was a vertical rise of about 2000ft over 5 miles, a ten mile round trip. The last half mile rises about 800 of those feet with sheer drops either side of slippy, crumbling rocks. We did it as a group of ten of us (team tame - we like to tame nature) and got through the tough bits by focussing on what was for dinner that night! At Zion we had to say goodbye to our old friends on the old bus and transfer to a new bus with a new driver. About 15 of us made the transfer but were not impressed by the new "groovy" driver and his 24 year old hippy girl sidekick.
From Zion we drove to Bryce Canyon which is full of the famous hoodoos, vertical slabs of rock sticking up like stalagmites (is that the right one?) in a cave. Pretty incredible stuff. We hiked 8 miles around the canyon which once again provided us with an incredible sunset. This set us up for our first night drive where we had to sleep on the bus. I managed to yoink a bunk with about 1ft of space to squeeze into. I spent the night holding on for dear life as we turned hairpin bends and rocked our way to Arches NP.
Arches NP in some state somewhere (we were losing track at this stage) is full of the famous arches. Pretty tame trek and we were getting pretty bored of rocks at this stage.
This meant that by the time we got to Monument Valley, home of the navajo natives (injuns if you will) we were sick of rocks! we camped overnight under the stars by an incredible canyon with the snaking colorado below us which was slick as you like. The tour around the valley in a jeep was pretty poor (this rock looks like elvis, this one we call the weeping eagle etc...) I'd love to hear about the natives history and how they live now (pretty well it seems, they're all obese) but they were more interested in rocks that looked like things. woop....
Finally we managed to get a night out, we pulled up to a place called pace, full of yahoos. The steak house was pretty poor but reassuringly expensive. Nonetheless it was our first bit of meat in a week so we wolfed it down. From there we hit up a kareoke bar which went a bit mental. The groovy driver tried his best to be a young man (not happening buddy) and the rest of us made fools of ourselves. We piled back onto the bus at 1.30am for 4 hours of incredibly cramped "sleeping" where we had side lying room only, if that.
We arrived at the Grand Canyon at 6am and the hikers had some brekkie. I was heading down with team "all the way" the next day for an overnighter so we had the day off. Lucky that as we were pretty hungover and sleep deprived. I got my washing done, ate a big fried breakfast and went off to the rim to check out the canyon. It's pretty grand alright. Kinda like the dodder valley but feckin huuuuge and completely different. The GC was also a highlight as it was our first place to shower in four days (we had dipped into lakes and rivers but no showers).
The next morning we packed our bags and lunches and trekked the bright angel trail to the bottom of the canyon with a 4 hour stop off halfway to play cards and avoid the sun. Near the bottom we met up with team 3/4s for a swim in the colorado and to pose for some rather strange muscle-man photos. I'll leave it to your imagination!
Team all the way made it to the campsite 10 miles in by sunset and cooked up a feast of mountain house freeze dried space food followed by whiskey and cocao (thanks jane!). We slept out overnight only for the alarm to go off at 3.40am. We had to get up early to avoid the sun and get back to the bus for our departure at 11am. The first two hours were spent walking by headtorch, it was pretty cool watching seven lights bob their way up a canyon side. We reached half way after 90 minutes (a quick 4.5miles given the gradient) and had breakfast of sambos and energy bars. We trekked on after a few minutes and made it to the top by 8.40, just over four hours after setting off. OUr pace was pretty good as we climbed 1700ft over 10 miles in just over 3 hours of hiking. Needless to say we had a little sleep on the bus.
So we went to vegas (with a one hour breakdown in the desert on the way - overheating bus) where i stayed in circus circus with the kielys and our new friend ray the kuwaiti rig worker who comes from kiwiland. We gambled, saw le reve (ask jane about it) and generally wandered around for two days before hitting here.
On my way back from the post office in LV I spotted a hippy rainbow crusted campervan. I had a little giggle at those damn hippies and forgot about it. Until I got to the hostel in san diego and there was the very same camper van. Turns out it was owned by 8 irish kids who've been travelling around for the last month. We're now thinking of buying it for $500 and heading to mexico!! I've got some convincing to do but it would be sooo much fun!!
if you want to talk me out of it now's your chance!
Anyway that brings me to here, san diego, where we have two more nights before heading to mehico. More alventures to come. I'll keep you posted.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Green Tortoise Week 1
Having left Jane to fend for herself with the mac version of "head over heels" in Seattle airport I met up with Rob, Fi, Bruce (the car) and Sheila (the sat nav). We took the monorail to the skytower-spaceship-yokie, wandered around for about five minutes then headed to meet Brucie to go camping. We loaded up and took the ferry to Vacher island off Seattle where we stayed at a hostel / ranch full of families. We fit right in throwing frisbees and drinking beer. It was a quiet enough night which was needed after a big exciting day spend with Jane.
The next day we drove to Tacoma, just south of Seattle to meet up with one of the US kids who did a JYA in UCD. Turns out he was having a house party full of first years ("i've just turned 21, my life is soooo over") and bicep toting creatine freaks. good fun though, rob and i showed them how to party by being last up.
after that we took a week to head down the east coast of oregon stopping at national parks to camp along the way. ask jane what it's like as she probably went everywhere i went!
now i'm on day 10 ish of the green tortoise. what an invention!! i've met so many people from 20 year old summer students to 69 year old rita from glasgow ("my kids don't know i'm here!"). it's a great mix of people.
the green tortoise bus is a regular bus but without the seats. the entire back of the bus is a bed so you can laze around all day, go for a nap or sit up against the windows and admire the view. in the middle you have the dinettes for cards and dice and up front there are two sofa type creations which turn into another bed platform when needed. it's a great way to travel. sleepy? just hit the back deck, or the womb as we call it, and lie down for a nap. aaaaahhh, luvly.
we've had one night drive so far where 34 people are able to sleep at once. there are 8 on the bunks, 4 on the dinettes, 4 below the dinettes and the rest on the beds. pretty impressive.
The next day we drove to Tacoma, just south of Seattle to meet up with one of the US kids who did a JYA in UCD. Turns out he was having a house party full of first years ("i've just turned 21, my life is soooo over") and bicep toting creatine freaks. good fun though, rob and i showed them how to party by being last up.
after that we took a week to head down the east coast of oregon stopping at national parks to camp along the way. ask jane what it's like as she probably went everywhere i went!
now i'm on day 10 ish of the green tortoise. what an invention!! i've met so many people from 20 year old summer students to 69 year old rita from glasgow ("my kids don't know i'm here!"). it's a great mix of people.
the green tortoise bus is a regular bus but without the seats. the entire back of the bus is a bed so you can laze around all day, go for a nap or sit up against the windows and admire the view. in the middle you have the dinettes for cards and dice and up front there are two sofa type creations which turn into another bed platform when needed. it's a great way to travel. sleepy? just hit the back deck, or the womb as we call it, and lie down for a nap. aaaaahhh, luvly.
we've had one night drive so far where 34 people are able to sleep at once. there are 8 on the bunks, 4 on the dinettes, 4 below the dinettes and the rest on the beds. pretty impressive.
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| From Green Tortoise Wk 1 |
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| From Green Tortoise Wk 1 |
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| From Green Tortoise Wk 1 |
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| From Green Tortoise Wk 1 |
Monday, September 15, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Friday, August 1, 2008
Vancouver
Sitting in dublin airport for six hours trying not to buy irish tat seems like an age ago as I sit in a humid hostel in downtown Vancouver. I should have known things were a little off as our plane was delayed three hours. Being diligent travellers we'd all checked in three hours early which meant six hours of hanging out. Luckily there were 30 of us so banter wasn't exactly limited. It was fun watching the people doing the dublin-london commute that I had so frequented.... aaahhh, sweet freedom was in the air.
We flew with Globespan (globewho?) in premium economy. For premium read "cramped, stuffy" as it was the worst long haul jet i'd ever seen. The seats were ryanairesque but filthy, the arm rest was held together with duct tape, the toilet had a hand written "out of order sign" on it, the food was woeful, the tvs were tiny and very far away, the movies were 10 years old etc etc etc....
After 9 hours of that we got to vancouver to be greeted by a robotic immigration man "why are you here, where are you staying, when are you leaving". I managed to sneak into the country and finally smell that unique arrivals smell of baggage, kerosene, humidity and excitement.
Our hostel on the first night was beautiful, it was an old converted barracks by jericho beach in it's own grounds. All 18 of us were in one long room for two nights. The weather was pretty woeful so we mainly slept, played cards and did some light training on a pitch that I'd played summer league on years before.
Two days later we moved to UBC to our home for the next 12 days. After a few days training the tournament got under way. We were in the group of death with australia (17-9), GB (17-7), Germany (16-8) and the cheating colombians (12-8) and venezuelans (17-12). This put us into the bottom bracket where we finished 14th overall. The spirit prize cheered us up nicely. I'm not really up for doing a full report on the games but suffice to say they were incredibly tiring but fun.
On finals day our team had decided to do $17 saturday which involves dressing up a teammate using $17 of charity shop clothes and watching the final dressed like an eejit. what we didn't bargain for was being hauled up in front of 4000 people to collect our spirit trophy dressed like straw chewin hicks! ah the fun.
The trouble with going on the booze after a month off it is that you forget the simple things such as: look after your phone and wallet and don't break your laptop. Unfortunately I didn't do any of this and ended up having a bit of a shocker. I'm waiting on new cards to make their way over to me (mum - we need to have a quick chat about that one!).
So we managed to get out of UBC, finally, with a group of six of us intent on having fun (JD, Ois, Brian mcdev, Rob K and Pete Forde from cark). Trouble is, we had no plan! At about 5pm we headed downtown to get a hostel. We didn't bargain for a big gig being on in town and all the hostels being full. We were a bit stuck, unwilling to head back out to UBC or Jericho so we hopped on the horseshoe bay express, got our footlong subway sambos and boarded a ferry to nanaimo on vancouver island. The plan was to rent a log cabin for a few days and chill out.
What we ended up with was a lot of "we're full" and "you didn't book in advance?!". Finally we got a place in Campbell River about half way up the island. This is one of the many salmon capitals of the world (nearly every town claimed to be the capital, someone ought to sort this mess out!). Our log cabin turned out to be an RV park full of hicks with a tiny prefab and some mattresses. Once the initial shock subsided we found the place to be "charming" for want of a better word. We headed off in godlentrojan (our 6 man car) to the town centre which was essentially three shopping malls and three massive car parks. We stocked up on beer, steaks and marshmallows and headed back to create a campfire and bbq. Our cabin looked our over a massive bay with the rockies forming the horizon, it was actually quite beautiful. We sat there watching the shooting stars above and the cruise ships in the distance and just had a lads night in.
The next day we managed to haul our asses into gear and go trekking for 4 hours aruond elk falls on the campbell river. It was an easy hike but gave me reason to be scared about my knee falling off in alaska. This was capped off with a swim in a gorgeous lake surrounded by pine trees and the setting sun. There's been a lot of random swimming going on.
We checked out yesterday and went to some island for a day of kayaking, otherwise known as water wars. There were six of us lads and 7 others who formed a french family. The introductions were priceless as we decided to practice our french "Je m'appelle JD et mon colour favourite est vert", :"Je m'appelle alain et j'ai deux saours et un chat"! As soon as we were in the water we set about soaking anyone within soaking distance and doing high speed ram-capsizes. Boys will be boys!
After a day of that we had to head back to our ferry. Luckily Rob had booked us a hostel in vancouver for the night. Unluckily it was for the wrong night. Luckily we found this out at 6pm not 10pm and managed to book another hostel in the dodgy gastown area. Unluckily it was above a very noisy bar and we were tired. Luckily 6 pitchers of beer cured our tiredness!! A good night out and a hungover morning leads me to being right here in the hostel international downtown vancouver, sitting beside a funny looking chap who's spent the last hour playing tetris online. Such are the characters you meet on this travel buzz.
We flew with Globespan (globewho?) in premium economy. For premium read "cramped, stuffy" as it was the worst long haul jet i'd ever seen. The seats were ryanairesque but filthy, the arm rest was held together with duct tape, the toilet had a hand written "out of order sign" on it, the food was woeful, the tvs were tiny and very far away, the movies were 10 years old etc etc etc....
After 9 hours of that we got to vancouver to be greeted by a robotic immigration man "why are you here, where are you staying, when are you leaving". I managed to sneak into the country and finally smell that unique arrivals smell of baggage, kerosene, humidity and excitement.
Our hostel on the first night was beautiful, it was an old converted barracks by jericho beach in it's own grounds. All 18 of us were in one long room for two nights. The weather was pretty woeful so we mainly slept, played cards and did some light training on a pitch that I'd played summer league on years before.
Two days later we moved to UBC to our home for the next 12 days. After a few days training the tournament got under way. We were in the group of death with australia (17-9), GB (17-7), Germany (16-8) and the cheating colombians (12-8) and venezuelans (17-12). This put us into the bottom bracket where we finished 14th overall. The spirit prize cheered us up nicely. I'm not really up for doing a full report on the games but suffice to say they were incredibly tiring but fun.
On finals day our team had decided to do $17 saturday which involves dressing up a teammate using $17 of charity shop clothes and watching the final dressed like an eejit. what we didn't bargain for was being hauled up in front of 4000 people to collect our spirit trophy dressed like straw chewin hicks! ah the fun.
The trouble with going on the booze after a month off it is that you forget the simple things such as: look after your phone and wallet and don't break your laptop. Unfortunately I didn't do any of this and ended up having a bit of a shocker. I'm waiting on new cards to make their way over to me (mum - we need to have a quick chat about that one!).
So we managed to get out of UBC, finally, with a group of six of us intent on having fun (JD, Ois, Brian mcdev, Rob K and Pete Forde from cark). Trouble is, we had no plan! At about 5pm we headed downtown to get a hostel. We didn't bargain for a big gig being on in town and all the hostels being full. We were a bit stuck, unwilling to head back out to UBC or Jericho so we hopped on the horseshoe bay express, got our footlong subway sambos and boarded a ferry to nanaimo on vancouver island. The plan was to rent a log cabin for a few days and chill out.
What we ended up with was a lot of "we're full" and "you didn't book in advance?!". Finally we got a place in Campbell River about half way up the island. This is one of the many salmon capitals of the world (nearly every town claimed to be the capital, someone ought to sort this mess out!). Our log cabin turned out to be an RV park full of hicks with a tiny prefab and some mattresses. Once the initial shock subsided we found the place to be "charming" for want of a better word. We headed off in godlentrojan (our 6 man car) to the town centre which was essentially three shopping malls and three massive car parks. We stocked up on beer, steaks and marshmallows and headed back to create a campfire and bbq. Our cabin looked our over a massive bay with the rockies forming the horizon, it was actually quite beautiful. We sat there watching the shooting stars above and the cruise ships in the distance and just had a lads night in.
The next day we managed to haul our asses into gear and go trekking for 4 hours aruond elk falls on the campbell river. It was an easy hike but gave me reason to be scared about my knee falling off in alaska. This was capped off with a swim in a gorgeous lake surrounded by pine trees and the setting sun. There's been a lot of random swimming going on.
We checked out yesterday and went to some island for a day of kayaking, otherwise known as water wars. There were six of us lads and 7 others who formed a french family. The introductions were priceless as we decided to practice our french "Je m'appelle JD et mon colour favourite est vert", :"Je m'appelle alain et j'ai deux saours et un chat"! As soon as we were in the water we set about soaking anyone within soaking distance and doing high speed ram-capsizes. Boys will be boys!
After a day of that we had to head back to our ferry. Luckily Rob had booked us a hostel in vancouver for the night. Unluckily it was for the wrong night. Luckily we found this out at 6pm not 10pm and managed to book another hostel in the dodgy gastown area. Unluckily it was above a very noisy bar and we were tired. Luckily 6 pitchers of beer cured our tiredness!! A good night out and a hungover morning leads me to being right here in the hostel international downtown vancouver, sitting beside a funny looking chap who's spent the last hour playing tetris online. Such are the characters you meet on this travel buzz.
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