Hey y’all!
Only two weeks in The States and I’ve lost the Kiwi accent, back to my Yankee-old- self…
Ready for some real American experiences, we boarded the Green Tortoise in San Francisco. Known to be a driving cloud of hippies, grass and freedom…. It became clear though that the seventies are over, when mostly young people wearing shoes boarded the bus and the driver started explaining the bus-rules. But even in the 21th century, I can really recommend these trips! (check http://www.greentortoise.com/) We had a blast! This big old green bus could be converted in one huge bed and with bunks hanging off the ceiling could sleep up to 36 people! Not a lot of privacy obviously, but with 23 in our group it was lots of fun.

Overnight-drives, to wake up in beautiful National Parks. Zion, Bryce, Arches, they were all so different! Cooking outside, sleeping under the stars and lots and lots of hiking! Our group had 12 different Nationalities and people of different ages. Even a father with his 12 year old son, who I promised to write about Hunter surely stirred up the group a bit, especially after he had coffee and chocolate for breakfast…. Telling stories, building amazing armies out of rocks, asking lots of questions and hugging all the girls. ( being 12 does have advantages!) It was great to meet you Hunter, you better leave us a message on this blog.

Our drivers made a huge effort to talk us out of hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, but doesn’t that make it more exciting? Well, you must be a little crazy to hike down the steep walls to descend into temperatures of over 44 C!!! There is two tricks to surviving that… good planning and drinking lots and lots of water! We started hiking late afternoon to reach the Colorado river at the bottom of the Canyon as it got dark. Weird though, temperatures that went up, as the sun went down…. We slept under the stars (amazing sky!) to get up and start our climb back to the rim at 4.00 in the morning.
It was fantastic!

On the way back we went to Las Vegas, man, what a crazy place that is! It is so big and it’s so hard to get anywhere (the sidewalks will lead you into casino’s and over bridges etc) that we didn’t even find time to throw away all our money! Thank god. We are doing that now instead….. (am writing you from the Sky-dive boogie in Davis)

The last few days we have spent in my dear Bolinas, staying at a friends house, visiting people and places. Celebrated my 28th (!) with a dinner at The Coast Cafe , where I used to work, and Pol and the staff turned it into a real B-day-party with candles and singing! Many thanks, Justine and Brandy, for the great meal!

So now I have lots of time to work that B-day cake off at the drop zone… If only it wasn’t so damn hot!
On monday we’ll head up to Seattle and Orcas Island, get some work done!
Hope you are all doing great! Eef and Ed, I’m impressed with the homework you guys did, and looking forward to our next adventure…. vroem vroem!

Eef and Pj.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 22nd, 2007 at 7:26 and is filed under Fun, Party, Adventures, General. 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.