Further Wanderings

Yeah yeah. That’s a terrible title. You aren’t the first to have thought that. But this entry IS about a voyage home, and it’s probably my favourite of the Star Trek movies, so deal with it.

Well… Most of this entry happened in the rather distant past, but I think I ought to write about it anyway, because:

A. It will bring this blog up to date, at least as far as travel goes.

B. It’s a pretty entertaining story.

C. It will provide a nice intro for our (Sarah and I’s) trip back to NZ.

After 11 months in Wellington, the time had come to head back home. But unlike on the way there, I’d have company this time. Sarah (the lovely Kiwi lady discussed in previous entries) would be coming with me. Cool! Fun! Good!

Our journey started simply. My flatmate Pablo drove us down to the Wellington ferry docks and we climbed aboard for the trip across to the South Island.

Looking back at Wellington Harbour as we depart on the first leg of our journey home

On arriving in Picton we were met by Sarah’s dad who piled all our belongings into his car (most of them were Sarah’s things that would be staying with him while we were away) and headed down the coast to Christchurch.

We spent a fun few days in Christchurch, staying with Sarah’s Dad, and then with her mom (big thanks to both of them for accommodating us and for not complaining about their daughter being dragged halfway around the world) and spending time with her friends there, many of whom I met for the first time.

Nice as it was, I was anxious for our time in Christchurch to pass, and for our real trip home to begin. This it did, and with a quick stop in Auckland to visit Sarah’s friend George, we were soon winging our way across the Pacific Ocean.

Sarah and George in the back of the car during our quick visit in Auckland

We had a brief stop in Tahiti (interesting fact: Tahiti’s airport is named Faaa [yes, three a’s in a row]) which lasted just long enough for us to manufacture some tropical-style drinks (gin and Orangina decorated with flowers the local tourist board hands to all arriving passengers) before we were back aboard the plane and headed for the west coast of North America.

We arrived in LA and made our way to my friend Nick’s place on the excellent LA subway system (I make a point of mentioning this whenever I write about LA, as most people are entirely unaware that the city even HAS a public transit system, much less a good one.)

Our next few days in LA can be easily summarized in a few words, and since I’m feeling prety lazy right now, I’ll do exactly that:

Crusader Rex, drinking, Baja Fresh. Crusader Rex is a boardgame that attempts to simulate the 3rd Crusade (Baldwin IV and then Richard I vs. Saladin.) Drinking is mostly self explanatory. Sarah very kindly just sat around and read the new Harry Potter book and fetched Nick and I beverages while we played. Baja Fresh is a Mexican fast food restaurant that is SOOOO far superior to Taco Bell that I feel bad mentioning them in the same sentence. They make yummy fish tacos and burritos, and have this wonderful fresh salsa bar, which can turn two fish tacos (that come with free nacho chips) into an all out banquet.

After quite a bit of this, Sarah and I headed down to San Diego on the Pacific Surfliner (train) to visit Dom again. Once you get out of LA and Orange County it’s a beautiful trip… You’re often riding right along the backs of the beaches, and lots of people wave as you zoom by. The stations are very pretty too, especially San Juan Capistrano.

In San Diego we spent a couple days hanging out with Dom, doing our best luchador impressions with the masks Dom had got us as gifts, and doing a bit of sightseeing.

Sarah and I engaging in a bit of Lucha Libre at Dom’s place in San Diego (“Lucha Libre” is Mexcian professional wrestling, many of whose participants wear crazy masks like those pictured.)

The prime sightseeing took place not in SD, but across the border in Tijuana Mexico, where we felt privleged to experience what we’ve since dubbed the “Tijuana Trio.” The Tijuana Trio consists of being hassled by the police about whether you’re there to buy drugs (usually happens if you wander much off the two main tourist streets), having tequila poured down your throat by a man blowing a whistle in your ear (almost invariably happens if you stop for food or drink at a tourist restaurant) and being offered a donkey show (if you don’t know, don’t ask.)

The trip back into the US went pretty smoothly. Since entering Tijuana just involves walking through a one-way turnstile (like they have at some exits to the Toronto subway) and since the Americans didn’t stamp our passports on the way back into the US, there’s actually no evidence that we were ever in Mexico (except for the 800 100mg Vicodins that we brought back from one of the dozens of “no prescription required” pharmacies that line the streets near the border. [JOKING! No need to worry!])

Sarah just before the Tequila-toting-whistle-blowing guy in the sombrero appeared and wrapped towels around our necks as he poured blue agave liquor down our throats

The queue of cars headed north to San Diego at the border in Tijuana. Thankfully we were walking. The light rail in San Diego takes you within about 100m of the Mexican border
Our final day in SD saw us bid Dom adieu when he headed off to work in the morning, then spend the morning at the beach and the afternoon at the Pizza Port brewpub. It has a pretty unassuming name, but the Pizza Port makes some FABULOUS beer, and pretty darn good pizza to boot. If you’re ever down in the area you must check it out.

Me at the Pizza Port having one of several pints on the afternoon (trivia: it took me a long time of going to bars in the US and being irritated that they never poured full pints before I finally realized that there are different sizes of pint. I’m truly a child of the metric era.)

Upon our return to LA we realize that we hadn’t really made any specific plans with Nick and so found ourselves without anywhere to drop our stuff. Which kind of worked okay, since we still managed to get into his condo building and just lounged around the pool ’til he arrived home. At which point we spent our last evening in LA doing pretty much exactly what we’d spent the rest of the time there doing.

OH! At the risk of disabusing you all of the notion that we spent our time in LA 100% unproductively, I’ll also mention that we did go and visit the Getty centre one afternoon. The trip there involved driving along Hollywood Blvd. and being shouted at by “homes of the stars” tour bus drivers who thought that Nick was Brad Pitt because it appears they drive the same car. The time there was spent marvelling at the architecture and the location (seriously. Even if there was nothing at all inside, I’d STILL go back to the Getty) and the trip home doing our best to avoid the legendarily horrid LA traffic.

One of several cool gardens at the Getty Centre in LA

The next morning we headed back to LAX for our flight to Las Vegas, where we immediately picked up a rental car and set out for the Grand Canyon. Our stop at Hoover Dam meant that we arrived after 22:00 and well dark. As we approached the front gates we were worried that they’d be shut and access to the park would be impossible. Thankfully the gates were open and unattended and we managed to drive on in and find our reserved campsite without much trouble.

Sarah at Hoover Dam

Statue at Hoover Dam. I like to think that this is a pretty decent picture as is, but if only the sky had been blue…

The late arrival meant that we really didn’t get much sleep, as we’d planned to star our trip down into the canyon eaaarrrrly the next morning. We woke at around 4:30 in order to get the 5:00 shuttle bus to the South Kaibab trailhead. The early part of the walk down was cool and clear with beautiful views of the sun rising over the canyon. But by the time we reached the inner canyon (perhaps 9:00) it was already very hot, and we were very pleased to reach Phantom Ranch and, more importantly, Bright Angel creek by 9:30, as the temperature had already gone over 30C.

The Grand Canyon and the South Kaibab Trail about an hour out from the trailhead

Another Picture of the Canyon taken two minutes later. It’s amazing how quickly the colours and appearance of the canyon change near sunrise

The walls and buttes of the canyon silhouetted by the rising sun. Despite the fact that the sun was not far above the horizon at this point it was already getting hot

We spent the remainder of the morning and most of the afternoon soaking ourselves in the creek, chatting with other hikers doing much the same thing, and occaisionally climbing out of the water to check the temperature or get some food or drink from our packs (one of our fellow creek bathers was visiting the area for the second time during his trip and, after a bit of digging, pulled up a couple of cans of beer he’d buried in the riverbed to cool a few days earlier. Jealousy ensued.)

Bright Angel Creek, one of the few year round sources of clean, clear water in the canyon

We ended up leaving a bit earlier than we’d planned, as a thunderstorm cleared and cooled the air in the mid afternoon. Thunder cracked every couple of minutes, echoing off the canyon walls, and the huge raindrops even managed to make us feel COLD for a couple of minutes.

Heading back up out of the Canyon. This is actually a side-canyon, but it gives the impression of what it looks like down in the inner gorge quite well

Once the storm had passed we dragged ourselves back onto the trail to begin the uphill portion of the walk. We followed the river along the inner gorge, turning off to head up a side canyon on the Bright Angel trail, and hauling ourselves up the switchbacks of the Devil’s Corkscrew before reaching the Tonto Plateau, and soon after, our campsite for the night, Indian Gardens.

The Devil’s Corkscrew is a long series of switchbacks that (almost) finish the climb out of the Grand Canyon’s inner gorge and onto the Tonto Plateau

Sunset was nearing as we approached the campsite, and the air had cooled enough to bring some wildlife out into the open, including several mule deer and the large (though almost certainly not venomous) snake that was inhabiting our tent site when we arrived.

The following day was another long one… The walk up the canyon started almost as early as our walk down, around 5:30. Between this and the considerably higher elevation, it was pretty comfortable and not terribly difficult. Sarah barely complained once! (But seriously… She’d been a bit nervous about her ability to manage the trip, but passed the test with flying colours and was a great walking companion. I’ll turn her into a tramper yet. Maybe.)

We arrived back at the South Rim three hours later, which left us plenty of time to have a wander and to stop at a few overlooks across the canyon. At the last of these, we saw a couple of California Condors, which number among the world’s rarest birds. Not in Grand Canyon National Park, however. In 2001 twelve birds were released deep in the park’s wilderness areas. But, being scavengers that depend on large mammals for their food, they had soon migrated to the park’s most heavily visited areas near the South Rim visitor centre.

The majestic California Condor, an elusive creature that lives only in the most rugged parts of the canyon and avoids human contact whenever possible. In all seriousness, however, they are beautiful birds whose impressive size belies their silent grace in the air

Leaving our friend Dr. C (for some reason we’d started calling the canyon this) behind, we drove back to Las Vegas where we checked in to our hotel and promptly fell asleep.

Now, there’s only one obvious thing to do when you find yourself in Las Vegas after spending two days in the Grand Canyon backcountry eating granola bars crackers and nectarines: visit an all-you-can-eat buffet. I’m really pleased with myself that I only managed to eat to the point of being uncomfortably (rather than painfully) full.

The rest of our time in Vegas was spent wandering around town gawping at the impressively extravagant… No, wait, extravagant sort of implies tasteful… impressively garish, yes, that’s the word, hotels and casinos, and trying to find the best drinks specials in the city. ($1 Margaritas seemed like a good bet, but after a few of them the sugar content became just about unbearable. I think the real winner were the $3 Martinis at the Tropicana.)

The natural-gas burning fake volcano at the mirage hotel. Garish, not extravagant

The only other real competitor was the off-strip bar that we spent our last hours in the city lounging around. It was clearly full of locals, the bartender had drunk enough that she kept coming back and asking us whether she’d remembered to charge us for our drinks, and you could get a bottle of beer and a hot dog for $2.

The Las Vegas Strip at night. I actually don’t understand what those trails of light are, but I rather like the way the picture turned out

All this over consumption had provided a good warmup for our final stop on the trip back to Toronto: my annual pilgrimage to the World Boardgaming Championships in Lancaster Pennsylvania.

My friend Nick and I go every year to play a few of the 100 different games on offer in the tournament. This year Sarah was joining us as well (I asked Nick if he’d mind. He replied that he couldn’t very well complain, as I’d been okay with sharing a room with his cat in past years.)

Every trip follows the few same basic rules: Food and drink for the week are purchased during one massive shopping trip on the day of arrival. All food conusmed must fit in with the year’s specified food theme and be prepared in our hotel room. This year’s theme was blended foods, which meant that we got a lot of strange looks as we unloaded our 24 cans of chickpeas (for making hummus of course!) at the supermarket cash (not to mention all the strange looks Sarah and I had got as we took our blender “Blendy” on five different plane trips during the course of our trip home.) Throughout the tournament we got lots of strange looks for other things as well, including the matching canteens that the three of us were perenially sipping out of, and Sarah’s attempt at making trifle (it was really miore of a sherry, custard and fruit cocktail soup than a trifle) which my friend Ewan very kindly claimed to have enjoyed.

Our Bar/Pantry at WBC. Note the cans of chick peas in the top right drawer and all the fruit (for blended smoothies, of course) in the bottom left

The tournament was lots of fun. As usual Nick did very well in several events, and I came within a whisker of winning Republic of Rome (being denied the title by some very poor sportsmanship from another competitor.) The biggest suprise, as far as gaming went, came from Sarah when she made it to the Britannia Semi-Finals (some of you may be aware that Britannia’s my favourite all-time game, so this provided me with some solace after I’d failed to even make the quarter finals this year.)

Playing Kingmaker (a game about the Wars of the Roses) at WBC

WBC wound down with us doing our usual massive cleanup of the hotel room (we borrowed the cleaning staff’s vacuum, hid the stained and torn excess towels, returned the picnic bench back to where we’d got it and cleaned the spilled tuna fish and pickle juice out of the bureau drawers.) The drive back to Philadelphia wasn’t the most comfortable ride in history (it never is) but it got us to the airport in plenty of time.

Nick went his way (back to LA) and we went ours (on to Toronto) and that, my friends, is the end of our story.

It’s theoretically possible that I’ll get around to writing a bit about Sarah and I’s experiences living back in Canada, but given that much of this is well in the past, and that we’re about to hit the road for a six-month trip back to New Zealand, I have a feeling that it just might not happen. On the positive side, I almost certainly WILL be writing about the upcoming voyage, so be sure to check back regularly for updates!

Thanks, as usual for reading, and especially for coming back for a look despite the fact that it’s been over 7 months since I last wrote anything!

Tags: California, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Llew Bardecki, North America, Travel

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 24th, 2008 at 7:12 pm and is filed under North America, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.