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| U.S.A. - West |
| Population: 285,000,000 Ave Income: $ 34,000 per year Currency: £1UK = $US1.43 |
 Downtown Los Angeles |
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Los Angeles
I landed at Los Angeles International Airport on a Sunday lunchtime, completely jetlagged and a bit bewildered by all the noise and bustle after the nature and chilled lifestyle of New Zealand. A friendly local took me under his wing and directed me towards the bus stop for Venice beach where the backpacker's was. America is a bit of a bewilderment for first-time visitors. Everything looks at once familiar and alien, the large cars and wide streets, shopping malls and advertising hordes. I'd heard many scare stories and disasters about travelling in America, the nutters on Greyhound buses and the craziness of the masses. In this respect, Los Angeles probably wasn't the best introduction to America. After figuring out the right bus, and jumping off at the right stop, I had to negotiate my way through a couple of neigbourhoods (they don't call them 'suburbs round these parts) to the youth hostel. Having left England in the spring, I was now back into a warm spring Los Angeles afternoon, with people washing their cars, kids playing basketball (basketball! how American!) and guys just, er, hanging out. With my rucksack and traveller clothes, I must have stood out a mile as I walked through this lower-middle class suburb to Venice Beach. I was also a little apprehensive but no-one seemed to take too much notice of me and I found the hostel fine. In reality, the hostel found me: Venice Beach Kotel! in large pink letters on the side of the building. It wasn't really til the next day that I started to explore, being completely exhausted from travel. I crashed in my room oblivious to all. Waking up a few hours later, I met my room-mates. I was soon to discover that American hostels often house a range of characters, from the wildly eccenric to the downright surreal. The pair in my room fell somewhere between the two. At first I thought they were a gay couple, but as it turns out they had met at the hostel from very different backgrounds. First of all there was Vincent, an old Indian guy and lecturer of economics at UCLA. (At first I was sceptical but he took me to see his study in the UCLA buildings where he was housed among 'eminent' geography professors). Never quite figured out what he was doing staying at the hostel. Then there was Rolf from the former east Germany, an introspective guy in his forties looking to make a new start in America. I ended up hanging out with them the whole time I was in L.A. Never venturing too far from the bar in the hostel, where only vodka punch was served, it seemed Rolf had an interesting background that matched his outlook on life. A former East German prisoner, having tried to jump over the Berlin Wall in the 80's, he was very keen to leave Europe behind him and make a fresh start. He had made friends with all the immigrant business owners in the area and took me round to meet his Turkish, Iranian etc. friends. Back to Venice Beach. It looks familiar from 'Baywatch'; the tall palms, long stretches of beach etc. but in early spring the water looked grey and uninviting. It's also quite a dodgy area and I really didn't go out at night. All kinds of hawkers jam the boulevard along the beach - and it isn't as well-kempt as it looks. Interesting nonetheless. One day I took a tour with a load of Japanese tourists and English honeymooners, which took me round Beverley Hills, downtown, some markets, the marina etc. etc. The wealth is pretty amazing, whole castles blocked off from outside life. Rodeo Drive was cool, if only because that's what I believed 'real' L.A. to be like. Another highlight was looking over L.A. (see photo) and seeing the planetarium where 'Rebel Without a Cause' was filmed. On another day Vincent took me and Rolf to his study in UCLA, and gave us a tour round the grounds - this was also pretty impressive. Most backpackers come away with a really bad impression of L.A. Certainly much of it is inaccessible, expensive and it's not somewhere you can wander by yourself at night, but it really is interesting, strange and just downright surreal. I left Vincent and Rolf and decided to take a bus up to San Francisco. Taking a bus to the Greyhound terminal made me realise just how huge Los Angeles is. The bus crossed the grids of streets and just kept going and going. Downtown L.A. wasn't very nice, and naturally I had chosen the wrong Greyhound station to go to. With a little trepidation (the Greyhound! nutters! murderers!) I was directed to the right bus and we pulled out of Sunset Blvd station heading north. San Francisco The bus travelled through the night and dumped me in the midst of San Francisco's towering financial district at one in the morning. I stayed at a rather stuffy YHA hostel on the banks opposite Alcatraz. The views were fantastic - right across the bay - but the hostel was 'just no fun' and so I moved to the Green Tortoise, a hostel on seedy Broadway and right in the middle of North Beach and all the action. Here I met a cool bunch of people - a guy from Australia, a couple of American college kids and a girl from New Zealand, and we got to know the North Beach bars and clubs. |
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 The view across San Francisco Bay to Alcatraz - click to enlarge |
San Francisco is completely different from Los Angeles. It's climate is cool, people much less low-key and laid-back. North Beach, an area of cafes, bookshops etc. made famous by Jack Kerouac in 'On the Road' was my favourite area. I visited the famous 'hippy' area of Haight-Ashbury, which was now a bit of a tourist ghetto and the gay area of San Fran called the Castro, a pretty area of typical San Franciso style houses. |
| Alcatraz Prison
Despite all the tourist hype, the prison of Alcatraz was one of the highlights of my visit. A rocky island sitting right in the middle of the bay, it was used as prison since 1984 and has since been squatted by hippies, and is now converted into an attraction, and most of the prison is completely intact. You can walk round the cells, dining rooms, hear stories of famous attempted breakouts and take in the eerie atmosphere. |
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| one of the towers of Alcatraz - click to enlarge |
| Las Vegas
My next plan was to head for Las Vegas. After one week and a wicked time in San Francisco, I boarded the Greyhound once again to go back to L.A. where I could pick up a bus inland. After a drunken farewell in a North Beach bar to some pals from the hostel, I staggered on the overnight bus and managed to spend the whole time asleep. After changing buses in L.A., we climbed through the hills, emerging in clearer, more desert-like surroundings. The road to Las Vegas was almost a straight line, passing advertising hoardings, diners and trailer parks. As you get closer to the gambling centre of the world, the ads get tackier, the signs more brash alluding to gambling. Entering Las Vegas round the backstreets in the middle of the day isn't that exciting, but I found the hostel fine - a converted motel in not the nicest part of town. Las Vegas really is like a plastic town, a showcase for how tacky and showy the States can be. The Strip however is quite fun, a long, er 'strip' of casinos with different themes. Camelot is built like a medieval castle, Caesar's Palace like a marble palace, etc etc. The extravagant exteriors make way for rather disappointing regular casinos inside, packed with cheap slot machines and gambling tables. At night though the Strip really comes alive. I took a trip up the Stratosphere, a tower with viewing platform high up looking right out over Las Vegas (see photo). The strangest thing is seeing where the lights stop and the darkness of the desert begins, as if the city parameters have been sliced square into shape. |
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 Vegas by night from the Stratosphere - click to enlarge | |
| One of the more surreal events was a fake Elvis wedding and party in the hostel, between the daughter of the owner and a random Swedish backpacker. There are real wedding chapels along the Strip, and from all accounts they looked pretty busy. |  |
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The Grand Canyon is only a short way south of Las Vegas. I splashed out and took a small plane flight to the quiet South Rim of the canyon. The aircraft that I boarded with a few other Brit package tourists was small - only 6 seats, including me
being up the front with the pilot. Preparation for takeoff sounded more like we were in a mini than a small aircraft, but the flight was smooth, and after an hour we landed in a very untouristed area on the edge of the canyon.
This was my first glimpse of the Grand Canyon. Pictures do not always do it justice - it really is amazing, huge, and way beyond my expectations. I met a German guy on the flight, and we walked round the edge, marvelling at the many crevices spiralling into the distance and the Colorado river far below. The picture below is a shot of the Hoover Dam, fondly remembered during geography lessons... |
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 Hoover Dam - click to enlarge |
 Colorado River - click to enlarge |
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The weather in Las Vegas was hot for March, so I spent plenty of time by the pool in the hostel... the desert environment is clear and dry
and made a change from the city.
Arizona I decided it was time to move on when I went bleary-eyed into the grocery store next to the hostel at 9 on a sunday morning and found slot machines, fully attended, and gambling in full swing. It had always been a dream to visit Arizona, so I bought a ticket for a bus heading south. The journey itself was beautiful, if desert landscapes are your thang. The bus broke down in Kingsman, Arizona, a one-horse town populated it seemed purely by motels and Taco Bells. A redneck couple (as they described themselves) had befriended me on the bus and invited me to a night of tequila-swilling at one of the motel bars, but probably wisely I decided to talk my way onto another Greyhound to Flagstaff, which I did.  Flagstaff, Arizona, is the traditional jumping off point for the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley and countless other National Parks and outdoorsy things. It's a town dissected by the old highway Route 66, which I crossed several times on my journey east. A town of students, outdoor and biking shops and bars. Being high up, it was pretty cold when I arrived in the middle of the night. I spent a day chilling out then decided to visit Monument Valley, a few hour's drive north towards Utah. A rather eccentric old cowboy drove us on a tour trip in his van. For some reason, I decided a horseback trip was a really great way to see Monument Valley. Conquering my fears from when Helen Mason's pony at school nearly trampled me, I jumped on the back of this huge horse led by an Indian guy. To be honest, it probably was the best way of seeing the Valley, as the huge red boulders loomed above us. According to the Navajo who was leading us, there are Indian families that live permanently in the valleys around there, really desolate spots in the middle of Indian land. The silence in the Valley was quite eerie, a spectacular place to visit with a peaceful atmosphere. |
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 Monument Valley - click to enlarge |
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Back at the hostel I met Kate from London who had hired a car to see the west, and I joined her for a second trip to the Grand Canyon. This time we visited a more touristy spot, but the views were no less fantastic. |
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 more Canyon shots - click to enlarge |
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| Eventually the colder weather began to annoy me, so I decided to head south, to Tucson Arizona near the Mexican border. Changing Greyhound buses at Phoenix, I vowed never to
go there again - a bus station stuck out in the middle of nowhere populated by nutters, drunks and gang members. Probably. Anyway it began to feel like Mexico when the bus neared Tucson, little flat-roofed dusty towns and fewer people.
The Roadrunner Hostel in Tucson was wicked - a converted house with a large veranda, met some cool people from all over the place. A girl from the Netherlands, an Australian witch, and a psychic. In fact the psychic/healer guy offered a reading, and gave me some
pretty freaky information about where I'd been - he also spotted the arm injury I'd sustained in New Zealand. A Japanese girl had hired a car and together with a guy from Italy and a guy from London, we drove out to the old cowboy town of
Tombstone.
Tombstone was the town where Wyatt Earpe was sherrif (and there I was thinking he was fictional). The town today has mainly been reconstructed as the Old West apparently looked, complete with storefronts, horse tours and cowboy shows. We went and saw one of the outdoor shows, a gunfight, which turned out to be strangely camp but fun to watch. It turned out the Mexican border was only a few mile's drive away, and we decided to cross over, even though without visas we couldn't go too far into Mexico. We crossed, across large amounts of barbed wire and high fences, into a little Mexican border town called Naco, unfortunately not 'Nacho' which would have had at least some comedy value. |
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 Mexico - do YOU need money? |
We drove around like tourists for a while, and just before crossing back the English guy remembered he had some weed on him. Inevitably, we were stopped by the US customs for a regular search, nervously answering their barrage of questions on where we had been. After five minutes, we were on our way again, though we learnt how paranoid US Customs are about who and what is coming through from Mexico. |
| One thing I would definitely recommend in Tucson is the Sonoran Desert Museum and Saguaro National Park. I spent a day at the outdoor museum, which made me realise how diverse the desert is. From exotic cactii to Roadrunner birds and desert hawks, this museum was really excellent. It is surrouded by Sonoran cactii, which can grow metres tall, and are most often associated with Roadrunner cartoons. Walking around among them is quite eerie as they are so tall and seem to take on the posture of humans. No, really. |  Sonoran Desert cactii |
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I was quite sad to leave Tucson, a sleepy little sunset town. However, an offer of a lift from Rob, a Texan guy, all the way into New Mexico was too good to refuse. The journey was uneventful, the road pretty
remote and we passed mainly trucks. We were struck by unseasonal weather as we crossed the southern deserts of New Mexico, as snow - snow! - started falling. Without a jacket to my name after months of
tropical weather, I was freezing. By the time we reached El Paso on the Mexican border, it had fortunately stopped snowing but was pretty chilly. Rob spoke Spanish, and suggested we stay overnight and check out
the delights of a Mexican border town.
Mexico For a border city, Cuidad Juarez was not very pretty. El Paso has traditionally had strong links with it's sister city across the Rio Grande, not least because of the American college students who go there just to drink. We took a tram across and watched the city street life, the old Mexicans in cowboy hats, the craft shops and markets. Rob bought some sweet Mexican toffee which literally rots your teeth as you eat. It didn't feel a particularly safe place, and I was glad to be with someone who at least spoke the language. We ended up in a bar, nowhere I would have dared go on my own, drinking ice-cold beer WITH ice in, from glasses with salt around the rim - this seemed to be the standard way to serve drinks here. Quite a few beers later, we ambled back over the Rio Grande, checking back in at US Customs. However, a sobering thought is how many Mexicans try and cross this border illegally every year, and how easy it was for us. |
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| I left early the next day for a bus up north. I was going to stay at a little spa town called Truth or Consequences, but the bad weather had reached it's way up north and when the bus pulled in the snow was falling thick and fast. I didn't even get off the bus. I had met a Texan guy way back in Singapore who told me his favourite place in the south-west was Taos, New Mexico. I trusted him, and had enough time to take a trip up there. I stoppped off for a couple of nights in Alberquerque. In the rather spooky hostel there, I met a large American family who had once belonged to a religious cult but who had got out and were now travelling the country teaching people about the dangers of cults. They seemed pretty well-grounded people and had some interesting stories to tell. |  Route 66 runs through Alberquerque - click to enlarge |
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Taos, New Mexico
Taos is indeed a very pretty place. A town sitting on the edge of Navajo and Apache-owned land, dominated by the colonial pueblo on the outskirts of town, which has influenced most the the Spanish-looking architecure there. It is surrounded by mountains and the premier alpine ski resort of Angel Fire. The hostel wasn't quite in Taos itself, but a small village called Arroyo Hondo which mainly catered for the skiers. Indeed I arrived at the end of the season and there were a few guys staying at the hostel who were out snowboarding every day. Not skiing however, I found a day's trek through the forests on the foothills of the mountains. Snow was still on the ground, and I found a waterfall that had frozen icicles round the rocks - really beautiful. I trekked up to get a great view of the Taos valley, across the town and stretching across the Indian lands to the west (see photo). It was a pretty remote area, and soon after dark clouds appeared on the horizon, I started down the track - not the place to get stuck. |
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 Looking out over Taos valley - click to enlarge |
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| I had a great 'travelling' experience in Taos. On my way back down the trail from trekking, I was offered a lift into town by a hippy-looking couple in a jeep. On hearing that I was visiting, they invited me to a party, a group of their Indian friends who were playing some music at a house in town. Intrigued, I went along and had a great time, meeting some real local characters. There were a mixture of white and Indians there, some of whom had come off the reservations. Some of the people were artists, as Taos is a centre for native art, and I chatted to them about... nature, life etc. Pretty cool people anyway. I also met an Apache, apparently, called Willie Two Feathers (I began to get used to the native names). He lived near the hostel and offered me a ride back on the back of his customised Harley Davidson. This bike was the largest machine I'd ever seen - bright red, all sorts of native paraphenalia on it, and with the engine of a Corvette car. Needless to say it roared. This would have looked out of place in my local high street, but in Taos, roaring down the road at over 100mph (quite scary actually) watching the sun go down over the mountains, it was a pretty cool experience. | |
Roswell The time came to move on. I had always been fascinated by Roswell, the site of an alleged alien landing and cover up in the 1950's. It was in the middle of nowhere, leaving Taos, the bus took us through Santa Fe, another 'pueblo' town, and then east across flatter plains. I arrived late at night and checked in at the nearest motel - my first motel! - a kitsch 50's style place, very David Lynch. |
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| Roswell really is just a one-horse town of motels, fast-food restaurants and a couple of alien stores and the museum. I went into one of the stores, a poorly stocked place of tacky T-shirts and alien masks. I don't know if the guy in there was just doing it for tourists, but he seemed to believe he had been abducted by aliens. The museum was marginally more interesting, with quite a lot of technical information and evidence that aliens exist. There were some pretty funny cartoons, and some information on the phenomena of crop circles in England. Pretty interesting although predictably touristy. |  Roswell alien museum - click to enlarge |
| I was beginning to run out of time - I had spent lots of time in the south-west, and I only had a number of weeks til my flight back to London was due.
I decided to start heading east, going by Greyhound across the massive state of Texas, stopping off in New Orleans before I hit the east coast. I bought a ticket through to Austin and boarded the bus
with my last western sunset... |
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 Sunset in Texas - click to enlarge |
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| Links
http://www.excult.org - Ever belonged to a religious cult? A site for ex-cult members http://anw.com/Gilbert/ - some alien cartoons http://www.desertmuseum.org/ - the Sonoran Desert Museum website |