Hiii
so this is me making a formal apology for being probably the worst blogger in the history if the universe... Travel allows very little time alone and plus writing a blog from a cell phone is just annoying. My hand already sort of hurts from typing all this.
So when I left off we were starting out in San Francisco. For the first few nights we stayed in berkeley with a very nice couchsurfer named Michael who spoke lots of different languages snd took us to some of the best Thai food I've had... And really different from appeThaizing. Cali's Thai food seems to be a lot more authentic than what we eat in ny.
San Fran was fun but I'll keep it short and sweet... We drank champagne on a street corner, slept on the beach which we thought would be fun but was just sketchy because we were in a city and sandy and damp because we were literally 2ft away from the ocean... Everyone everyone in sf thought we were homeless because of our bags so we got some not so nice treatment in stores and restaurants.
Actually, this trip so far has really given me a lot of perspective on what it is to be homeless, whether actually homeless due to necessity, or travelers like we are. It is extremely extremely hard to live off the board, especially in a big city where people pretend not to see you except to make you feel unwelcome. There are very few public restrooms and drinking fountains and one night when Christian and I were walking big sur in the pouring rain and had ticks and there was no shoulder on the road (and did I mention it was pouring?) not a single person slowed down to see if we were okay.
It's weird because I understand the reasoning for avoiding the homeless, because you never know what someone will do, especially if desperate, but it's sad it has to be that way. And it doesn't, not really. And many people you'll meet have a story. We met a man in a coffeeshop in San Luis obispo who I'm pretty sure was god, but he had been homeless before and even now was treated as though homeless due to his long beard and single long long dreadlock running down his back, but he was an ordained Buddhist monk and an architect. Anyway.
After sf we went to Santa Cruz and couchsurfed with some awesome people living on land they were in the process of turning into an organic farm, and they had two mini-goats and a little creek in back with a rope swing and whatnot. Santa cruz was an awesome awesome place, almost didn't want to leave.
But we did and biked all the way to Monterey which is 40 miles! But forty miles proved too ridiculous for us and we ended up ditching the bikes in big sur. Nothing all too special happened in monterey, we were too poor to go to the aquarium and there isn't much else to do, but we stayed there waaaay too long, mostly because we were recovering from our bike trip but also because we just could not figure out the travel thing. We almost bought a car until we realized that would be stupid. We took the bus the 20 miles to big sur.
On the bus we met two crazies who told us all about big sur and what to see, which ended up in us walking fifteen miles in the dark and the rain to get to this place we weren't entirely sure existed
but sure enough, at 12:45am we arrived at esalen, where fifteen minutes later a woman with an Australian accent came riding up the hill in a go cart and took us down to the natural hot springs that were right on the edge of the cliff, overlooking the ocean.
It was all very surreal, maybe because Christian and I both fell asleep in the tubs and had to be woken up. Anyway we didn't have anywhere to camp, not realizing in advance that highway one through big sur is surrounded on one side by cliffs going up and on the other side by cliffs going down.. To the ocean. The esalen people felt sorry for us so they told us of a common area for esalen people about a mile and a half up the road where we could sleep.
We got there and walked up to one of the buildings where we found an old woman with a broken nose and toe smoking out of a bong behind a bamboo screen. I assume she was the caretaker but she felt sorry for us (I guess we looked pretty pathetic) and kept saying "bless you, bless you" and let us stay there. On big comfy couches after a hard night of tick bites and walking and a week of straight camping before then during which I accidentally set myself on fire trying to get a campfire started. Lohveleh.
And then (sorry mom)we woke up and hitched a few rides OUT of big sur with some of the nicest people- an older man who is a therapist who also has an organic farm in Hawaii that is always looking for people to go help out (wwoof) and a nice older couple who took us 80 miles to san Luis obispo, I think because they were worried about us and didn't want anyone scary picking us up, which was nice and certainly appreciated, especially because we covered 90 miles in one day, which was unexpected. But although I had such a good experience hitchhiking, I'm not pushing my luck, and from what I hear the 1 is a relatively safe place to hitchhike (especially through big sur because it's mostly tourists driving through) and we were safe, buuut I'm not going to do anymore hitchhiking on this trip.
Anyway after fifteen miles of walking in the rain with 100 more to go til civilization, you'll find your mind opens up to hitchhiking just a little bit. We're getting a 60 day greyhound bus pass for this coming leg of the journey.
We're in Santa Barbara now, staying with some of phil grajko's friends who were nice enough to have us, and headed to la as soon as Christian wakes up.
I'll try to be a better blogger in the future I swear
love and well wishes
Jackie
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