Day seventy-five

Okay, so where to start. Last we left off, I was about to head off on a two-day bus ride from San Francisco to Houston, Texas, right? Right. Okay.

On second thought, I’m really not feeling this at the moment. Will watch this Sarah Silverman movie I downloaded a couple weeks ago first, then come back after that. Or do some reading. Or play some DS. Or shave. Or write more of this :P. But for now, farewell.

Oh yeah, before I forget; Mexico is SO cheap! I went to the supermarket yesterday and bought two bananas, a 600ml bottle of water, and a 600ml bottle of that V8 juice, and all up it cost me, in Australian dollars, just $1.50. That would have been a minimum $6 purchase in Oz, if not more. The cinema here? Just $5. Cheap!

Yeah, I’m not really too sure why I still watch Sarah Silverman. She stopped being funny like two years ago.

I’m kind of annoyed at the moment because when leaving Texas, I was picked for a security screening at the airport. They basically went right through my carry-on bag, which is FULL of little things; pens, tissues, memory card adaptors, cables, etc etc. And the more I look through it, the more I realise there is stuff missing from there now. And the only place I can seem to think where it could have gone was there. *fume*

Speaking of things that are bad, it’s no wonder America has such a high level of credit card fraud. You know if you buy something at a McDonalds in the US, and pay by credit, you don’t have to sign anything? They just swipe the card and give you your receipt, and everything is done. They don’t have any clue that card is yours, but it’s all paid for, whatever you bought. Some other stores do this too, I can’t remember specific ones, but it seems like a junk system.

And on a final note about San Francisco; that first full day where I walked down to the wharf, all the way round then up to the windiest street in the world, down to Coit Tower and across to Market St, and back up again, I worked it out the other day. It was a 20km walk. I don’t know that I’ve ever walked that long on one day. Of course my brother’s Iron Man accomplishments are far greater than a 20km walk, but hey, this was big for me :P.

Ok. Anyway. I left San Francisco a good two weeks ago on the first of July, and even that was fraught with danger, suspense and surprises. I went to get my Greyhound ticket, only to find all their schedules had changed a couple weeks earlier, well after I had booked my ticket. So they had to find me a new route to Houston - which fortunately was about eight hours shorter than the original trip. Woohoo, only 40 or so hours on buses instead of two days!! :D

Originally I was going through San Diego, somewhere else, then Dallas and finally Houston. The new one went through San Jose, San Fernando Valley (very nice), then we stopped in Los Angeles around 9pm, and the next connecting bus wasn’t til midnight. Here’s a good travel tip for you all; do not go to the Los Angeles Greyhound station, whether it be night or day. It’s not a very nice place. It was made even worse by the mass of people trying to get on our one bus, and things got really very hairy when it came time to board. They have no line system or anything, it’s incredibly stupid. In the end they put on another two buses, and I got onto the second one, which only left about 20 minutes later.

There’s this weird thing about the Greyhound. Every time you stop at a station somewhere you see bits and pieces of people you saw on other buses, at other stations, all over the place. It’s kind of cool, and kind of not, because it seems only the mad people catch Greyhound. After getting (THANKFULLY) out of Los Angeles, we passed through Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona, then New Mexico, before hitting our first port in Texas; El Paso. And then things got hairy again.

After we boarded back onto our bus with our new bus driver, he does his spiel about not threatening the bus driver etc. Apparently, from the way he was talking, there have been a large number of incidences where the bus drivers have been attacked. Not really sure why; you attack the bus driver, you lose the person who’s taking you where you wanna go. And if you wanna take it somewhere else, you have a busload of people who are gonna take you down.

Regardless, some woman with three kids supposedly said something along the lines of wanting to “choke the s**t out of the bus driver”. I didn’t hear it, she didn’t deny it. But she had three kids, and was a crying mess when the bus driver said she had to get off, and could go on the a “later schedule”. Not only this, but she had a truckload of stuff on that bus. So her and her three little kiddies crying and upset, carted all this stuff back off the bus, crying and heaving and apologising the whole time. She really only brought it on herself. But of course, we were ALREADY late, and this made up like an extra hour late.

Plus then we had to go through border security. Really? We were already in Texas, and we were going to San Antonio, which is also in Texas. I didn’t get it. I thought maybe New Mexico wasn’t a state of the US, and so it was catching those people there, but no, New Mexico is also the US. We never left the country, yet we had to show passports and documents etc. Go figure.

I finally arrived in Houston, Texas, at about 12pm on Thursday, 3rd of July. My dear, long-time Texan friend Jason, picked me up from the station. He basically had planned out the whole next week on my behalf, the afore-mentioned “World Tour of Texas”, and for that I was and am eternally grateful. I had just spent the last two months having to organise myself, research places, look up ways to get around etc, and this week was free of all that. Jason knew where to go, how to get there (mostly :P), and was basically the best mate a guy could have.

I got off the bus, into Jason’s car, and straight off to lunch with another friend of his I sort of knew, Marty. Keep in mind I had just come off a near-two-day bus ride, so I hadn’t had any chance to shower, change, brush my teeth, sleep properly, or anything. I have no idea how badly these people must have thought of me that first day! I felt mucho embarrassed, but got through it :).

After lunch we went off to pick up another friend of Jason’s I had heard about over the years, Brian. We went from there to the Galleria, which is the snooty high-end shopping centre. Brian is all techy and gadgety like me, so we got on pretty well, apart from me trying to stand as far off as possible and not breathe in anyones direction too much :P.

And the day kept going! Brian, Jason and I went to dinner where I tried a blood orange mojito (side note: America has taken it upon themselves to “flavour” mojito’s in everything from... apple to... zucchini. A mojito is not a mojito if it is not lime. Enough said on the matter), then on to a place called Dave & Busters. It’s kind of like a Timezone, if Timezone were twelve times bigger, had a sports bar and dining area, more pool tables, etc etc. Awesome fun :).

And THEN we went on to one of Jason’s favourite bars; Meteor, to meet a whole bunch more of his friends; Luis, Juan, and Crystal mainly. Don’t forget, I STILL haven’t showered or brushed my teeth yet. Or changed; I was wearing denim shorts and a t-shirt that I had put on two days earlier and not taken off since, even half-slept in. Oh dear. We left by about 2am and Jason dropped me back at Marty’s, where I would be sleeping on the couch for a couple nights.

Day Two in Houston was Independence Day; July 4! This is where things are a little hazy. It was either on that day, or the following day, that we went to the Museum of Natural History. Either way, we went :P. It was pretty cool - they had on a special exhibit called Geopalooza which was all about rocks. No really, it was awesome!! ;D There was like a rock theme (MUSIC rock) to the whole exhibit, with disco balls at the entrance and exit and U2 etc playing as you wander around. They had a rock there that predated the birth of the sun. I liiiiked that one.

Also at the Museum of Natural History was an IMAX theatre, so we saw a special on the Galapagos islands, in 3D. Everything is better in 3D. It started off kinda lame with all birds and lizards etc, but soon after they went underwater, and things started to get better :). They took a deep-sea submersible right to the bottom of the ocean where no one had been before, and where it was complete pitch black - not even the sun could reach down there. The species of fish down there were completely different to anything we had seen before. Cool!

As for July 4 celebrations, we went to Juan’s house (from Meteor the previous night) for a bit of a party. Everyone but Brian, plus Marty, were there from the previous day, and some extras. Crystal made hot dogs and hamburgers (both delicious) in Juan’s kitchen, until we went up to the roof of the parking garage adjacent to watch the fireworks. Which were confusing - there were like three sets going off in different directions. Way to go for centralised celebrations :P.

On the whole Independence Day was a much more subdued affair than I expected. There was no ticker-tape parade, no people driving around with the US flag all over their cars yelling out “Happy July 4” or whatever, no people wearing the flag in one form or another, none of the usual stuff you see on Australia Day.

After the party we went out to another bar called JR’s, followed by a hip-hop club called Blur, finishing up at the big dance club of the area, South Beach. The last was my faaaavourite. There’s a MASSIVE dance floor, and above it are all these blow-up sea animals hanging from the roof. And every hour on the half hour they cool everyone down by shooting out streams of highly-cooled gases! So much of the stuff you cant see anything or anyone more than an inch from your face, and so cold even though you’re dancing up a sweat, you start to feel chills by the time the gases stop again. And it’s all timed to the music (in the first case, Miley Cyrus’s See You Again).

On the Sunday Jason had rented a rental car (a little more definitely reliable than Jason’s own..) and we headed off to San Antonio! We arrived there a little late though, at like 10pm :P. Time enough to check into a hotel and wait for another of Jason’s friends I had heard a lot about, Dave, to turn up and the three of us to go out for dinner :). Dave is in the military, and spent a considerable amount of time stationed in Iraq. He’s been back in the US for about seven months now. After dinner he took us on a tour of the military base in San Antonio, which was fantastic. They have a copy of every plane that has been used by the US on display all over the grounds. This place is huuuuuge.

Apparently over in Iraq the US troops aren’t allowed to drink, which is fair enough. But the Australian ones are, and apparently we drink a lot, and fight a lot (as in bar fights), over there. I don’t see why we don’t have the same alcohol restrictions.

The military base at San Antonio has a convenience store that sells tax-free, discounted alcohol, and we went and stocked up a bit there. I bought a bottle of my usual Bacardi Limon, which is about $au25 at home. Here, is was $au10 for the same bottle. And that’s the everyday price. Every bottle of alcohol was discounted like that. The US military have it good. Not only that but all their health and dental cover is taken care of, they get major discounts at, like, everywhere, and more.

After that we basically just went back to the hotel room and chilled and chatted, me playing Aussie music and explaining what a backpackers was, going through my photos from home etc. Good, quiet, night.

The next day Jason and I went to Seaworld. And it rained. A lot. They had to cancel a number of shows because of the rain (or more specifically, the lightning), and so we wandered in the rain, went to the penguin “encounter” (oo-er), and spent a lot of time under cover :P. I fed the dolphins! :D We stayed til close, and saw “Shamu Rocks Texas”, which is the great white sharks show, dancing and jumping and flipping etc, along to “todays hits” (judging by what they were playing during the show, I think we need a fact check please!!).

On Monday we were heading to Dallas, but not after seeing some more of San Antonio. We went to the Alamo, where a very famous historical battle was held in 1830-something. And then on to this Tomb Rider 4D ride, which is a moving cart ride with 3D glasses, and you also have to shoot targets as well. I feel like we should have been injected with sugar at the start of it as well, to keep up with everything that was going on. By some strange twist of fate, Jason and I got exactly equal scores :). Our final stop in San Antonio was the Guinness Book of Records Museum, which it has to be said is a great source for cracking jokes.

After that it was off to Dallas, after a bit of a stop in Waco, where Jason went to college, so we had a bit of a wander and a reminisce at the Baylor campus. We ended up getting into Dallas about 10pm, had dinner and met up with Luis (who was at Juan’s July 4 night, among other places), then went out to the Dallas edition of JR’s. Luis was letting us crash at his place these couple of nights, so we headed back there after a couple hours at JR’s :).

The following morning we were really beginning to feel the exhaustion of the past four or so days, so first stop was a cinema, where we saw Wall-E! It was my second time seeing it, but I want to see that thing like eight times, it’s a spectacular movie. Then we went on to the JFK Museum, where you can see the window where he was assassinated from, and follow the events leading up to and after that day. It’s not a story with a happy ending.

Fortunately things lightened up from there; we went to dinner with another couple Dallas people; Lisa and JT. And after that the four of us headed back to Lisa’s place to play Wii for most of the night. We played some DDR, some Mario Party, and some Mario Kart - none of which I won at :P. Wasn’t too bad at the Wii DDR though! JT, Jason and I met up with Luis afterwards and went back to JR’s, then a hispanic club called Heaven. That was a greaaaat night. Hell, they all were.

That was our final night in Dallas. The next morning we headed back to Houston, I checked into a hotel near the airport and Jason headed off to return the rental and get some errands etc done. I crashed, tried to sort some of my stuff out, and just got more confused :P. That night we headed out to dinner with Juan, and I said goodbye and many, many thanks for Jason for everything he had organised over the past week. I was off to the airport Friday morning, at the same time Jason was lining up to get the iPhone 3G for himself and Brian (JEALOUSSSS).

I took practically no photos in Texas. Which is OK, cause Jason took heaps, and I got a copy of them all :D. Will post some of them at some point too. I arrived in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, last Friday afternoon. Saturday I explored the beaches right up to the centre of town (some three hours walk away), when it started teeming down with rain. So I went to see Hellboy II to pass some time (subtitled), and it was still pouring afterwards. It was about 9pm by the time it cleared up enough to head back.

But the water, it was everywhere. I would cross roads through water maybe four inches deep. Because the roads here are incredibly uneven, potholed and just generally pretty messy, there are these huge puddles everywhere, especially considering it rains so much at a time. Nothing drains well either.

Sunday I spent mostly at the beach; either in the water or relaxing on the sand. I ended up kinda burned, but not really. Not really tanned either. Some sort of weird mix of the two. Monday I took a breather to plan out and look at the future of this trip. I’ve booked myself a flight out of Mexico on Sunday - two days earlier than originally planned - and into Miami. I’ll be there about a week (including a day in Fort Lauderdale for the Idina Menzel concert) before spending a bit more time in Florida then flying over to Las Vegas at the beginning of August.

After that I’m not too sure. My short time in unsafe Los Angeles has made me think twice about even bothering to visit. So I might just go from Las Vegas to Hawaii and to Sydney after a week (instead of two) in Hawaii. Which would end me up home early by about three weeks or so. Maybe head back to work a bit early too if it is feasible, and hopefully then be able to use that leave some other time. Will figure it out when I get closer to Las Vegas, and have a chance to see what I can do with my already-bought flight home.

On a side note, at the hotel here they have a communal area in the centre where the pool is, and a bar, and TV etc. They play music/shows most nights (both spanish and english), and for some reason tonight they have played Alanis Morissette’s Underneath about four times so far. In about two hours. Not that I’m complaining, it just seems kinda weird :P.

I’m enjoying Mexico, apart from the language barrier. I feel rude that I don’t understand everyone, and that they don’t understand me. Which means I’ve been keeping to myself a lot more than in other places. Which sucks, but there’s not a whole lot to be done about it. I think that was part of why I decided to shorten my stay here by a couple of days - I just feel more comfortable in places where english is the primary language. I know how that sounds, but it’s just plain fact for me; I feel considerably more uncomfortable not being able to effectively communicate. Sometimes people are trying to get my attention on the street (street vendors etc)and I have no clue. Sometimes people aren’t trying to get my attention on the street and I think they are. It’s just not fun for me.

So, um, that’s it. That’s everything. I’ll post some pictures from Texas when I get a chance, and a video from Mexico as well. Until then, take care people :).