Bridge to Terabithia

Did you notice I didn't mention the Golden Gate Bridge in my previous post of highlights? I was saving it.

After three days at Fisherman's Wharf, we decided to head for something a little cheaper. The place we ended up is between Russian Hill and Cow Hollow, both beautiful and upmarket areas of inner SF. Our hotel, however, is neither of those things. Free parking wasn't enough to stop us grimacing at the dingy corridor as we found our room. But you know what, this is our view. So we don't mind so much.

And Andrew took the kids up the Golden Gate today (you know me and heights - I went shopping).

Chinatown

So we're now in sunny San Francisco. No sarcasm, either. Apart from a couple of heavy downpours yesterday, we've had clear, sunny, beautiful weather, which apparently is atypical of SF in Feb.

We've done lots here, but here are some of the highlights:

Chinatown (and it's Chinese New Year), where we had excellent dim sum (that's yum cha to you Australians) and saw a fortune cookie factory ...



Sea lions at Pier 39 (there were lots, but this guy was special)


The amazing Alcatraz, where we had an excellent audio tour, and the view back over to the city was beautiful






There's more, but we need to go out and eat now ...

East of Eden

The last part of our drive up to SF featured the bizarre juxtaposition of a visit to the National Steinbeck Museum followed by a couple of weird hours at an outlet mall.

The Steinbeck Museum was great - the US seems to do these kind of things particularly well, utilising volunteers, and incorporating simple activities for kids to keep them focused while parents can actually read and absorb the more serious material. We saw Steinbeck's RV - and realised that we'd done some of the same route that JS himself did with his dog Charley.

As for the outlet mall, well, now we can say we've been to one. Andrew, Holden & Phoebe all have new Converse sneakers.

And so we drove into San Francisco, a much less daunting and horrible experience than driving into LA. Our hotel for the first three nights was right on Fisherman's Wharf ... details to follow.

From Here to Eternity

We were happy to leave LA. And I mean that.

Movie trivia: You may not know this, but the famous love scene from 'From Here to Eternity' was filmed at the Big Sur. So there.

As we had three days to get from LA to SF, we took it pretty easy. On the first day we drove up to San Luis Obispo, and happened to luck on a nice hotel and the town's weekly Thursday night street market. Part of one of the main roads is closed off to traffic, and fills with stalls selling everything from fresh produce to chili dogs to Democrat slogans. And they have a HUGE Barnes & Noble. It really was the first time in the US I thought 'yeah, I'd like to live here'.

The next day we met spectacular scenery (the famous Big Sur) on our drive up to Monterey. You'll see this features in our new blog header.

Once again, through a bit of good fortune we ended up spending the evening in a great spot, right near the coast.


The following morning was so glorious that Andrew had to prove his manliness with a swim ...


And we had trouble getting Miss Phoebe out of the ice-cold water.

Fantasia

The kids and I would just like to add the following to Andrew's analysis of Disneyland - it was AWESOME!!! Corny, cheesy and fantastic fun, even if Andrew and Holden did trick me onto a roller coaster ...

But really, the only possible reason to go to LA. What a dump.

The Truman Show

Just the word Disneyland conjures up so many images and ideas about America that I was quite excited about going there. It is a brand that has become inseparable from the country of its invention and although it may be less associated than McDonald’s with US hegemony and globalisation, it is probably more practically responsible for it.

However, excited as I was Holden and Phoebe were ten times so - which was a good thing as getting our family of four the most basic entry for a day cost close to A$300.

We were there mid week, mid winter and might have expected it to be half empty but of course Disneyland is never empty. It can’t be. It needs a constant flow of dollars and lots of them. It is a gargantuan effort of organisation and without a vast number of people arriving every day and forking over a lot of greenback it would collapse very quickly.

Nowhere is the science of handling high volumes of people as perfected as Disneyland. Everything runs smoothly, everything is clean and you don't notice how many people are there.

At first the employee greetings of “have a magical day” seem a bit lame, but it's hard to remain cynical when you see the extraordinary special effects and robotic technology of the rides and also the surprising sense of humour displayed by many of the ride staff. For example, on exiting "the jungle tour" - which had taken all of five minutes - the boat driver told us we had been a wonderful group ... and that she would miss us .... and she loved us .... deeply. Some of the Americans simply didn't get it and started grumbling about her having "lost it". We thought it was hilarious.

A visit to Disneyland also has an almost patriotic meaning to many Americans. There are literally hundreds of extended families running around the park wearing loud matching t-shirts with slogans such as “Jones’ family road trip 2007” with a map on the back of their journey from Iowa. Without even realising it they are on an odd secular pilgrimage to worship at Space Mountain, Frontierland and the Matterhorn Bobsled ride.

It may sound an odd description of what on the face of it is a children’s theme park, but I walked away from Disneyland astounded by what is possible with enough money, enough desire and enough brainpower. In my view Disneyland is as much a monument to US ingenuity as NASA. It may also encapsulate much of the unauthenticity, even fakery that is in the US national character. The same country that put a man on the moon mostly chooses to make 5 billion burgers that are cheap and taste exactly the same.

LA Story

As usual I’m writing this blog about LA in Monterey [but posting in SF - ed], so I need a little music to set the scene.

… as the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard … with apologies to Sheryl Crowe.

Crowe may not be the only one looking for some fun in the city of angels, but they’re all sure to be doing it in a car driven very fast and recklessly. As we discovered, our beloved and faithful RV George didn’t cut the mustard.

George gets the death wobbles at anything over 70 miles an hour and in LA’s 14 lane freeways and five storey freeway loops, our introduction to the city was…well…terrifying. What was to be an hour and a half afternoon jaunt from Palm Springs to an RV camp site for our final night, ended up being abandoned at about 7pm at the first motel we could find. Along the way we discovered that in vast swathes of LA Spanish is the preferred lingo and that the term “beach” in a suburb name doesn’t necessarily mean it's on the coast.

LA is a city based on the car. So we had to get one. We said goodbye to George and at great expense said hello to Bob, the world’s ugliest Chrysler, who will stay with us until we head home from San Francisco.

We also said hello to Venice Beach, which I must admit is a pretty cool place. It’s kind of like Bondi only seedier and a bit more colourful There were more drug casualties per square inch on Venice Beach than I have ever seen. Bums quite literally hold up signs reading “Willing to work for marijuana”. However, the homeless are everywhere in LA, even – and I had to admire this guy – in Disneyland. He must have had a very very good hiding spot because I doubt he was fronting the entry fee.

The LA beaches are ok, but not much on Sydney beaches. I really like their ocean piers, but the beaches we saw were about 200 meters wide which give a decidedly desert feel. The water is also quite murky and at this time of year very cold.

The next day we made the compulsory trip for tourists along the Santa Monica Boulevard to Beverley Hills and Hollywood. It being Oscars month the kids got to hold an academy award as part of the academy’s PR attempt to compete with Cannes and Sundance, but in general the walk of fame, Sunset Boulevard, etc were a bit lame.

One thing that was interesting was just how much film production seems to go on in this city. It’s a cliché, but every second conversation overheard in a café seems to be about the film business and we saw at least three major film crews at work in the time we were in the city.

The next day was Disneyland and that’s worthy of its own blog … hopefully tomorrow.

Postcards from the Edge

We interrupt our normal broadcasting for the following public service announcement:

It has come to our attention that a number of letters and postcards we sent from Peru have never arrived. So if you're sulking because a promise epistle has failed to appear in your letterbox, please forgive us. Perhaps they will turn up one day.

We are just hoping the 10kg box we posted with EVERYBODY'S GIFTS in it hasn't also gone AWOL.

Raising Arizona

After the Grand Canyon, we headed down to Tempe (Phoenix) for our reunion with the Smiths, who lived in our apartment block in Bondi back in the day ... Hairy freeways aside, we made it to their house, and proceeded to be terribly spoilt for the next day and a half.

Harriet took us to the botanical gardens, which were quite incredible. I never realised what biodiversity the desert contains. And the cactus are something else.



Tempe is a very civilised place, with a lively main drag and the kind of buzz you get from having a huge university. On our second night there the Smiths took us to a fabulous Mexican restaurant, which happily wiped out the lingering taste of many third-rate 'Mexican' dishes we've had. And the frozen Margaritas were pretty good too.



Unfortunately we didn't have time to wallow in the Smiths' hospitality any longer, and hopped back into George to head for Joshua Tree National Park (after which U2 apparently named their album). Now I know where Dr Seuss got his inspiration for the crazy trees that feature in so much of his work.



We liked the rocks too. This one is known as Skull Rock ...

National Lampoon's Vacation

Had to use this title again sooner or later. Even though we're now in LA near Venice Beach I'm going to back track to tell you about Arizona.

Generally tourist pictures of the Grand Canyon don't include snow but believe me it snows. When we were there walkers were recommended to wear ice crampons and with good reason. Just after reading about a 24 year old marathon runner who died of heat exhaustion when she under estimated the difficulty of one of the Canyon trails in summer, I almost became a winter casualty when I slipped on an ice patch walking around the rim at Grand View. Luckily I survived to appreciate one of the most famous views in the world.



No matter how many pictures you've seen it still takes your breath away. There's also always something that you didn't expect. For example, as you drive towards the canyon you can see what seems to be a range looming out of the desert almost 40 miles away. Infact it's the northern wall of the canyon which rises 1500 feet higher than the southern wall. Access to the northern rim is completely closed in winter by snow.

Anyway the morning we visited the southern rim it was quite warm and what snow there was was rapidly melting. Pictures will never do it justice but we will post some shortly.

After a couple of hours at the canyon we made our way south to Phoenix and experienced one of the most dramatic changes in climate possible without getting on a plane.

Tempe, Arizona State University and the extraordinary hospitality of our old Bondi neighbours the Smiths, will be the subject of our next post before we get on to the horror of LA freeways.

Deliverance

Last night we were to spend the night in the town of Truth or Consequences in New Mexico. As you might imagine it's the type of place where you pop into the local supermarket to pick up some Jack Daniels and the checkout bag packer spends five minutes telling you what a lousy place it is. It's a town that chose to change its name from Hot Springs in 1950 as part of a publicity stunt for a radio program and despite numerous plebicites has steadfastly refused to change back and is known by locals as T or C.

We chose to take the bag packer's advise and moved on down the road to Elephant Butte. This of course elicited all kinds of jokes about signs informing us that "You are now entering Elephant Butte" and arguments about the correct way to pronounce the name. It's a fairly nice place where the largest lake in New Mexico is located.



Today has been a long day on the road and we've driven through an amazing variety of landscape on the way to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. We're really into snow country now and the kids have been very excited, with a lunch time snow fight.



I've never seen, or even imagined, desert snow and it's spectacularly beautiful. This afternoon we drove through the "painted desert" out of which a spectacular mountain range ascends from a flat desert plain that extends to the horizon. You can see it from 100 miles away and then you're suddenly in Flagstaff and you are surrounded by snow and connifer forests. That's where we are now.

Even Cowgirls get the Blues

Unless they're wearing boots like these ... Yes, I know they are pink, but the beauty of cowboy boots is that you don't have to show the fancy top bit.



The major excitement yesterday for the kids was seeing snow, leftover from last week's unusual snowfall. The day itself was bright and sunny and warm, making the snow even more of novelty.



We also visited the MacDonald Observatory, and saw some very big telescopes (Phoebe was disappointed we couldn't look through them), and we also had a solar viewing, which was incredible.

Then we came back to our site and I cooked chile and cornbread for dinner, while Hol & Andrew did a bit of baseball practice. See, we're practically Texans.

Zoolander

Speaking of faux celebrity and all that jazz, it turns out we were on a plane with the Dixie Chicks and Andrew only happened to mention it to me TODAY, FOUR DAYS later. 'Oh yes', he says, 'the three chicks with big hair who the gay flight attendant was really excited about'.

Oh My God. And apparently Brad and Angelina are moving to New Orleans and were quite probably there while we were tootling around.

This is the blog of celebrity misses.

I am writing this exciting celebrity post from Fort Davis, the highest town in Texas, on the night of the SuperBowl. It's just excitement all the way.



Silliness aside, Fort Davis is gorgeous. Today we drove from San Antonio, and decided to take Highway 90 instead of the hideous Interstate 10. It was a good call. Eventually I will put up some photos, but they don't do it justice. Real road movie scenery - I saw turkey buzzards, a road runner, and lots of dead rabbits. Andrew saw elks and some giant sheep things, the names of which we were told but have promptly forgotten. We are on the lookout for cougar, live jackrabbits, deer and funny little black pigs (yeah, so, this is what the locals told us).



We are so taken with this spot that we have decided to stay another night. As we have a pretty leisurely schedule tomorrow, we may even blog and put up some photos, if any of you people (apart from my mother) would actually read this thing and comment ...

Apollo 13

We're on the road ... Yesterday morning we were picked up from our hotel in Dallas and driven through miles of malls to the RV depot. After much admin (but very nice people indeed), we were finally allowed to drive off in our lovely little (compared to some of the buses that people drive) RV, who we have christened George Washington because it has Washington plates.



Our first day of driving was a bit of a trial by fire - unusual weather (killing several people in Florida), heavy rain on our route, hideous traffic and the added complication of never having driven on the right ... But we made it.

Texas countryside thus far has been dull in the extreme, since we have done nothing but drive along Interstates. But we did get to the Space Centre today and it was incredible. We got to see the command centre for the actual Apollo 13 mission. The kids were ho-hum, while we were awestruck. Especially when the guide told us that they did it all with about 400 kilobytes of computer power.

Tomorrow we head into San Antonio, but the adventure really begins the next day, when we plan to drive to Alpine for some real Wild West landscape. Despite the apparent wilderness, we will apparently have wi-fi at our RV site, so expect to hear from me, especially if I spot some tumbleweed.

PS For those of you who understand about shoes, I am planning to buy cowboy boots in either Texas or New Mexico ... two and a bit months in hiking boots is taking its toll.

The Big Easy

True to form, I am now blogging about New Orleans from Dallas, where we are holed up for one night before collecting our RV.

New Orleans was just as beautiful as I imagined, although still very much recovering from Katrina. The newspaper still had cover stories about Katrina every day we were there, and talking to locals (which is what happens when you get a bus to a shopping area outside of tourist town) gave us a sense of how much the city has suffered. Even downtown there are still a lot of shops closed.

Travelling on a very tight budget as we are, our version of a steamboat trip on the Mississippi was a free ferry ride from one side to the other. Andrew and I amused ourselves greatly by reminiscing about how our own parents would have done just the same thing - always the cheap (preferably free) version of whatever everyone else was doing! The kids just looked at us in puzzlement and asked what the point was. We just wanted to say we'd been on the Mississippi.

We've been generally impressed with the famed Southern hospitality and courtesy - and boy, these people are chatty. People just talk to you when you're on the bus, at a restaurant ... anywhere, in fact. I never thought of Australians as reserved, but we obviously have some English reserve compared to Americans (or Southerners, at least). We met some locals at the Acme Oyster House (no, truly, that's what it's called) and they asked us 'Do y'all think we have accents?' What could we say?!

Anyway, Dallas is not the most thrilling place we've been, but the kids are watching Mythbusters, Andrew is snoozing, and we have wireless internet in our hotel room, so all is good. Future instalments may be even more sporadic - in addition to our natural laziness, I'm not sure how much access we're going to have on the Great RV Journey.

By the way, I overcame that laziness to upload a couple of photos, so please do scroll down and take a look ... I promise to add more once I've had a Jack Daniels ...

Goodbye Mr Chips

Like so much of this blog this title is a little old because Holden and I are sitting in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel, New Orleans enjoying free wireless internet. Even so, it did apply three days ago as we said goodbye to the people of Pumarmarca, recieving an emotional sendoff by people those we have come to love over the last two months.

After a somewhat torrid journey lasting 32 hours we had lunch today of gumbo and oyster po boy in a bar on the famous Bourbon Street. We can't quite believe we are here and I think our culture shock is more than if we did not speak English. Our taxi driver from the airport spoke with such a strong Haitian accent that it was easier for Tiff to speak French than attempt communication any other way. Right now we are exhausted, it is 50F and raining, but we are so excited nothing could dampen our spirits.

Life Is Beautiful

We have returned from the Inca Trail and are enjoying our last few days in Cusco before we make our way to the US.

The four day walk to Machu Picchu must rank as one of the most fantastic experiances of my life. It was also great to share it with Tony, Jen and Austin.

However, please let me put the achievement of our children into context. The four day version of the Inca Trail is 45km of hard walking. In a recent SMH article a ¨celebrity chef" described the second day of the Inca trail as the most difficult achievement of his life. On the second day the trail rises over 1200m to ¨dead woman´s pass" at an altitude of 4200m in a single morning. As Phoebe ascended this section she was singing "Jesus Christ Superstar" while passing adults who were literally in tears of pain. When Phoebe, Holden and Austin reached the pass in good spirits without being carried one inch, fellow walkers waiting at the top in exhaustion burst into spontaneous applause when they saw the kids strolling by. By the end of the walk the kids had become minor celebrities on the trail and we were being approached by strangers wanting to photograph the amazing kids who had walked the trail. All the children walked the whole trail without being carried and without complaint and I am so proud of them.









The trail itself is incredibly beautiful, with the 500 year old cobbled track winding its way through the Andes connecting increasingly impressive Incan ruins. Machu Picchu is almost beyond description in its stunning location, extraordinary engineering and unique religious significance. We also became very used to having an army of porters to spoil us, making camp before we arrived, providing extraordinary meals and waking us with cocoa tea in our tents at the beginning of each day. The only way to camp.

We are all very sad to be leaving Cusco, but are also very busy finishing off our projects in Pumamarca and packing up. Tomorrow we have the closing ceremony for the Pumamarca Olympics and will hand out prizes and gifts to the kids.

Will try to get in another blog before we leave for Lima on Friday.

Working Nine to Five

We´re not really working too hard but we are trying to pack everything in as we leave on Jan 26 for the US and on Wednesday we´re off to Machu Picchu for four days.

Jen, Tony and Austin have arrived and we´ve been having a fabulous time.

This weekend we all went to Pisac and stayed in the Royal Inca Hotel for a night to go shopping at the famous markets and show them the Sacred Valley. The Cusco ¨futbol¨ team Cienciano, which we saw play four weeks ago, just happened to be at the same hotel on a training weekend. Of course sitting alone at the bar Jen and Tiff met the manager.

We´ve all been working quite hard at Pumamarca and after a bit of a marketing campaign the summer school is now going really well. Today Jen, Tony and Austin joined us and we had over 50 kids for our Pumamarca Olympics. At the moment Australia and Italy are neck and neck on 26 points with Indonesia and Canada fighting it out on 18 and 15. Next week we will have finals and presentation of prizes - provided by Jen.

Tiff is also working hard with the adults in the community and ¨talleres¨, which is a workshop to create saleable handicrafts. She´s achieving fantastic things with it but I´d better let her tell you about that.

Sorry this is so short, but we´re really short of time.

Swimming to Cambodia

We have been impossibly slack and impossibly busy and we're now a long way behind on our blog. Sorry...

However, back last year we went on a journey to Lake Titicaca, the world's highest navigable freshwater lake that also marks the border between Peru and Bolivia.

As is often the case when you are in some Andean backwater between Cusco and Puno, I ran into a former colleague from the City of Sydney travelling through South America on hols. To our delight, Victor and his girlfriend Keturah were on the same lake tour and we really enjoyed their company over the next few days.

To an Australian, Lake Titicaca may as well be the ocean with water stretching to the horizon in many places and only the snow capped mountain ranges of Bolivia reminding you that you are 3800m above sea level. Walking up a hill achieves the same effect.

After a somewhat touristy visit to a floating reed village we spent the night on the island of Amantani. We stayed with a family in this fantastic community and stunning location. An evening of dancing and beer at altitude really sorts you out.

The next day we left early and visited Taquile island ... where single and married men wear special Catelan hats. It was such awesome weather that after lunch I went swimming with some "loco" Canadians. Yes, it was cold.



Back in Puno a dispute with our hotel ended up costing us dearly. When we refused one of the reception staff a bribe to use the shower before our overnight bus ride back to Cusco we ended up homeless for several hours. This didn't seem too much of a problem as some friendly aussies let Tiff use their shower and we had a fabulous dinner with Victor and Keturah. Our problems started when we decided to get ourselves to the bus station rather than get a transfer from the hotel. Before we knew it our luxury first class bus had transformed into a local bus, complete with sacks full of potatoes, chickens and a smell that can't really be described. It was a difficult night, but we survived and we are stronger, especially our auto immune systems.

The Polar Express

Christmas came and went and we didn’t convert to Catholicism (although Phoebe remains a little up in the air on that front).

There was a huge market on the Plaza De Armas in Cusco on Christmas Eve and we exhausted ourselves buying fireworks and didn’t make it back for Christmas mass. Even so, we did have a tour of the cathedral on boxing day and it is amazing. The ability of the Catholics to adapt local religions to their own – at least until they reach a critical mass after which they simply massacre non believers – is truly astounding. The cathedral contains many wonderful artworks dating from the 16th century, but one of the most impressive is a 17th century adaptation of the Last Supper. Not only is the direct gaze of Judas truly frightening, but the disciples are hoeing into local fair, including a very distinctive guinea pig in the middle of the table. There is also an amazing 16th century choir stall, which took over a decade to carve. In addition to 40 something male and 30 something female saints it also contains quite unCatholic miniature images of a topless female at each choir stall. It is none other than “Pachamama” the pre Inca pregnant image of mother earth that has been worshipped in the Andes for thousands of years.

Christmas day itself was fairly traditional. We were joined by everyone from Peru’s Challenge for ham, turkey, champagne and fireworks. I’d definitely like to add the latter to an Aussie Christmas. There is something very jolly about blowing things up.

We did miss everyone at home though and I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year.

We have since been to Lake Titicaca, swam in the highest navigable freshwater lake in the world and experienced the true horror of an overnight local bus from Puno. But that will have to wait for another blog.