USA - Adventures in San Francisco

Stepping off the plane late at night we had to check we hadn't arrived back in England. As it was cold, windy and foggy. This can't be right, surely? Using the legendary old fashioned cable cars we managed to find the road our hostel was on.

As we reached the corner we looked at the street map. Looked right, then left. "Looks like we're in the Red light district." Rich and I looked at each other after taking in the high density of bars with questionable moral value. "The hostel is down there, looks like our luck is in!", Rich jested. A diseased cackle came from behind us, on the corner of the street we had walked down. An old china man with dark wirey long hair and matching beard sat on a concrete step, clutching booze in some brown paper. We found a small doorway between a two strip clubs, opening on to a stairway with worn green pasiley carpet. The lobby at the top and indeed most of the hostel had the look of a run down set from 'The Shining'. Although located in an dodgy area the hostel had some excellent features, namely - free beer, free Internet access, free dinner and free breakfast. The final sweetener was a free dance from the next door club!!! And yet the cost per night was the same as all the other hostels.

On one of the mornings wehired bikes and been ambitious decided to bike up the biggest mountain in the area. Using the map given to us by the rental company the mountain looked easy enough - it even had a picture of friendly biker happily riding up the mountain, indicating its easiness. So with only one obvious track to the summit, how could we possiblygo wrong?....

How wrong we were! The mountain contained000's of paths, and not all leading to the summit! After 6 hours of hard steep climbs we finally made it to a lodge which took refuse to us as it was by now quite late and the fog began to roll in. We were greeted as heroes by the guests of the lodge as apparently the mountain usually takes a complete day to climb and we had managed to do it in half the time. As we had not anticipated any of this sincethe map made it look so simple all we had with us were shorts, t-shirt, 1 litre of water and a power-bar. The guests took pity on our situation and feed us like kings with roast chicken, ham, cheese, bread, and beer. The next morning they even set us off with a cooked breakfast! The actual summit was another 400m so we walked the rest and tookphotos of the hundreds of miles we could see below us.

We met up with Seth, Richard's cousin Eben's best mate. He generously lent us his penthouse apartment, complete with stunny views of SF harbour and all the mod con's a modern day bachelor keeps in their apartment. On arrival he showed us around, handed us the keys and said "Im off to NYC on business, see you 2 days. Have fun boys" before picking up his bag and leaving. Rich and I stared at one another in disbelief....

So as any kid acts with a new toy, we rummaged discovering endless things to do,checking out the endless TV channels, cooked up a massive feast, cranked the music up and lazed on pure leather sofas. Sweat!

Over the next few days we partied it up meeting cool people, discovering great bars which actually serve quality drinks with a genuine smile.A guy in particular we met was Brandon who wasa sports coach atnoneonly but the best gym in San Fransico! In fact the same gymJessica Alba goes to (shewas in Dark Angel andnow in the film Deep Blue). He invited us to a house BBQ the following night where we met more cool people and got brain freeze on frozen cocktails.

Seth returned from business and decided we havent experienced the US of A without a mandatory trip to a baseball game. Rocking up to the San Fransico stadium we were ushered through to a private viewing area which Seth had pre-arranged. With admission, drinks and food paid for we got to watch a superb game. Thankfully Seth guided us through the game to many other spectators disbelief of our ignorance. "There British" was the only thing we could think to settle matters. The game itself was slow paced, slower than Cricket! However the endless banging of music during strikes/walkouts etc, chants, and hotdog throwing attendants made up for any slow moments.

Before leaving San Fransisco we booked ourselves onto a 4 day trip to a national park called Yosemite Park, a park the size of Wales. The 4 day, 3 night tripwas done on an adapted coach which converted from daytime seating to a massive bedroom at night. The 4 days were probably the best days of my life. Meeting 35 amazing and different types of people from across the world, trekking and hiking through strenuous mountains, swimming in ice cold lakes and streams, marvelling one of the biggest waterfalls in the world, each lending a hand cooking, opting to sleep outside counting dozens of shooting stars and avoiding grizzly bears. The complete escapade and antics deserves a much more detailed rendition which is best shared in person, one day!

As we were enjoying San Fran so much we didn't really want to move on so soon. We called Quantasthe airliner to see how much it was going to cost to change the flights.Josephine promptly told us it wasn't going to cost anything. "Nothing? Are you sure?" I asked in disbelief following the tale STA Travel told me stating it would cost minimum 50pnds per change.

That was it for us.....we couldn't believe our luck so straight away delayed all our subsequent flights by 1 month. Fan-bloody-tastic!

With such great news we had to move on nonetheless and do 'the cruise' down the West Coast......

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Yosemite National Park (a glimpse - Rich's account)

[DEF CHECK OUT THE PHOTOS - CLICK BELOW ANY PIC ON THIS PAGE WHERE IT SAYS 'VIEW ALL PICTURES']

"These guys are gonna be popular"

Dave and I put the two 24 pack of Miller cans on the ground in the middle of a mixed group of 38 travellers, mainly in pairs and trios but a fair share of solo's too. We were pleased that the group seemed to be youthful and plenty of english speaking folks.

Jimmy our resident driver guide and hippy generation expert read the rules in a strong Northern-Californian accent. The green tortoise bus was a lot more modern than I remembered in the brochure more like a giant RV than a hippy bus.

Cruised overnight to Yosemite, woke up at dawn surrounded by emmense trees and the sound of water crashing thru bolder from a great height about 100m away. Dave and I had to inspect whilst breakfast was being prepared. The walk delivereda huge water fall and saw humming birds and brightly coloured woodpeckers.

After brekkie hit throad again for Yosemite valley to begin a power hike to the top of the Yosemite Falls. The book makes it a 5 1/4 hour round trip. Seven of us started out. We lost Dave after 20mins, who after meeting up at the top discovered he stopped to redo his shoelaces. Racing to keep up he somehow managed to overtake us and with the help from friendly walkers coming back down who kept him on with the refreshing sound of 'yeah I saw a big group....just around that corner'....

Got to the top in time for a few pic's of the famous five that made it, then Dave walked around the corner. After bumping into him again we walked to the stream of the falls for a token dip in the FREEZING icy water.

The extra time swimming meant we basically had to run down the track, and made to back in 3h50mins! Whew!

Back on the bus to the night camping spot. Due to a few navigation issues with Jimmy(driver) we pulled up to our final spot pretty late. All the Brits grabbed the cushioning from the bus and set up a 'camp' (constituting of a long cushion) under the stars and counted thw shooting stars over a few cold beers.

Day 2 in Yosemite was just as good,though not quite so physically demanding. Went to Mono Lake to float in the salty waters, a bit like the dead sea, except the alkalinity of the water was so strongly that it left your whole body feeling slippery. For the chemistry geeks out there the water was roughly equivalent to dilute Sodium Hydroxide!

The evening was finished off with a well organised camp fire (well I did sort the construction out). I was in my element lighting the fire, I'm sure in another life I could have been a very skilled pyromaniac or arsonist.

Day 3 involved a mild hike to Dog Lake and swimming, but more importantly a severe party at the oldest bar in California. Loads of Karoke, including an essex style rendition of Kool & the Gangs "Celebration" by yours truly and Dave (always a crowd pleaser!).

That night we had to relunctly get back onto the bus for the journey back to San Fransico arriving extremely earlyor late.....with a coach load of hangovers.