Day 357: Walking the Strip

With a full day to spend I decided to head over to the Strip to check out all the things that make Las Vegas famous. I decided to walk there from my hostel, which turned out to be further than expected, but not by enough to be much of a hassle. Through the course of the day I just wandered around heading from one casino to the next, gambling a very small amount (I don't exactly have a lot of money left in my budget to waste by this point) but mostly just checking out the excess and faux luxury Vegas is famous for. The one thing I probably would have rather enjoyed about Las Vegas - the shows, was eventually discared as a possibility because of the cost, although I still suspect it would have been worth it to indulge in at least one.


My basic take on Las Vegas is that it's interesting to see has an emblem of American culture, but that I'd really struggle to spend more than a few days there, especially alone. Despite all the crazy buildings and fantastic shows, it's really a place of experiences, and I feel you really need to be sharing things as part of a group to really get much enjoyment out of it.

Day 356: Freemont Street

My bus got into Las Vegas in the afternoon. Instead of staying on the more recently developed Strip I was downtown on Freemont Street. Freemont Street is the old part of Las Vegas where the original, mob-run casinos were, and now it's largely filled with bars and casinos that are a bit less extreme than the famous Strip ones. The afternoon desert heat was quite nice after the chill of San Francisco and after walking down the street, out far past where anything truly touristy was, to drop off my things at my hostel I explored around downtown a bit more.


Also now on Freemont Street is the (in)famous Heart Attack Grill, where I went for dinner. Heart Attack Grill has become famous on serving some of the most unhealthy food in the world, and making a point to take pride in just how unhealthy it is. If the name wasn't enough of a clue, the staff are dressed as doctors and nurses, and they put a paper hospital gown on your when you step in, just to drive the theme home. There's a scale out front of the restaurant for people to weigh themselves, because the restaurant has a standing offer that if you weigh 350lbs or more, you get to eat for free.

The quadruple-bypass burger has a world record for the most calories in a burger - about 10,000. Even worse, in the menu there's an 8-layer octo-bypass burger. If you get the burgers with bacon they add 5 strips per level, so that's 40 pieces of bacon just added on top. I kept things reasonable by only getting a double-bypass burger, without bacon, and a coke instead of their butterfat shake. I've probably regressed somewhat in health since leaving Asia, but I'm not looking to reverse a year of constant exercise quite so easily. It was delicious, but I'm glad the restaurant is in a place that I won't be visiting often.

Days 354-355: Leaving San Fran

On my next day I explored further south in the city, mainly around the Mission and Castro Districts. There isn't much in the way of big sights around here, but there were a lot of cool little shops, and in the Mission District especially, lots of art. I also spent a chunk of the afternoon back downtown. I visited a small cartoon museum, which wasn't really as good as I'd hoped. I was hoping for more comic art, but it was largely either art from newspaper comics or from Bugs Bunny.

I had most of a day in the city the next day as well, since the bus I was taking out was a night one. There were no rides at this time of year directly through the mountains to Las Vegas, so instead I had to go all the way back to Los Angeles then transfer to a bus heading up into Nevada. I booked my ticket a few days in advance this time, so I at least got to go with Greyhound. The weather in the city was cold and cloudy before I had to leave, and I didn't really feel like walking around after spending the last 3 days walking almost non-stop. Instead I popped over to the San Francisco Public Library, picked out a book somebody had recommended that I'd been meaning to read, and just read through it all. To my amusement the book (which was an urban fantasy mystery, for lack of a closer genre) was set in San Francisco, so all the major locations in the book were places I'd visited in the last couple days. When I was finished the book I headed back to the hostel to get my bags out of storage and walked to the Greyhound station and eventually got on my bus.

Day 353: West Coast Trail

Based on a suggestion from some random German guy I met I decided to walk along the West Coast Trail which runs up the west side of the city. I made my one public transit trip in the city to head out to Lake Merced and start walking north. The trail wasn't clearly marked in many places, so in the end I basically just tried to follow whatever trail/path/beach/sidewalk I could find to keep heading north. The morning was really foggy, which kind of spoiled the coastal view but contributed a special atmosphere of its own.


At some point around Land's End the sky started clearing up and visibility got a lot better.


I continued on until the Golden Gate Bridge, then headed southwest through Presideio.


I eventually got out of Presidio and slowly worked my way back to the hostel zig-zagging down different blocks. This is a pretty brief description of the walk, but it actually took the bulk of the day since it was ultimately probably 15-20km. In the evening I got some dinner with an Uruguayan in my room and played a little late night pool before calling it a day.

Day 352: San Francisco

San Francisco is another of those American cities full of famous things - some of which I feel deserve the fame more than others. San Francisco also has a lot of art and culture, and that immediately made it more appealing for me than Los Angeles was. Because San Francisco is contained by the Bay, it's not all sprawled out like a lot of cities, and I can walk around everywhere pretty easily, and I tended to cover a lot of ground. I started off by heading south-east a bit to check out a specific street art murtal I wanted to see, then turned north-east and followed Mission St. up towards the harbor. Along the way I stopped at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I've expressed my mixed feelings about modern art before, but this is one of the most famous modern art galleries in the world, so I was curious to see what it would be like. Half the gallery was closed down as new installations were going up, but because of that the tickets were half price. It was a pretty cool gallery. The permanent collection had some things I liked and some I didn't. They had one exhibit up of Lebbeus Wood works that I really liked. He's an architect/artist, but a lot of his drawings and sculptures look like futuristic, sci-fi architecture.


When I reached the water I just followed it past all the piers until I got to Fisherman's Wharf, stopping to check out all the harbor seals and Alcatraz. There are lots of ferry tours out to Alcatraz, and I probably would have found it interesting, but it's one of those things where I feel it's reputation probably exceeds it's real interest to me, and I'm trying to save money, so I skipped it.


I stopped for lunch at Fisherman's Wharf, going to one of the famous In-N-Out Burgers. I've had multiple people from California that I've met tell me it's amazing, but I honestly don't really get what the hype is about. It was good, but no better than a lot of other burger chains around. I got some icecream afterwards and walked up the nearby hill to Lombard Street, which is known for being the crookedest street.


That was pretty much it for the day. I walked back towards the hostel from there, stopping to hang out in a park for a bit and cutting through China Town before wandering through the financial district and finally back to the hostel.

Day 351: Crossing California

My morning was a bit rushed. I was taking a fairly early bus out of Los Angeles, using some small independent Vietnamese bus company that was going to pick me up in China Town. The main issue was that I had to have a printed copy of my ticket, which I had forgotten to do in advance, and I had to wait for the staff at the hostel to get up (they tend to party pretty hard, and normal office hours weren't until 11am), and then we had problems getting the printer to work. Once we finally got things working it was a pretty quick ride to China Town since it was on the same subway line as where my hostel was, so I managed to get there in time. The ride wasn't very good. The bus was cramped and completely filled, with only 5 people that weren't Asian.

We got into San Francisco in the late evening, and by the time I got to my hostel the sun was down. The hostel I stayed in was huge, and one of the few real organized hostels I've encountered in the US. It must have had a few hundred beds, and had other perks like a fully-equipped industrial kitchen, pool tables and even a small movie theater. It was right on the border of the nicer part of downtown and the much less nice Tenderloin district (you can't expect much from a district named Tenderloin) which was full of beggars and homeless. Since it was already evening by the time I settled in I only went out to get a pizza, and then spent the rest of the evening trying to plan out what to do in San Francisco.

Day 350: LA - The Hidden Places

With much of the big touristy stuff out of the way I decided to spend my last day in LA doing the sort of thing I enjoy most, which is exploring interesting neighborhoods, wandering down back alleys and generally just looking for cool places tucked out of the way. I had gotten a few suggestions from people in the hostel, and had looked some things up online to make a list of plays to see. I ended up not getting to half of it, mostly due to one of the stops, Culver City, taking longer than I expected to get to, and then getting a bit lost there. I can't share the highlights of the day until I do my street art post, but the Culver City trip was worth the effort. I hopped around to a few other places after that, but in general I was pretty ready to move on in my trip.

Day 349: LA - Being a Tourist

After a good night's sleep I was ready to go again. Like most cities, and especially cities in the USA, I wasn't really sure what to do. Big American cities have all these things they are famous for, but I kind of feel that they are only famous because they put them in movies and talk about them a lot - and they don't really have much inherent interest for me. For Los Angeles, I started my explorations by looking around downtown some (it turns out downtown LA isn't really all that interesting).

I took the metro up to Hollywood, which was a bit more interesting. It has all the tacky iconic stuff, but also had some nice street art. I have somewhat mixed feelings about the touristy stuff. I found the entire Hollywood sign and Walk of Fame pretty underwhelming, but I did enjoy the Chinese Theater and going through all the handprints out front.


I spent the evening back at the hostel spending time with the people living there, partly because it had been drizzling off and on all day and I didn't feel like staying outdoors. Most of them were semi-permanent, having been staying in the hostel for at least a couple weeks, and while a lot of them were pretty strange, they were a good group.

Day 348: The Longest Day

I was sitting out in this little park/plaza on my tablet with my backpack and bags piled around me in the middle of the night. It's sort of in the middle of the bar area, and it was a Friday night (or very early Saturday morning) so there were lots of really drunk people stumbling around shouting a lot. A few came over to talk with me, but it's New Zealand, so nobody really gave me much of a hassle. Finally around 3am I walked to the corner and caught my shuttle bus to the airport. There were only 2 other people on board, and the ride was a lot faster than it had been when I flew into Auckland due to there being nobody getting on or off and no traffic. I checked in and lounged around the airport and read some more. My flight path was a bit strange. It was cheaper to go to LA through Melbourne than direct, even though going through Melbourne meant flying for hours in the wrong direction first. I'm more concerned with money than time, and spending long hours sitting in a vehicle is routine by now.

The issue in Melbourne was that I was transferring between two airlines (JetStar and Qantas), and they weren't going to transfer my backpack to the second flight automatically. This meant that I had to get my bag, queue up to go through border control, go through another queue at customs (which is very thorough in Australia), go to the Qantas desk to get my boarding pass and check my bag for the new flight, then go through more queues back through security and border control again. There was only about 1:15 between when the first flight landed and I was supposed to board the second flight, and with all the long lines that time disappeared quickly and I was feeling a little nervous (and rather tired since I still hadn't slept). Ultimately I did get there in just under the time I needed, but it turned out to be moot since there was some sort of equipment trouble and boarding was delayed 40 minutes anyway. Finally we got on the plane and it was time to head back the way I'd just come, flying east over the Pacific.

The person sitting next to me on the flight was a blind Australian who was eventually heading to Venezuela to visit hospitals and orphanages as a clown with Patch Adams. That, combined with me having been travelling the world for a year made for lots to talk about. I also watched a few movies, and got a couple hours of much needed sleep. American border control is known for being pretty thorough, so the lines were slow. When it was finally my turn, I got grilled. My passport is by now rather colourful, which seemed to make him suspcious (in Australia, people going to backpack around the world is almost part of growing up, in America, not so much). This led to him asking for additional identification, which hasn't happened anywhere else in the world. I gave him additional identification, but of course since it's me the names didn't match exactly since all my IDs are slightly different. This led to more questioning about all my aliases (no, I've never gone by the name Rico Martinez Miller) before eventually letting me continue on. I finally got into the main terminal about 7:30am on March 7, the same time and date as I'd left Auckland like 20+ hours ago (gotta love the date-line time travel flights). I took my time getting a shuttle to Union Station, and since I was still really early decided to walk to Mariachi Plaza instead of taking the subway. My hostel was across the Los Angeles River, and in a rather poor and run down Mexican/Latino area. The hostel itself was a small independent one, but the staff was friendly and it was right next to the subway. I was pretty exhausted still from all the travel and not getting much sleep on the plane, so I napped a little and just spent the day in the local area, talking with other guests in the hostel and finding some nice little restaurants in the local area. After months of craving Mexican food, bein in the Mexican part of LA certainly gave me a lot of options. I managed to put off going to bed until late, partially since it was Saturday night and there were a lot of people coming and going. Finally I got some well deserved sleep.

Days 346-347: Waiting to Leave

I took my last bus ride of New Zealand from Taupo, back up through Rotorua and finally to Auckland. During our hike across Tongariro our group had a lengthy discussion on New Zealand meat pies, which seem to be something of a national dish. One of the places that came up was a little bakery in Rotorua that had delicious pies, so when I happened to have an hour between transferring buses around lunch in Rotorua I managed to hunt the place down and get a few award-winning pies.


I had purposely booked a hostel a bit closer to where the buses come and go, mostly so that I wouldn't have so far to work at the dreadfully early hour I had to go at to catch my plane when I finally left the city. I didn't really have much I wanted to do in Auckland, but I did hang out in the city for much of the second day, just browsing through comic and book shops and sitting around in parks or by the water. Although I booked 2 nights in my hostel, I ultimately only slept there once. My flight from Auckland to Los Angeles left around 7am, and between the few hours early I'd have to get to the airport, the bus to get there, and the walk from my hostel to the bus stop I'd have had to get up around 3am to do everything comfortably. Instead I just walked to a nearby park where I could use wifi (my hostel was charging $10 a day to use wifi - one of the things I really hate about New Zealand) and just spent the night reading a book on my tablet and planning out the next few weeks a little.

Days 344-345: Resting in Taupo

Originally I'd planned to squeeze one more place in before returning to Auckland to fly out, but after all the bus rides and hiking I decided I'd rather just take things slow and just rest in Taupo for a few days then head to Auckland. The day after the hike I had breakfast with the others before they drove on back to Hamilton and I switched to a new hostel. The two days in Taupo was pretty uneventful. I went for a few walks around town and along the lake, but there isn't really much to talk about!

Day 343: Feats of Endurance

We got up around 4:30am to get read for an early morning shuttle from Taupo out to the start of the climb in Tongariro National Park. We shared the shuttle with two other people staying in Taupo, bringing our little group to 7. Tongariro is recently famous for being used for filming of Mordor and Mt. Doom in The Lord of the Rings movies, and it's something of a wasteland of dust and volcanic rock. The walk began pretty easily with winding paths through rocky fields with lots groundcovers and lichens. The mountains themselves began pretty obscured by cloud, but things cleared up quite a bit as we approached.


Once we got to the edge of the mountains things got steeper and quite a bit harder. The steepness wasn't really the problem, but in many places the ground was loose volcanic sand and gravel that slipped with every step, and through the hike we all slipped and fell down more than once. After the first climb up there's a long flat section that goes by the red crater, and a nice view down at the rocky plain on the other side of the mountains.


There was another steep climb up the next ridge before the path carried on down the other side to the emerald lakes. This steep descent wasn't too bad to go down, and normally going down is all you have to do since it's a one-way path. Unfortunately the end section of the crossing has been closed for some time do to dangerous volcanic activity, so we had to slowly climb back up the steep, shifting slope of sand.


Once climbing back up to the highest part of the walk we stopped for lunch, then retraced our path back over and out of the mountains. Once we got back to our starting point we got the shuttle back to Taupo and after returning to our hostel for showers we went down to the main area to get some dinner and drinks. As I mentioned before, this was the day of the Taupo Iron Man race, so we got a table along the course to watch and cheer people on. For those that don't know, Iron Man competitions are insane. It's like a triathalon, but they lengthen all the sections since apparently triathalons aren't hardcore enough already. The Iron Man consists of a 4km swim followed by a 180km bicycle ride. If you're not exhausted after all that, then you only have to run a full marathon of 42km afterwards to finish. I'm a little in awe of anybody that can finish one of these, even if I question their sanity a little for wanting to put themselves through it. Deserving special mention is a guy staying in our hostel that we had a bit of a chat with who was probably about 50, and only had one arm. I don't know what time he got, but we saw him well into the marathon run.

Days 341-342: Wellington to Taupo

I spent a day hanging out in Wellington to recover a bit from all the non-stop travelling. The weather in Wellington has been pretty amazing every day I've been there, and it was a nice warm sunny day. I didn't have any real plans or objectives, and was happy to just explore around downtown and along the harbor. The only really notable encounter of the day was with a tiny baby penguin that seemed to be wandering alone in the rocks down along the water, but it was unfortunately one of the times I didn't have my camera with me.

The next morning I took the morning bus from Wellington up to Taupo, where I was going to be meeting some locals to visit Tongariro National Park. Taupo is another fairly small town (similar to Owen Sound in population), sitting on the picturesque Lake Taupo. Our accomodations and transportation for the hike at Tongariro was entirely set up by Claire, who I think is the only person I've met in 4 different countries now - China, Hong Kong, Nepal and New Zealand (I can only think of 4 people, 3 of whom are family, that I've even met in 3 countries). She lives fairly close to Taupo and had been wanting to do the hike, so when I got to New Zealand we picked a suitable date and she did all the hard work, which was especially notable because the weekend we picked happened to also be the weekend of the Taupo Iron Man competition, and almost everything in town was booked solid. In the end our group was 5 people (including 3 of her friends from nearby Hamilton), and we met up in the evening at our lodging for the night before going out to pick up some groceries for the hike.

Days 339-340: Northward Blitz

It was now time to blitz back across New Zealand, or at least the south island. I first took a long bus ride from Queenstown up to Christchurch, delayed slightly be a huge herd of sheep that wouldn't get off the road.

I was curious to see what Christchurch would look like now, after it suffered so much destruction from the earthquakes. At first, it doesn't look that different, but then you start to notice all the empty lots and the fact that there really aren't many buildings more than 2 stories tall. The hostel was nice enough to come pick me up from downtown and drive me to the hostel, and the driver/owner was pointing out all the buildings that have been torn down, or are going to be torn down because the foundations are no longer safe.

The hostel itself was... interesting. Because there's been so much damage to the infrustructure there's a combination of not enough accomodations in town and a lot of people coming into the city looking for construction work, causing a huge shortage of beds. The hostel I was in had addressed this by having tents spread all through the backyard, with big outdoor communal areas under tarps. I was in a more traditional dorm room inside the house, but spent the evening hanging out with a lot of the campers. It had a very hippie commune vibe to it, and included lots of random drum circles and impromptu sing-a-longs.

My bus in the morning was at an annoying 7am, so I had to take a taxi from the hostel. About 2/3 of the way to Picton the bus came to a sputtering stop, and died. The driver tried a few things, but ultimately gave up and told us that they were looking for an alternative, but that anybody going to the ferry was going to miss it. I was mentally trying to figure out all the things I was going to have to shift, when one of the other passengers who happened to be a mechanic managed to get the bus going again. We rushed on north and I managed to catch the ferry and cross back over to Wellington. I just had time to get to my hostel, drop off my bags and have a quick shower before I met up with my childhood friend Alan and his girlfriend for dinner, as they happened to be heading down south as I was coming north. If you can't reconnect with old friends on the other side of the world, where can you?

Overall, a really long 2 days.

Days 337-338: The Divide and Return

The final day was from Lake Mackenzie to a place called The Divide, which is where a few different trails begin. It was mostly in woods again, so the views weren't as spectacular, but it was still a nice woodland track. The one notable exception was another steep side tail up to Key Summit which climbed back above the tree line to an alpine marsh preservation. In addition to all the lovely mountain views it was also new flora with lots of different colourful mosses and groundcovers.

From there it was a steady descent down through the forest. Closer to the Divide there were lots of other hikers who take a bus out, hike for a couple hours then go home. I think they miss all the best parts of the hike, but not everybody has the time, desire or fitness to do the entire thing. I got picked up a couple hours after finishing the track, and got driven back to Queenstown in a much longer journey than the one that brought me in.

Back in Queenstown I returned my sleeping bag and decided to book an extra day in the city to relax and look around a bit. I tried to get dinner at this famous burger restaurant called Fergburger. It's not only famous in the city, but had been recommended to me even by people on the other side of the country. Unfortunately I'm not the only person looking to try it out, and the line was too daunting to get one. Instead, I waited until the morning and went and had a massive, delicious burger there at 9:30 in the morning when there was no line at all!


The rest of my day was pretty uneventful. I visited the small beach in town and just hung out relaxing.

Day 336: Routeburn Falls to Lake Mackenzie

The second day was the longest hike, from Routeburn Falls up across the saddle between mountains, crossing from Mt. Aspiring National Park into Fjordlands National Park, around the back of the mountain range and down to Lake Mackenzie. The morning began with very poor visibility as we were right in the middle of the clouds. I was too restless to wait them out, but didn't want to miss the best views of the hike, so I walked slowly in the morning and took lots of breaks to sit and wait as long as I could manage before getting restless again. My delay did pay off as around 11am little pockets of blue appeared, and then within 15 minutes the entire sky was clear.


The next hour or so of hiking was my favourite of the track as you cross through another valley, and head up through another mountain pass that has a glacial lake nestled inside.


Past the lake, on the final saddly of the range was a little day-shelter that marks the switch from one park to the other. There's also a side trail that leads up to the peak of Conical Hill. Conical Hill only takes 30 or 40 minutes to go up, but it's a steep, hard climb. The view from the top lets you see in all directions though, so it was a worthwhile sidetrip.


The entire day so far had been above the tree-line, and that continued as the path crossed over to the other side of the mountains and hugged along the side. There was a new view of more mountains and a river valley down below, with forest between the alpine grasses around the path and the valley below.


Finally the path curved around the side of the mountains and revealed Lake Mackenzie down below. Then it was a series of cross-backs down the mountain that was hard on my knees. Towards the bottom the path went through an amazing mossy forest of silver beech trees that is nicknamed the "Fairy Glen". Unfortunately it's pretty impossible to capture it properly with my camera (like just about everything on this hike).


After grabbing a bunk (I was one of the first there, so I managed to get one of the good ones) I headed over to the lake for a swim. There was a group of Germans waffling over the temperature of the water, and I swear it took them all least 10 minutes to finally work up will to jump in after standing with the water up to their knees. I just walked down a log and jumped in, and while it was cold it wasn't that bad, and certainly not as bad as many places I've swam. Wussy Germans.

Each of the bunk houses has a park warden stationed at them. It's their job to look after the bunk house and check tickets, but more importantly they also maintain the track and look after the surrounding parks. The guy on our first night had just given us a talk on fire safety, but the one at Lake Mackenzie is something of a legend in the parks. He's worked at Lake Mackenzie for 20 years, and runs an annual Christmas dinner and Highland Games competition that brings the other park wardens in from all over the country. His talk was a mix of annecdotes, information and stand up comedy (for the most part absolutely deadpan) that was absolutely hilarious in addition to being very informative.